Tribes in Ancient India c66: Chapter LXIV. The Lāṭas
Tribes in Ancient India c66
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Chapter LXIV. The Lāṭas
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The name of the Lāṭas as a people must have been known as early as the beginning of the Christian era, if not earlier, and their country Lāṭa or Lāṭa-viṣaya was well known in Indian history till as late as the seventh and eighth centuries. It is curious, however, that neither the country nor its people is ever mentioned in any of the earlier Purāṇas, or even in the Epics.
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The earliest definite mention of the country seems to have been made by Ptolemy. According to his description of India within the Ganges, Lārike lay to the east of Indo-Skythia along the sea-coast.¹ Lāṭadeśa in its Prākrit form Lārdeśa (the country of Lār) seems to have been a very early name for the territory of Gujrat and Northern Konkon,² and McCrindle conjectured that Lārike ‘may therefore be a formation from Lār with the Greek termination *ike* appended’.³ The name Lārdeśa probably survived the Hindu period, ‘for the sea to the west of that coast was in the early Muhammadan time called the sea of Lār, and the language spoken on its shores was called by Mas’ūdī, Lārī’.⁴
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¹ McCrindle, *Ptolemy’s Ancient India*, pp. 38, 152-3.
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² Marco Polo, Vol. II, p. 302 n. (Yule).
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³ McCrindle, p. 38.
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⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 153; Marco Polo, II, p. 353 n.
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In Ptolemy’s Lārike lay the mouth of the river Mōphis, which is identical with the Mahī, a village named Pakidare which is difficult to identify, and the cape Maleo which ‘must have been a projection of the land somewhere between the mouth of the Mahī and that of the Narmadā, but nearer to the former if Ptolemy’s indication be correct’.⁵
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⁵ McCrindle’s *Ptolemy*, p. 38.
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The two great cities of Barygaza and Ozene were also within the political division of Lārike. In Ptolemy’s Gulf of Barygaza lay Kamane, doubtless identical with Kamonone of the *Periplus* which places it to the south of the Narmadā estuary, while Ptolemy locates it to the north; Nausaripa, which is the same as modern Nausārī on the coast and Sanskrit Navasārikā, and finally Poulipoula, which in Yule’s map is located at modern Sanjam on the coast south from Nausārī. Barygaza itself is the same as Sanskrit Bhṛgukṣetra or Bhṛgukaccha, Pāli Bharukaccha, modern Broach; while Ozene, of course, is Ujjayinī or Ujjain.
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The Ceylonese chronicles (*Dīpavaṃsa* and *Mahāvaṃsa*) refer to the country of Lāḷa in connection with the first Aryan migration to Ceylon, led by Prince Vijaya. Attempts have been made to identify Lāḷa both with Lāṭa or Lāḍa in Gujrat, and Rāḍha in Bengal, and both countries claim the honour of the first Aryanization of Ceylon. Prince Vijaya is described in the chronicles as having been the great-grandson of a princess of Vaṅga; hence one school of scholars mainly depending on historical evidence proposes to equate Lāḷa with Rāḍha, while the other school finds Lāḷa to be philologically more closely akin to Lāṭa or Lāḍa. It is not impossible that the tradition of two different streams of immigration came to be knit together in the story of Vijaya, as Dr. Barnett thinks.¹
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¹ *J.A.S.B.*, Vol. XVIII, 1922, No. 7.
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In the days of the early Imperial Guptas, the Lāṭa country came to be formed into an administrative province as Lāṭa-viṣaya, along with Tripuri-viṣaya, Arikiṇa-viṣaya, Antarvedi-viṣaya, Vālavī-viṣaya, Gayā-viṣaya, etc. These viṣayas or pradeśas seem to have been subordinate to the larger administrative division, called bhukti.
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It is likely that the Lāṭa country was the same as the Lāṭeśvara country mentioned in one or two early Gurjara and Rāṣṭrakūṭa records. In the Baroda Copperplate Inscription (verse 11) the capital of the kingdom of Lāṭeśvara is said to have been at Eḷapur. The inscription also gives the genealogy of the kings of Lāṭeśvara. K. M. Munshi, in his work ‘Gujarāta and its literature’, gives us some information about Lāṭa. He says: ‘From about *c.* A.C. 150, the tract between Khambhāta (Cambay) and Narmadā acquired the name of Lāṭa which, thereafter, came to include the country south of the Narmadā up to the Damaṇagaṅgā. Under the Chalukyas of Aṇahilavāḍa Pāṭaṇa (A.C. 961), the name Lāṭa was gradually displaced by the name Gurjara Bhūmi . . . . The whole of Lāṭa up to Damaṇagaṅgā became part of Gujarāta in *c.* A.C. 1400.’² Lāṭa, then, was evidently the equivalent of South Gujarāta. Lassen, however, identifies Lārike with Sanskrit Rāṣṭrika,³ in its Prakrit form Lāṭika, which is easily equated with Lāṭa, though the equation of Rāṣṭrika and Lāṭika is not convincing enough.
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² *Ibid.*, pp. 2-3. See also *ibid.*, p. 20 n., p. 36.
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³ See chapter on Rāṣṭrikas. It may be that Rāṣṭrika formed the northern part of Gujarat, and Lāṭa, the southern.
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Lāṭa is mentioned twice in Vātsyāyana’s *Kāmasūtra*.⁴ Vātsyāyana does not give any clue as to location of the country, but contents himself with describing the characteristics of the men and women respectively. Lāṭa is also referred to by the author of Kuvalayamālā (c. 779 A.D.). The inhabitants of Lāṭa are distinguished from those of Gurjara, the Lāṭa people appearing as pleasure-loving and humorous, and those of the north as sterner and of stronger build. Lāṭa appears to have possessed distinctive literary traits. A kind of style, favoured by the authors of Lāṭa, acquired the name of Lāṭī. Rājaśekhara represents the people of Lāṭa as preferring Prākrit to Sanskrit.
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⁴ *Ibid.*, pp. 103 and 126.