Tribes in Ancient India c66.14

c66.14

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.