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Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c12: VIII. Daśārṇa, Aśmaka and Kuntala

Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c12

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VIII. Daśārṇa, Aśmaka and Kuntala

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Our attention has been drawn to a verse contained in Lakṣmīdhara’s *Kṛtyakalpataru*, which refers to a pious lady named Vasundharā who was the daughter of a certain Vikrama and was an inhabitant of Daśārṇa.¹ In this connection, several suggestions have been offered; but none of them is supported by any evidence or argument of any kind. Vikrama has been identified with Candragupta II Vikramāditya and Vasundharā with Prabhāvatīguptā, daughter of Candragupta II and queen of Vākāṭaka Rudrasena II. We wonder why the daughter of any person of the name of Vikrama has to be identified with the only known daughter of only one of the numerous Vikramas known to history.

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¹ See D. B. Diskalkar in *I.H.Q.*, Vol. XX, 1944, pp. 367-68.

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The suggestion that the Vākāṭaka territory was known as Daśārṇa which is identified with the Chattisgarh division of M.P. as well as the reference to *Vijaya-Daśanapura* in the Andhra country mentioned in some inscriptions as the capital of a Vākāṭaka principality’ in Jayaswal’s *History of India*, p. 136, is also untenable. Here is a clear case of the *andha-paramparā-nyāya*, as Daśanapura, mentioned as a seat of government of the Early Pallavas (who, it should be noted, ruled contemporaneously with the Vākāṭakas) and identified by scholars with modern Darsi in the Nellore District, had absolutely nothing to do with the Vākāṭakas. As a matter of fact, there is not the slightest evidence of Vākāṭaka rule in the Chattisgarh region of M. P., the ancient name of which was, moreover, Kosala (South Kosala) and never Daśārṇa. From numerous references to Daśārṇa in Indian literature,² it is clear that it was one of the old names of East Malwa and the adjoining region, with its capiat Vidiśā (modern Besnagar near Bhilsa, Madhya Pradesh) and with the rivers Daśārṇā (modern Dhasan) and Vetravatī (modern Betwa) running through it.

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² Cf., *e.g.*, *Meghadūta*, 24-25.

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In this connection, the attention of scholars may be drawn to another almost equally unjustifiable theory that the Vākāṭaka territory was known as Kuntala.¹ It is easy to show that the heart of the Vākāṭaka kingdom corresponded to the ancient *janapada* of Vidarbha (modern Berar and the adjoining regions) where most of the records of the family have been discovered. The founder of the Vākāṭaka family seems to have had something to do with East Malwa and the Vindhyan region and a few other early members of the main branch of the family probably held sway over parts of Central India (especially Bundelkhand) before the extension of Gupta power in that area.² But the capital of a branch of the Vākāṭaka line was at the city of Vatsagulma, modern Basim in the Akola District, while the main branch of the family ruled from a place not very far away from modern Nāgpur.³ The Vākāṭaka kings reigned in Vidarbha from the second half of the third century to the first half of the sixth. They were not only responsible for some of the magnificent caves at Ajaṇṭā; but it was apparently at their court that the celebrated Vaidarbhī *rīti* or the Berar style of Sanskrit composition originated and flourished and was recognised by the author of the *Kāvyādarśa* as the best style as early as the seventh century A.D. We have elsewhere suggested that the other important style known as the *Gauḍī rīti* has to be associated with the court of the dynasty of Gauḍa kings represented by Gopacandra and Śaśāṅka.⁴

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¹ Cf. *The Successors of the Sātavāhanas*, 1939, pp. 253, note.

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² Cf. *The Age of Imperial Unity*, p. 217.

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³ See *The Classical Age*, pp. 181-82, 185.

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⁴ Cf. above, pp. 115 ff. For the *Udīcya*, *Pratīcya*, *Dākṣiṇātya* and *Gauḍa* styles of composition, see also Bāṇa’s *Harṣacarita*, I, 7.

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In connection with the name Daśārṇa, it is interesting to note that the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*⁵ places ‘the region of Dosarene yielding the ivory known as Dosarenic’ towards the east of Masalia (i.e. the country around Masulipatam in Andhra).

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⁵ See Schoff’s trans., p. 47.

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Ptolemy mentions the city of Dosara¹ apparently as the metropolis of this land. He locates Dosara in the land of the Kokkonagai who lived to the west of the country watered by the mouths of the Ganges. Some scholars trace the Indian name Daśārṇa in Dosarene.² But it is impossible to locate the places mentioned by the Greek authors outside modern Orissa. It seems that Dosara is a modification of the Indian name Tosala (the same as Tosalī or Tosalā), identified with modern Dhauli in the Puri District. The early times, Tosalī was the capital of the Kaliṅga country.

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¹ Geography, VIII, 1, 77.

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² Cf. JAS, Letters, Vol. XVI, p. 266 ; Schoff, The Periplus, trans., p. 253.

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A Rāṣṭrakūṭa ruler named Mānāṅka (who seems to have originally been a rāṣṭrakūṭa or provincial governor) is known from the Undikavatika grant⁵ of his great-grandson Abhimanyu who resided at Mānapura. He has been identified with king Mānāṅka, grandfather of Avidheya who issued the Pandurangapalli grant discovered in the neighbourhood of Kolhapur. There is reason to believe that the territories over which these rulers held away lay in the Kolhapur region and the adjoining area of the South Marāṭhā country, and Prof. Mirashi may be right in identifying their capital with Man in the Satara District. Rāṣṭrakūṭa Bibhurāja of the Hingniberdi plates, Dejja-mahārāja of the Gokak plates, Govindarāja, son of Śivarāja, who is known from the Naravana grant of 743 A. D. of the time of Vikramāditya II and seems to have been the subordinate ruler of a territory in the Satara-Ratnagiri region, may have been scions of this family.⁴ The land ruled by this family seems to have been known as ‘Māna’s territory.’⁵

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⁴ Cf. Ep. Ind., Vol. XXIX, pp. 174 ff. ; Vol. XXI, pp. 289 ff.; The Classical Age, p. 199. Śvarāja’s son Govindarāja is described as the grandson of Nannappa in the Salem plates (Ep. Ind., Vol. XXVII, pp. 145 ff.).

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⁵ See below, p. 159.

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The Pandurangapalli charter⁶ appears to describe Mānāṅka, who probably flourished in the latter half of the fifth century, as the conqueror of Vidarbha and Aśmaka and also as the chastiser (*praśāsitā*) of the Kuntalas. The Kuntala people under reference were no doubt the Kadambas of Vanavāsī (Banavāsī), whose territories comprised the North Karnara District and parts of Mysore, Belgaum and Dharwar. In the inscriptions of the Later Kadambas, the progenitor of the Kadamba family (sometimes called Mayūravarman, but in some cases Mukkana or Trilocana Kadamba) is represented as the ruler of the Kuntala country which is described as the land round the capital city of Banavāsī in the North Kanara District. The country of Vidarbha lay on both sides of the river Varadā (modern Wardha, a tributary of the Godāvarī) according to the *Mālavikāgnimitra*, and roughly corresponded to the major part of Berar and the western part of M. P. Its ancient capital was at the city of Kuṇḍina which has been identified with modern Kauṇḍinyapura on the Wardha in the Chandur Taluk of the Amraoti District of Berar. The city of Padmapura which was the birth-place of the poet Bhavabhūti and was situated in the Vidarbha country in Dakṣiṇāpatha, has been rightly identified with modern Padampur near the Amgaon railway station in the Bhandara District of M. P. Vidarbha therefore included at least the Amraoti region in the west and the Bhandara area in the east. Epigraphic evidence shows that, about the time of Mānāṅka, the above land was entirely in the possession of kings belonging to the main branch of the Vākāṭaka family that had its headquarters near modern Nāgpur. Thus it will be seen that the Pandurangapalli grant seems to represent Mānāṅka of the south Marāṭhā country as having fought successfully with the Kadambas of Kuntala and the Vākāṭakas of Vidarbha.

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³ Ep. Ind., Vol. VIII, pp. 165 f.

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⁶ Cf. A.B.O.R.I., Vol. XXV, pp. 36 ff.

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But who were the Aśmakas, also mentioned in connection with the victorious campaigns of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa ruler? It appears to us that the Aśmakas under reference are no other than the Vākāṭakas of Vatsagulma which is mentioned separately from Vidarbha in the *Kāmasūtra* (V, 5.33-34). The capital city of this branch of the Vākāṭaka family has been identified with modern Basim in the Akola District about the southern fringe of Berar;

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but their dominions certainly included the Ajanta region in the Aurangabad District and very probably also Nāndikaṭa, identified with the Nander District, both in the northern part of the old Hyderabad State. The Vākāṭakas of Vatsagulma therefore ruled over the southernmost region of Berar and the northern part of old Hyderabad, and the ancient Aśmaka country has been located by scholars precisely in this region.¹

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¹ Cf. *P. H. A. I.*, pp. 76, 21-22; *N. H. I. P.*, Vol. VI, p. 88; *J.A.H.R.S.*, Vol. IX, iii, p. 1 ff.

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The *Pārāyaṇa*, incorporated in the *Suttanipāta*, speaks of a sage named Bāvari who was an inhabitant of Śrāvastī but settled ‘in the country of Aśmaka, in the vicinity of Mūlaka, on the bank of the Godāvarī’. ² While describing the journey of Bāvari’s disciples from the sage’s hermitage in Aśmaka to a locality in Northern India, the same work says that the first place reached was Pratiṣṭhāna (modern Paiṭhan on the Godāvarī in the Aurangabad District) which was the capital of the Mūlaka country; the men are said to have next reached Māhiṣmatī on the Narmadā, and then Ujjayinī outside the limits of Dakṣiṇāpatha. This shows that the Aśmaka country lay immediately to the south of Mūlaka which is the Paiṭhan region of the Aurangabad District. The ancient capital of the Aśmaka country was, according to the *Mahābhārata*, at the city of Paudanya which is known as Potana (< Podanna < Paudanya) in the Pali literature. A variant of the form Potana is Potali which seems to be a mistake for Poṭana or Poṭaṇi (cf. the striking similarity between the forms of the two letters *l* and *ṇ* at some stages of development), the latter being a possible corruption of Paudanya through another intermediate form Podaniya.³ Raychaudhuri identifies Paudanya with modern Bodhan near the Godāvarī in the Nizamabad District abutting on the Nander District in the old Hyderabad State. In a narrow sense therefore the Aśmaka country may be identified with the Nander-Nizamabad region of Andhra Pradesh and the adjoining area. In ancient literature, however, Aśmaka is often represented as including Mūlaka, i.e. the Paiṭhan area of the Aurangabad District, and as abutting on Kaliṅga (roughly speaking, the coastal land between the Mahānadī and the Godāvarī), Vidarbha, Aparānta (the Northern Konkan) and Avanti, doubtless the celebrated Avanti-Dakṣiṇāpatha with its capital at Māhiṣmatī on the Narmadā, identified with Mandhata in the Nimar District or Maheswar in the former Indore State. This wider sense must have been in the mind of Bhaṭṭasvāmin when he identified Aśmaka with Mahārāṣṭra, i.e. the Marāṭhā country. But the heart of this land appears to have been the northern districts of old Hyderabad including naturally the southernmost region of Berar. The heart of the ancient Aśmaka country thus seems to have corresponded to the dominions of the Vākāṭakas of Vatsagulma. Rāṣṭrakūṭa Mānāṅka therefore claimed victory not only over the Kadambas of Kuntala and the Vākāṭakas of Vidarbha, but also over the Vatsagulma branch of the Vākāṭaka dynasty of Aśmaka.

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² See the Chapter on Gonarda (Ch. XVI) below, pp. 206 ff.

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³ Cf. *śākya > śākiya > śāki; mūlya > muliya > muli; ārogya > ārogyia > arogi*, etc. in my *Gram. Prak. Lang.*, p. 23.

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There have been some comments¹ on our views regarding the identification of the Kuntala and Aśmaka countries.² An attempt has been made to prove that ‘Kuntala in ancient times did not comprise only the North Kanara District and parts of Mysore, Belgaon and Dharwar Districts as stated by Dr. Sircar but that it extended much further to the north so as to include what we now call the Southern Marāṭhā Country.’ Unfortunately it has not been noticed that practically the same view has been expressed by many other writers including Fleet³ and ourselves.⁴ The fact is that where other scholars would locate, according to evidence, the Kuntala country proper in the heart of the Kanarese area and distinguish between that land and the later empire (often called Kuntala) of the imperial Kuntala or Karṇāṭa (i.e. Kanarese) dynasties, our critic would place Kuntala proper in the Marāṭhā country and would not distinguish the essential Kuntala country from the gigantic Kuntala or Kanarese empire of later times. If, in the days of Warren Hastings, the Banaras District formed a part of Bengal, would it justify any one to identify Bengal with Banāras or to locate Bengal in Banāras? The name Vaṅgāla (Bengal) originally indicated a small district in Southern Bengal; it was later used to signify the whole country comprising such ancient lands as Vaṅga, Samaṭaṭa, Suhma, Tāmralipta, Gauḍa and Puṇḍravardhana. Can we locate the ancient Vaṅgāla country in any part of later Vaṅgāla (Bengal) It will be clear we like?

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¹ See V. V. Mirashi in *I.H.Q.*, Vol. XXII, pp. 309-15.

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² Cf. *Ibid.* p. 233 ff.

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³ *Bomb. Gaz.*, Vol. I, Part ii, p. 431.

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⁴ *Suc. Sāt.*, p. 215. Cf. below, p. 192 and note 1.

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Most of the questions raised in this connection were already answered in our *Successors of the Sātavāhanas* referred to above. from the following quotations from that work:

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'Cf. a record of A.D. 1077......... : 'In the centre of that middle world is the golden mountain to the south of which is the Bhārata land in which, like the curls of the lady earth, shines the Kuntala country to which an ornament.........is Banavāsi.' Some other inscriptions also prove that Kuntala was the district round Banavāsi.'¹

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¹ The tradition about Banavāsi having been the capital of the Kuntala country was remembered even after the foundation of the Kuntala-Karṇāṭa (Kanarese) empire. For a tenth century record mentioning the Kuntala king residing at *Vanavāsa*, indicating the city as well as 'exile', see *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXII, p.132. It has to be remembered that, in the age in question, the capital of the said empire was at Mālkheḍ in the old Hyderabad State.

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'Kuntala and Karṇāṭa are used as synonymous in the *Vikramāṅkadevacarita* by Bilhaṇa.² Vikramāditya VI has been called both Kuntalendu (or, Kuntalendra) and Karṇāṭendu...... Vaijayantī, identified with Banavāsi, has been described as a *tilaka* (that is to say, the capital) of the Karṇāṭa country in the Birur grant of Viṣṇuvarman......Karṇāṭa therefore signified the same territory as Kuntala or the country of which Kuntala formed a part....... The separate mention of Kuntala, Karṇāṭa

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² Note that the Cālukyas of Badami (*Ep. Ind.*, Vol. IV, p.88, etc.) and Kalyāṇa (*ibid.*, Vol. V, p.16, etc.) were regarded as kings of Kuntala, while the Cālukya army was called the Karṇāṭaka *bala* (*Ind. Ant.*, Vol. XI, p. 112, etc.). In Cola records like the Kanyākumārī inscription (*Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XVIII, p.27; vv. 69, 76), the Cālukya enemies of Rājendra I are mentioned as lords of the Kuntalas, while the inscriptions of Virarājendra mention them as kings of the Karṇāṭa family.

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Banavāsi, Māhiṣaka (cf. Mahiṣa-viṣaya in a Kadamba grant), etc., in some of the traditional lists may possibly refer to the fact that these names originally signified separate geographical units abutting on one another. Sometimes however one of them may have formed the part of another; cf. the case of Tamralipta which is mentioned in literature as an independent state, as a part of Suhma and also as a part of Vaṅga; also the case of Taxila (Raychaudhuri, *Stud. Ind. Ant.*, pp. 186 f.). With the rise of Kanarese powers like the Cālukyas and the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, the name Karṇāṭa (sometimes also the name Kuntala) extended over a large part of the Western and Southern Deccan. In the *Kaliṅgattu-paraṇi*, the Cālukyas have been described as the *Kuntalar*, ‘lords of Kuntala’ (literally, ‘the Kuntalas,’ indicating their Kanarese origin).... An inscription of Harihara II dated in Śaka 1307 ......says that Vijayanagara (modern Hampi in the Bellary District) belonged to the Kuntala *viṣaya* of the Karṇāṭa country.”

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Only a few words are required now to be added to the above. As Vidarbha and Vatsagulma are separately mentioned in the *Kāmasūtra*, our critic thinks that the former included the latter and that they are separately mentioned according to the Māṭhara-Kauṇḍinya *nyāya*. It will be clear from the extracts quoted from our book that we would partially apply the same *nyāya* to explain the separate mention of Vanavāsī and Kuntala in the *Mahābhārata* and the *Vāyu Purāṇa* on which the critic takes his stand. The *Daśakumāracarita* and the *Kāvyamīmāṃsā* were composed in an age when the name Kuntala was often applied to the Kanarese empire of the Cālukyas and their successors,¹ which usually included the Kuntala country proper. The separate mention of Banavāsī indicating Kuntala proper and Kuntala signifying the Kanarese empire in these works has nothing to do with the critic’s location of the Kuntala country proper in the South Marāṭhā country.

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¹ See *Suc. Sāt.*, p. 216, note 1.

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The critic suggests that the root *śās* or *praśās* means governing when the object is a territory and chastising when the object is a living being and that, in the passage *śrīmat-Kuntalānāṁ praśāsitā*, the word *praśāsitā* means a ruler because the object of *praśās* in this case is not a living being but the Kuntala country. Unfortunately, he does not notice that even if the distinction in the meaning of the verb is conceded, there is absolutely no reason why Kuntala (like Surāṣṭra in verse 11 of the Junagadh inscription of Skandagupta) should be taken in the sense of the Kuntala country (an inanimate object) and not in that of the Kuntala people. There can certainly be no objection if *śrīmat-Kuntalānāṁ praśāsitā* is translated as ‘the chastiser of the illustrious Kuntala people’.

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We do not subscribe to the critic’s identification of the Ṛṣika country with Khandesh. Sylvain Lévi rightly regards Ṛṣika as the southernmost country in Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi’s empire, to the south of Aśmaka.¹ According to the reading of the Hathigumpha inscription preferred by Barua and ourselves, the city of Ṛṣikanagara (capital of the Ṛṣika country) was situated on the Kṛṣṇabenā (Kṛṣṇā). As regards the critic’s identification of Aśmaka with the Ahmadabad and Bhir Districts, it is really impossible for us to understand why the Nander-Nizamabad region lying immediately to the east of that area could not be included. We consider Raychaudhuri’s indentification of Paudanya, the Aśmaka capital, with Bodhan in the Nizamabad District as exceptionally satisfactory and suggest that even the Ahmadabad-Bhir area or parts of it may have been included in the Aśmaka country and in the dominions of the Vākāṭakas of Vatsagulma. Nothing more can be said in the present state of our knowledge. As however the Vākāṭakas of Vatsagulma are known to have ruled over the northern part of the old Hyderabad State, which is the ancient Aśmaka country proper according to many writers including Raychaudhuri and ourselves, they may have been regarded as the lords of Aśmaka. As regards the inclusion of Vatsagulma in Vidarbha, suggested by writers like Rājaśekhara (about the beginning of the tenth century), we may draw the critic’s attention to what has been said about Tāmralipta and Takṣaśilā in the extracts quoted from our book. Vastsagulma, like those localities, appears to have been sometimes a separate state, sometimes a part of Aśmaka and sometimes a part of Vidarbha. It is well-known that Mūlaka or the land round Paiṭhaṇ in the Aurangabad District was sometimes a separate country but was often regarded as a part of Aśmaka.

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¹ Cf. below, pp. 214-15.

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D

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The country round the city of Mānapura, founded by Mānaṅka, appears to have been known in the early medieval period as Māna-deśa which included modern Velāpur about eleven kos to the west of Pandharpur (possibly the same as Pāṇḍuraṅgapallī mentioned in the record of Mānaṅka’s grandson Avidheya) in the Sholapur District of the South Marāṭhā country. Cf. Mānadeśa-sambaddha-Velāpura, Mānadeśa-sambaddha-sarvādhikārī Brahmadeva-rāṇā, etc., in the three Velāpur inscriptions (1300 and 1305 A.D.) of the Yādava king Rāmacandra of Devagiri in G. H. Khare’s *Sources of the Medieval History of the Dekkan*, Vol. I, pp. 78-80; Vol. II, p. 9. In that case, the dominions of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas of Mānapura comprised parts of the Ratanagiri, Satara and Sholapur Districts of Bombay.

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The name of this land reminds us of the well-known District of Mānbhūm (i.e. Mānabhūmi) in the south-western border of Bihar. As we have elsewhere¹ suggested, the Mānas who gave their name to this area probably ruled over a big kingdom covering parts of the Manbhum and Singhbhum Districts of Bihar and of the Mayurbhanj District of Orissa and having its headquarters at Khijjiṅga (moder Khiching) in the northern part of the Mayurbhanj District.

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¹ See above, pp. 143-45.

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