Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c12.42

c12.42

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.