Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c25.9

c25.9

It will be seen that the location of the four places in the suburbs of Kanauj is actually based on mere conjecture. It must be admitted that Gādhipura was either another name of Kanauj or at least the name of a part of the city. We should therefore search for a locality called Kālapriya to the south of Kanauj. According to Bhavabhūti's works, the poet's ancestral home was at Padmapura which lay in the Deccan, i.e. to the south with reference to the shrine of the god Kālapriyanātha. It is strange that some scholars have identified this Padmapura with Padam Pawaya (ancient Padmāvatī) near Narwar (ancient Nalapura) in the former Gwalior State.² The prelude to Bhavabhūti's *Viracarita* places Padmapura in Dakṣiṇāpatha or the Deccan, while the *Mālatīmādhava*, with more definiteness, locates it in Vidarbha (modern Berar) in Dakṣiṇāpatha. The identification of Bhavabhūti's birthplace with modern Padampur in the Bhandara District, near the Amgaon Railway Station, seems to be reasonable. The village of Padampur, it may be pointed out, lies directly to the south of Kanauj. It is very interesting to note that the only Kālapriya known to history and situated, like both Kanauj and Padampur, to the west of long. 80, appears to be modern Kālpī on the Jumna in the Jalaon District of U. P., about 75 miles directly to the south of Kanauj. It was an important station between the Ganges-Jumna Doab and the South not only during the Muslim period, but also in the early medieval age. In the first quarter of the tenth century A.D., when Indra III (915-28 A.D.),¹ the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king of the Deccan, was advancing against Kanauj, the capital of his Pratihāra enemies, the Rāṣṭrakūṭa army was for a time encamped at Kālpī where it crossed the Jumna. The Cambay plates of Govinda IV give the story in the following verse: