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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s8: IV. Cities and Emporia

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s8

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IV. Cities and Emporia

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W E have no clear reference to any city south of the Vindhya in the Vedic texts. But the cognomen Kauṇḍinya applied to Vidarbhī in the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* may point to the existence of the city of Kuṇḍina in Vidarbha or Berār in the age of the *Upaniṣad*. The city was certainly known to the *Mahābhārata* and is possibly represented by the modern Kauṇḍinyapura on the banks of the Wardhā in the Chāndūr *tāluk* of Amraoti. If this identification be correct the city lay to the north of the Sahyādriparvat, and hence stood outside the limits of the Deccan as defined in these pages. The same remark applies to Bhojakaṭa, Nandivardhana, and several other cities which had the distinction of being graced by the presence of monarchs of Vidarbha in the heroic age or in historical times. The only city of Berār which lies to the south of the Sahyādriparvat is Vatsagulma or Bāsim whose antiquity can be traced back to the fourth century A.D.

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The *Rāmāyaṇa* mentions a Vaijayantapura in the south in the direction of Daṇḍaka. The reference may be to the port of Byzantium or Byzanteion of the classical writers, or to Banavāsi—the Banaouasei of Ptolemy—described in the Aihole inscription as a place ‘which has for a girdle the rose of swans that sport on the light waves of the river Varadā’. The Byzantium of the classical writers is a market-town on the coast, and Ptolemy draws a distinction between it and Banaouasei, which is an inland city. But the latter too is known from Indian evidence to have borne the name of Vaijayanti. It is, however, interesting to note that Alberunī places his ‘Banavas’ on the sea coast. It is possible that foreigners did not always understand the distinction between Vaijayantī-Banavāsi in the interior on the banks of the river Varadā, and its port which may have lain somewhere on the west coast and apparently bore the same name. In a similar way Chinese writers turn the inland city of Kāñchīpura into a South Indian port of departure for Ceylon,¹ apparently confounding the Pallava capital with its port on the Coromandel coast.

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¹ Watters, *Yuan Chwang*, ii, 22.

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The *Rāmāyaṇa* also refers to Murachipaṭṭana, doubtless the Maruchipaṭṭana of Varāhamihira, Muziris of the classical writers, modern Kranganur. But it lies far to the south of the Deccan proper.

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The *Mahābhārata* knows the city of Śūrpāraka and the famous place of pilgrimage styled Rāmatīrtha, both of which figure in the inscriptions of Uṣavadāta. Under the name of Suppara or Souppara it is known to Greek writers, and is mentioned along with Calliena or Kalyāṇa in the Ṭhāṇa District. The early Pāli texts refer to a brisk trade between Suppāraka and Suvarṇabhūmi, that is to say, Lower Burma and the Malay Islands. Alberunī, who refers to it as Sūbāra, testifies to its survival till the eleventh century. A Śilāhāra record of A.D. 1095 refers to tolls on carts coming into Sthānaka (Thāṇa), Nāgapura (Nāgāon near Alibāg), Śūrpāraka, Chemūli (Chaul, the Semylla of the Periplus and Simylla of Ptolemy), and other seaports in the Koṅkaṇ fourteen hundred (district). Śūrpāraka is now represented by Sopāra near Bassein, a few miles to the north of Bombay.

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An interesting place mentioned in the Mahābhārata is the city of Sañjayantī, which probably answers to the Sazantion of Ptolemy. The name may have survived in the present Sañjan, an old village in the Thāṇa District.

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Karahāṭaka, Karahakata, Karahākaḍeka, or Karāḍ (in Sātāra), Potana, the metropolis of the Aśmakas, Dantakūra and Rājapura, capitals of Kaliṅga, are among other cities mentioned in the Great Epic. Dantakūra doubtless corresponds to the Dandagula of Pliny.

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Some of these cities are also known to the early Pāli texts. We have, moreover, references in these works to Paṭiṭṭhāna or Pratiṣṭhāna which was situated on the way from the banks of the Godāvarī to Northern India. It corresponded with the Paethana of the Periplus and the Baithana of Ptolemy, ‘the royal seat of Siro Ptolemaios’, doubtless identical with Vāśiṣṭhīputra Śrī Pulumāyi. The Mahābhārata knows a Pratiṣṭhāna, but this is probably to be identified with the city of the same name near Allāhābād, and not with the city of Paiṭhaṇ on the Godāvarī in the Aurangābād district of the Hyderabad State. In the Rāṣṭrakūṭa period this city seems to have enjoyed some importance as the headquarters of a bhukti or subdistrict.

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Kātyāyana, the famous grammarian, whom tradition assigns to the fourth century B.C., mentions the town of Nāsikya or Nāsik. It figures also in several Bhārhut and Beḍsā inscriptions of an early date. Scholars identify it with the famous Pañchavatī of the Rāmāyaṇa.¹ It seems to have been the headquarters of an important district or tāluk (vishaya, deśa) in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa period. In the Sātavāhana age it would appear to have been outshone by Govardhana, which lay six miles to the west of it. Ptolemy, however, recognizes its importance in the second century A.D. and places it to the ‘west’ (really south) of the river ‘Namados’, i.e. the Narmadā. The name has been analysed as Nav Sikh, i.e. nine-peaked. Some find in it a reference to the nose of Śūrpaṇakhā, sister to Rāvaṇa.

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¹ The claim is contested by Bhadrāchalam where ‘according to tradition, Rāma, during his exile, built his cottage. Sītā was carried away by Rāvaṇa from this place’ (Some Aspects of Hyderabad, 91-2).

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Suvarṇagiri, the seat of the southern viceroyalty of the Maurya empire in the days of Aśoka, has not yet been satisfactorily located. Hultzsch proposed to identify it with Kanakagiri in the Hyderabad State, south of Maski, and north of the ruins of Vijayanagara. The present writer suggested identification with Songir in the Khāndesh. It may be remembered that a stone inscription referring to the Maurya family who ruled in a part of the Khāndesh down to the eleventh century A.D., was discovered at Vāghlī, six miles north-east of Chālisgāon in the Khāndesh.

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Tosali (in Purī), Samāpā (in Gañjām), and Isila (in Chitaldroog), the other cities of the south mentioned in Aśokan inscriptions, lay outside the limits of the Deccan proper.

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The Hāthīgumphā inscription of Khāravela, king of Kaliṅga, who ruled in the second or first century B.C., mentions Asika-nagara (or, according to an alternative reading, Musika-nagara) on the Kaṇhabemṇā, i.e. the Kṛṣṇā, and also Pithuḍa, identified by Sylvain Lévi with Pihuṇḍa of the Uttarādhyayana-sūtra and the Pityndra metropolis of Ptolemy, in the country of Masalia or Maisolia, that is, the Andhra country round Masulipatam. The exact location of the city is uncertain. But Pityndra possibly did not lie very far from Vijayapurī of the Nāgārjunakoṇḍa inscription, Amarāvatī and Bezwāḍa in the heart of the ancient Andhrāpatha.

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Unfortunately Khāravela’s inscription has no reference to the capital city of king ‘Śātakarṇi’, the great western contemporary of the Kaliṅga monarch. For the great cities of the empire of Śātakarṇi and his successors belonging to the imperial house of the Sātavāhanas we must turn to comparatively later records. In several cave inscriptions of western India we have references to places which are specially associated with rulers of this line, namely, Benākaṭaka and Navanara, besides headquarters of amātyas, or district officers, like Govardhana (in Nāsik) and Māmāla (in Māval tāluk, Poona District). The word Kaṭaka has the sense of ‘camp’ or ‘royal metropolis’. Benākaṭaka, therefore, possibly signifies the camp or metropolis on the river Benā. As the place in question is definitely connected with Govardhana in the Nāsik District, the river is very probably to be identified with the Karabenā of inscriptions, represented by a tributary of the Ambikā which rises in the Bānsda Hills and falls into the sea between Surat and Daman. Navanara is possibly the same as Navā-nagara, an old name of Kalyāṇa in the Ṭhāṇa District.¹ The principal ‘royal seat’ of the Sātavāhanas at this period was Paiṭhaṇ on the banks of the Godāvarī. Two other great cities of the Sātavāhana empire were Vaijayantī-Vanavāsi (Banavāsi) in North Kanara and Dhānyakaṭaka-Amarāvatī in the Guṇtūr District of Madras. Other cities that probably existed in this age, but were specially associated with families that rose to power on the ruins of the empire of the Śātakarṇis, were Kudūra and Veṅgipura.

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¹ Bombay Gazetteer, xiv, 114.

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Vaijayantī-Vanavāsi has already been referred to above in connexion with the geographical data of the Rāmāyaṇa. The name Vanavāsi is spelt in different ways. According to Kittel the etymology is vana (bana) = ‘a forest’, and Kanarese basi or base = ‘a spring’. The Sanskrit form ‘Vanavāsa’ is taken to mean ’settlement in the forest’ (of the Pāṇḍava brothers). Dhānyakaṭaka, too, is spelt in epigraphic records in various ways. We have the forms Dhamnakaṭa, Dhamṇakaṭaka, or more simply Kaḍaka, Dhānyaghaṭa, Dhānyaghaṭaka, Dhānyaghāti, and Śridhānyāṅkapura. Yuan Chwang calls it T'ê-na-ka-che-ka. The district round the city is called Andhrāpatha in an early Pallava charter and Konnātavāḍi-vishaya in the Yenamaḍala inscription of Gaṇapāmbā. It is also sometimes referred to as ‘Kṛiṣhṇaverṇṇā-nadī-dakshiṇa-shaṭsahasrāvanī’, ‘country of six thousand villages on the southern bank of the Kṛiṣhṇā river’. The city which formed its heart and centre was adorned by the shrine of Amareśvara whose beauty was enhanced by the golden pinnacles with which it was endowed in medieval times. The names Dhānyāṅkapura and Amareśvara possibly survive in the present Dharaṇikoṭa and Amarāvati in the Sattanapalle tāluk between the Kṛiṣhṇā river and Guṇṭūr town.

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Kudūra is identical with the Koudoura of Ptolemy. It is known to have been the headquarters of a district under the Bṛihatphalāyanas and the Śālaṅkāyanas, and possibly also under the Eastern Chālukyas, and is represented by the village Kuḍūru which is four miles from Masulipatam and six miles from Ganthasāla, the Kontakossyla ‘mart’ of Ptolemy, close to the mouth of the Maisolos or the Kṛiṣhṇā.¹ Not far from this mart lay the apheterion, the point of departure of ships bound for Khryse (Suvarṇabhūmi, Lower Burma and the Malay Islands).

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¹ Dubreuil, Ancient History of the Deccan, pp. 84-7.

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Veṅgipura possibly represents the Benagouron of Ptolemy, the seat of the Salakenoi or Śālaṅkāyanas. It has been identified with Pedda-Vegi about seven miles north of Ellore, and ten miles north-west from Colair Lake. There are extensive ruins and mounds on the way from Pedda-Vegi to Deṇḍalūrū, five miles to the south-east.²

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² Indian Antiquary, xx, 93.

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Interesting notices of other towns existing during the early centuries of the Christian era are found in the Periplus and in the Outline of Geography of Ptolemy. These may be divided into two groups, namely (a) those in the interior, and (b) those on the eastern and western coasts and near the mouths of the great rivers.

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Among cities in the interior of the Deccan the Periplus regards two as of special importance, namely, Paethana (Paiṭhaṇ on the Godāvarī), and Tagara (identified by Fleet with Ter or Thair in the Osmānābād District). ‘There are brought down to Barygaza (at the mouth of the Narmadā) from these places by wagons and through great tracts without roads, from Paethana carnelian in great quantity, and from Tagara much common cloth, all kinds of muslins and mallow cloth, and other merchandise brought there locally from the regions along the sea coast.’³

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³ Ter, it is said by some, has no tradition for cloth industry at any time, while several places in the Aurangābād District possess such tradition. Could Devagiri be corrupted into Tagara by European writers? The scarp and the spiral passage of the fort there show much antiquity.

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The city of Tagara finds prominent mention in Śilāhāra epigraphs as an ancestral capital.

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Ptolemy knows these cities, as well as Nāsika, Banavasi, and Pityndra, and mentions in addition Hippokoura, the royal seat of Baleokouros, Modogoulla, Bardamana, and Korounkala. Hippokoura has been identified by some with Hippargi in the Bijāpur District and by others with Kolhāpur. It may really be a form by metathesis of Koppāraka which gave its name to a *bhukti* in the days of Dantidurga (A.D. 754). This could not have lain very far from Peth in the southern part of the Sātāra District and the river Warnā which separates the Sātāra District from the Kolhāpur State.¹ Modogoulla has been identified by some with Mudgal in the Raichūr *Doāb* and by others with Mudhol on the banks of the Ghātprabhā. Bardamana is very probably the Vardhamānapura of the Hanamkoṇḍa inscription of A.D. 1163, represented either by Vardhanpet, twenty miles south-west of Anmakoṇḍa, or by Waddamarri fifty miles from the same city. Korounkala has been identified with the famous city of Warangal in the vicinity of Hanamkoṇḍa which was the metropolis of the Kākatīya kings and of Telin̄gāna before the rise of Golconda and Hyderabad (Bhāga-nagara).

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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, xi, 108, with Fleet, *Kanarese Districts*, 390.

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The market-towns on the coast mentioned by the classical writers include two groups, namely, those on the east coast and the emporia on the west. The eastern cities lay close to the mouths of the Kṛṣṇā and the Godāvari, the Lān̄gulinī, and the Vamaśadharā. The most important amongst them is apparently mentioned as the point of departure for ships bound for Khryse. Pliny mentions Cape Calingon and the town of Dandagula which were probably situated close to Chicacole at the mouth of the river Lān̄gulinī or Lān̄guliya in the northern part of the Vizagapatam District. Twelve hundred years after Pliny, Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveller, found to the south-west of the mouth of the Kṛṣṇā a famous port which he calls Mutfili, represented by the modern Motupalli. ‘It belongs to a queen (Rudramma or Rudrāmbā), a woman of great wisdom. . . . She has ruled her kingdom most justly and equitably . . . in this kingdom there are many mountains in which diamonds are found.’ The story of these diamonds reads like some of the tales of the Arabian Nights. Rudramma was evidently carrying on the traditions of her father Ganapatideva, whose Matupalli edict (*abhaya śāsana*), dated A.D. 1244-5, assured safety to foreign traders by sea whose ships might be wrecked on the Andhra coast. Moṭupalli or Moṭṭuppalli was also known as Deśyūyakkoṇḍa-paṭṭana.² It lies in the Bāpaṭla *tāluk* of the Guntūr District.

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² *Ep. Ind.*, xii, 189.

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On the west coast of the Deccan classical writers mention in order after Barygaza or Broach near the mouth of the Narmadā the following ‘market-towns’:

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Suppara—ancient Śūrpāraka and modern Sopāra whose identity and importance have been discussed above.

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Calliena—Kalyāṇa in the Ṭhāṇa District. A Kaṇheri (Skt. *Kṛṣṇagiri*, identified by some scholars with Ptolemy’s Kalligeris) cave inscription places it in the ancient land of Aparānta. Ṭhāṇa, ancient Sthānaka, is mentioned as a centre of trade in a record of A.D. 1095. Alberunī (A.D. 1030) mentions both Sūbāra and Tāna, that is, Śūrpāraka and Sthānaka, and refers to the latter as the capital of Kunkan (Koṅkaṇ).

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Dounga—mentioned by Ptolemy between Souppara and Simylla—it has been identified with Dugaḍ ten miles north of Bhiwandi. But the identification is not beyond doubt.

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Simylla or Semylla—Saimur of Mas‘ūdī, Chemūlya of Khārepāṭan inscriptions, modern Chaul on the coast, about thirty miles south of Bombay.

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Mandagora—has been identified with Mandangaḍ in Dāpoli tāluk, Ratnāgiri District, to the south of the Bānkot creek at the mouth of the Sāvitrī river.

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Hippokoura—this seaport should be distinguished from the inland city of that name. Ptolemy mentions it after the mart and cape of Simylla, and before Baltipatna. It has been identified by some with Ghoḍegāon and by others with Kuḍā in the Kolāba District. The solution of the problem must await fresh discoveries.

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Palaepatnae, Baltipatna—is identified by some scholars with Baleyavattana or Beliapatam in the Malabar District a few miles to the north-west of Cannanore. But this would place the port much too far south to make the suggestion acceptable. The actual position must have been between Chaul (between Alibāg and Kolāba) and Byzantium, apparently in North Kanara. There can hardly be any doubt that the classical writers really mean Valipattana in the ‘samudratīra-Sahy-anta-deśa’, mentioned along with Chemūlya and other places in the Khārepāṭan plates of Raṭṭrāja (A.D. 1008). The exact identity of the port, which is styled a ‘mahādurgga’ in the epigraph, is uncertain, but it must have lain in the territory of the Śilāhāras of southern Koṅkaṇ, which according to Fleet very probably comprised the Koṅkaṇa nine hundred, i.e. the present territory of Goa and the Iridige country, including the Sāwāntvāḍi State and the Ratnāgiri District.

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Melizeigara—The suggested identifications with Janjira, with Jaigaṛh, or with Rājapur can only be regarded as problematical. Of these three places Jaigaṛh seems to have the best claim.

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Byzantium—The Bombay Gazetteer identifies it with Chiplūṇ, and Schoff with Vizadrog (Vijayadurga), a famous harbour on the western coast—the Gheria of the Marāṭhā period.

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Togarum—identified with the modern Devagaṛh. But the validity of the suggestion depends upon convincing proof which is not yet forthcoming. The same remark applies to the identification of the next market-town, Aurannoboas, with Mālvan.

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Next follow a number of islands styled Sesecrienae (identified with the Veṅgurla Rocks), Aegidii (identified with Goa or with Anjidiv lying farther to the south), and the Caenitae (identified with the Oyster Rocks). Next comes Chersonesus, ‘Peninsula’, which is taken to stand for the Kārwār Point in North Kanara, and then the White Island, equated by Schoff with the modern Pigeon Island off the North Kanara coast. Others prefer to place it near Badāgara to the south-east of Mahe. Aiyangar remarks that the Leuke or White Island of the geographers is the same as the vernacular Velliyan Kallu or Tuvakkal, which he apparently identifies with Pigeon Island.

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¹ It is tempting to suggest its identification with the Aṅjanwel port and fort in the Ratnāgiri District. It stands between Bānkot creek (on which probably lay Mandagora) and Jaigaṛh (identified with Melizigara, which is the next port, after Palaepatnae, mentioned in the Periplus. Yule and Schoff prefer Dābhol (Daibal) in Dāpoli tāluk, Ratnāgiri.

Some Royal Seats of the Post-Sātavāhana Period

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Having attempted a survey of the inland cities and market-towns known to foreign writers of the early centuries of the Christian era and, in one case, to Marco Polo, we now proceed to give an account of some of the more important cities that served as capitals of the dynasties that flourished after the Sātavāhanas, including their environs. In the eastern Deccan Vijayapurī or Vijayapura, mentioned in inscriptions discovered at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa and Amarāvatī, seems to have occupied an important position under the Ikshvākus. Vijaya-kandarapura seems to have been the chief city of the kings of the Ānandagotra, Veṅgīpura that of the Śālaṅkāyanas, and Leṇḍulūra of some of the Vishṇukuṇḍin kings. The last-mentioned city has been identified with Deṇḍulūru near Ellore, only five miles to the south-east of Pedda-vegi, the modern representative of Veṅgīpura. From the fourth century A.D. another city, Piṣṭapura or Pīṭhāpuram in the East Godāvarī District, occupied an important position. It had to face the onslaught of conquerors from the Ganges valley and the western Deccan in the fourth and seventh centuries A.D. In the seventh century it became the seat of a Chālukya principality. The seat of government was removed, in the eleventh century, to Rājamahendrapattana or Jananāthapura, modern Rājmundry. Another important city, Vijayavāḍa, Vijayavāṭa, Vijayavāṭikā, modern Bezwāḍa, seems to have risen to great importance from the ninth century A.D. onwards. Its antiquity would be carried much farther back if future discoveries should prove its identity with the Vijayapura of an early Amarāvatī inscription.

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Coming to the western Deccan we find reference in Kadamba records not only to Vaijayantī, which has already been frequently mentioned above, but also to Palāśikā or Halsi in the Belgaum District, Triparvata (identified with Devagiri or with Trigiri or Tegur in the Dhārwār District, and by some with Murgoḍ in the Belgaum District), and Uchchhaśṛṅgī (either in the Chitaldroog or in the Bellāry District). Kadambas of a later age had for their chief cities Pānumgal or Hāngal in the Dhārwār District and Gopakapurī, Gopakapurī, or Gove, modern Goa. A city named Purī appears as the ‘queen of the Western ocean’ and the chief city of northern Koṅkaṇ from the time of the early Chālukyas to that of the Śilāhāras (seventh to the eleventh or twelfth century A.D.). Its exact identity is uncertain. It is, however, important to remember that Alberunī (A.D. 1030) referred to ‘Tāṇa’ as the capital of the province of ‘Kunkan’. It is perhaps not unreasonable to surmise that we have to look for Purī, the capital of the ‘fourteen hundred’ province of Koṅkaṇ, at or near modern Ṭhāṇa in the island of Salsette.

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None of the cities named above had the honour of being the capitals of the great empires that stretched, after the passing away of the Sātavāhanas, over nearly the whole of the Deccan plateau and considerable portions of the coastal strips beyond the Ghāṭs. The first of these cities which claims that distinction is Vātāpi. Vātāpi is represented by the modern Bādāmi, sixty-five miles south of Bijāpur. The famous metropolis lay picturesquely at the mouth of a ravine between two rocky hills on its north and south. About three miles from the city flowed the Malaprabhā (‘mud-shining’), Malāpahāri (‘mud-robbing’) or Malaprahārini (‘mud-shooting’), which falls into the Krishnā at Kapila-saṅgama. Among the hills to the east is Mahākūṭa. Eight miles to the north-east and on the river Malaprabhā stands Paṭṭadakal, also known as Paṭṭada-Kisuvoḷal and Dakshiṇa-Vārāṇasi, the centre of the district known as the Kisukāḍ seventy. Paṭṭadakal has the sense of ‘the anointing or coronation stone’. Kisuvoḷal means ‘ruby’ city or city ‘having the colour of copper’.

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Eight miles farther down the river Malaprabhā stood Ayyāvoḷe, ‘priests’ holy village’, Āryapura in Sanskrit, also styled Ahichchhatra, modern Aihole in the Hungund tāluk of the Bijāpur District. A place in the neighbourhood is Arasibiḍi, ‘Queen’s Route’, or Vikramapura, one of the minor capitals of the great Vikramāditya VI, only eight miles south-south-east from Aihole. Popular traditions about Vātāpi and Aihole (Ayyāvoḷe) probably find an echo in the story of Vātāpi and Ilvala, two demon-brothers of the Daṇḍaka forest, who played tricks upon several sages, and were finally reputed to have been destroyed by the sage Agastya.

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The Rāshṭrakūṭa dynasty that succeeded the Chālukyas of Vātāpi had its ancestral seat probably at Lattalūr or Latūr in the Osmānābād¹ District, twenty-eight miles east by north from Ter, ancient Tagara. But the capital from the time of Amoghavarsha I was at Mānyakheṭa, the Mankir of al-Mas‘ūdī, now represented by Mālkheḍ in the Seram tāluk of the Gulbarga District, about ninety miles in a south-easterly direction from Sholāpur, and about eighty-five miles west by south from Hyderabad. The identification was first suggested by Wathen and Wilson, and afterwards confirmed by Bühler and Fleet. The distance from the west coast as the crow flies is about 350 miles. The city contains an old fort on the river Kāgini or Kāgnā also called the Tāndūr river, a tributary of the Bhīmā.

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¹ Osmānābād town is close to the site of the old city, Dhārāsiṃha, thirty miles north by west of Naldurg.

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The city was either founded by Amoghavarsha I, or else developed and completed by him as the capital. It survived the fall of the Rāshṭrakūṭa dynasty, and was occasionally graced by the presence of the sovereign even in the post-Rāshṭrakūṭa period. A Mysore inscription of A.D. 902 marks it as the headquarters of the ‘Mānyakheṭa six thousand’ province.² The various forms of its name are Mānyakheṭa, Mānyakheḍa, Mannakheḍa, Mannekheḍa, Mankir, and Malquer.

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² JRAS, 1912, 709; Ep. Ind., xiii, 179.

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Forty-eight miles north-eastwards from Mālkheḍ stands Kalyāṇi (ancient Kalyāṇa, to be carefully distinguished from the city of the same name in Ṭhāṇa), which supplanted Mānyakheṭa as the metropolis of the Deccan empire in the eleventh century A.D. Bilhaṇa tells us in his Vikramāṅkadeva-charita that the city was either founded or adapted as his capital by Someśvara I, father of his hero Vikramāditya VI. The place, however, finds mention as the capital in a record of A.D. 1033-4, which falls within the reign of Jayasiṃha II, father of Someśvara. It was until recently a *jāgīr* town in the Gulbarga District. Like Mālkheḍ it has a fortress which was invested by the emperor Aurangzeb in A.D. 1656. Bidar, the town which gives its name to the district of which Kalyāṇa is now a part, seems to be referred to in the Telugu poem *Pārijātāpaharaṇam* as Beḍandakoṭa.

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Besides the chief imperial cities the sovereigns of the Deccan had a number of minor seats of power or temporary places of residence. The word for the capital city was *rājadhānī*. We also frequently come across the term *nelevīḍu* which literally means a 'fixed camp', and is sometimes rendered by the Sanskrit *sthira-śivira*. But, as Fleet points out, it is also coupled with the word *rājadhānī*, which means a permanent capital rather than a temporary residence. A record of A.D. 1053 speaks of Kalyāṇa as the *nelevīḍu* of Someśvara I. The exigencies of war, or the needs of efficient administration, sometimes required the presence of the sovereign in other cities. The evidence of Yuan Chwang suggests that in the early Chālukya period the king had a residence at Nāsik. Vijayāditya had a camp at Rāsena-nagara, identified with modern Rāśin in the Ahmadnagar District. It was probably the headquarters of a district or *tāluk* in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa age. Vikramāditya II resided for a time at Raktapura, modern Lakshmeshwar in the Miraj State, Dhārwār. Kirtivarman II once pitched his camp at Bhaṇḍāragavittaṇge on the north bank of the Bhīmā. Govinda III resided at one time outside Pratiṣṭhāna. He is also known to have encamped at the Rāmeśvara-tīrtha on the Tuṅgabhadrā, at Mayūrakhaṇḍi, possibly Morkhaṇḍ in the district of Nāsik, or Morkhaṇḍ in the Sātmāla Range, and at Śribhavana, identified by some with modern Sarbhon in Broach District. The *paṭṭabandhotsava* or coronation-festival of Indra III was performed at Kurundaka which has been identified with Kaḍodā on the Tapti, or Kurundwād in Kolhāpur State. The Chālukya emperor Iriva-beḍaṅga Satyāśraya 'reigned over the whole earth at Tāvareyaghaṭṭa or the mountain pass of Tāvare¹ or Tovare' in A.D. 1007-8. Jayasiṃha II had minor capitals at Baḷagāṃve or Baḷagāmi, also called Balipura or Dakṣiṇa-Kedāra, in the Shikārpur *tāluk* of the Shimoga District, at Poṭṭalakere in the Bellāry District, and at Koḷḷipāke, modern Kulpak, about forty-five miles north-east of Hyderabad.² His grandson, the great Vikramāditya VI, had residences at Naḍaviyuppayaṇa-vīḍu, in the direction of Waḍāgeri, near the frontier between Bijāpur and the Hyderabad State; Etagiri, also in the Hyderabad State, thirty miles south of Mālkheḍ; Vijayapura, modern Bijāpur; Manneyakere (Mālkheḍ?); and Vikramapura or Arasībīḍi in the Bijāpur District. Someśvara IV for a time established himself at Aṇṇigere in the Dhārwār District.

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¹ There is a place called Tāvarekere in Hospet *tāluk*, Bangalore.

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² Kulpak is 4 miles to the north-east of Aler, a railway station on the N.S. Railway. For the antiquities of Kulpak see *Journal of Hyd. Arch. Soc.*, 1916, pp. 14-36.

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The empire of Kalyāṇa fell to pieces towards the close of the twelfth century A.D. Of the kingdoms that rose on its ruins the most powerful had their capitals at Dorasamudra, Devagiri, and Hanamkoṇḍa-Waraṅgal. Of these Dorasamudra, modern Haḷebīḍ, in Mysore, lay far to the south of the Kṛṣṇā-Tuṅgabhadrā frontier of our Deccan. Devagiri was founded by Bhillama, the famous Yādava king, in A.D. 1187. It was situated in Seuṇa-deśa ‘on the beautiful confines of Daṇḍakāraṇya’ (maṇḍita Daṇḍakāparisara), and is represented by the modern Daulatābād, a famous hill-fort in the Aurangābād District of the Hyderabad State. The fortress rises on a conical rock, scarped from a height of 150 ft. from the base. Among famous buildings, besides the fortifications, are Mubārak Khaljī’s Mosque, the Chānd Minār, and the Chīnī Maḥall. The ancient city of Devagiri was formerly enclosed by an outer wall.

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Before the foundation of Devagiri the Yādava or ‘Seuṇa’ kings had seats at Chandrādityapura, possibly modern Chāndor in the Nāsik District, Seuṇapura, and Sindinera, the modern Sinnar, in the same district.

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Hanamkoṇḍa or Anmakoṇḍa is a short distance to the north of Waraṅgal, and may be regarded as one of its suburbs. It was the capital of the Kākatīya kings before the removal of the seat of government to Waraṅgal about the end of the reign of Ganapati. The district around it was known as Sabbisāyira, ‘the Sabbi one thousand’ which formed part of the empire of Kalyāṇi. The territory seems also to have been known as Anmakoṇḍa-vishaya. In the neighbourhood of the city tradition located the Hiḍimbāśrama or Hiḍimbālaya. The Sanskrit name of the capital is said to have been Hanumadachala or the Hill of Hanumat (Hanumān), the famous follower of the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa. The most conspicuous feature of Anmakoṇḍa is the ‘thousand-pillared’ temple built by king Rudra in or about A.D. 1163.

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Waraṅgal, which replaced Anmakoṇḍa as the metropolis towards the close of the reign of Ganapati (c. 1199–1260), is a corrupt way of writing Orukkal, which means ‘one rock’. It is translated in Sanskrit texts by Ekaśaila, and is the original from which the name ‘Ekaśilānagara’ is derived. The Telugu form of the name is Orumgallu. It is identified by some scholars with the Korounkala of Ptolemy. The city occupied a subordinate position in the time of Ganapati’s predecessors, but is said to have been embellished by Rudra I. It was provided with a stone wall by Rudra’s nephew and successor Ganapati, who removed the seat of government to it toward the close of his reign. The fortifications were completed by his daughter and successor Rudrāmbādevī. The city had to face successive onslaughts in the fourteenth century A.D. Muḥammad bin Tughluq took it in 1323, and renamed it Sulṭānpur. The total eclipse of the city in the Bahmanid period was followed by the rising glory of Golconda and Hyderabad, the famous seats of the Quṭb Shāhī kings and the House of Aṣaf Jāh.

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