Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c27: Appendix I. Kandhārapura
Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c27
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Appendix I. Kandhārapura
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The Sanskrit name Kṛṣṇa was often modified in South India as Kandara, Kandāra, Kandhara, Kandhāra, Kanhara, Kanhāra, Kannara and Kannāra.¹ Sometimes the same name is found in the joint form Kṛṣṇa-Kandhara or Kṛṣṇa-Kandhāra.² The Prakrit name Kannara was also sometimes re-Sanskritised as Karṇa.³ The earliest use of such a Prakrit form of the name is to be found in that of Kandara who was the founder of the Ānanda dynasty of Kandarapura in the Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh and flourished in the fourth century A.D.⁴
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¹ Cf. Bomb. Gaz., Vol. I, Part ii, pp. 244, 334, 410 (note 1), 468, 526, etc.; Ep. Carn., Vol. III, Ml. 19; Vol. VII, Sk. 197 (Intr., p. 27) and 198 (Intr., p. 36); Hl. 17; Vol. VIII, Sa. 119; Vol, X, Bg. 43; Vol. XI. Dg. 13. A similar form of the name was Kāhnura (cf. Ray, DHNI, pp. 340, 565).
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² Bomb. Gaz., op. cit., pp. 419, 508, 556; JBBRAS, Vol. X, p. 241.
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³ Altekar, The Rāṣṭrakūṭas and their Times, p. 12; Ep. Ind., Vol. XXVIII, p. 314, note 4.
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⁴ Sircar, The Successors of the Sātavāhanas in the Lower Deccan, pp. 55ff.
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The founder of the Raṭṭa dynasty of Saundatti in the Belgaum District is stated to have been raised to the position of a feudatory chieftain by a king named Kṛṣṇa who has been identified with the Rāṣṭrakūṭa emperor Kṛṣṇa III (939-67 A.D.).⁵ An inscription of 1218 A. D. represents the said Raṭṭas as the descendants of the same Kṛṣṇa, called Kṛṣṇa-Kandhāra, while another record of 1209 A.D. (?) from Haṇṇikeri near Sampgaon in the Belgaum District of Mysore mentions the same king as Kṛṣṇa-Kandhara and represents him as Kandhāra-pura-var-ādhīśvara, ‘the supreme lord of Kandhārpura, the best of the cities’.⁶
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⁵ Cf. Bomb. Gaz., op. cit., pp. 550, 556; Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXII, pp. 216ff. (Nos. 3-4); JBBRAS, Vol. X, pp. 240 ff.
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⁶ Bomb. Gaz., loc. cit.
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The Imperial Rāṣṭrakūṭas had their capital at Mānyakheṭa, modern Mālkheḍ in the Gulbarga District of the former Hyderabad State, now in Mysore. But they did not represent themselves as the lord of ‘Mānyakheṭa, the best of cities.’ Like the Raṭṭas of Saundatti, the Imperial Rāṣṭrakūṭas, were sometimes represented as the lords of the city of Lattalūra, Lattalūr or Lattanūr, which was claimed to have been the original home of the family and has been indentified with modern Lātūr in the Osmanabad District of the former Hyderabad State.¹ The representation of Rāṣṭrakūṭa Kṛṣṇa III, who had his capital at Mānyakheṭa,² as the lord of Kandhārapura in the Haṇṇikeri inscription, without reference either to his capital or to the orginal home of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa family, is interesting to note. It appears that Kṛṣṇa III had a secondary capital at Kandhārapura, built by and named after himself or either of his two predecessors who bore the same name.
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¹ Bomb. Gaz., op. cit., pp. 384, 387; Ind. Ant., Vol. XII, p. 220.
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² Bomb. Gaz., op. cit., p. 419.
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Fleet was not inclined to attach any importance to the mention of Kṛṣṇa III in the said epigraph as the lord of Kandhārapura. He draws our attention to the fact that it is an isolated instance and says, “I know of no place that can be identified with an ancient Kandhārapura or Kṛṣṇapura. The name may possibly have been invented from an imaginary Kṛṣṇapura derived from some passage similar to that in which the Eastern Cālukya king Guṇaka-Vijayāditya III is said to have effected the burning of the city of Kṛṣṇa II (Kṛṣṇa-pura-dahana; see Ind. Ant., Vol. XX, p. 102, note 26).” But this attitude appears to be rather hypercritical. Since the Raṭṭas of Saundatti, who were used to represent themselves as the lords of the city of Lattalūra, could have represented their ancestor as Mānyakheṭa-pura-var-ādhīśvara if they wanted to avoid Lattalūra-pura-var-ādhīśvara, it is difficult to understand why they should have preferred to bring in the name of an imaginary city. In our opinion, the specific mention of Kṛṣṇa III as the lord of Kandhārapura scarcely raises any reasonable doubt about the existence of a city called Kandhārapura apparently built by and named after a Rāṣṭrakūṭa monarch named Kṛṣṇa.
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Fleet’s attitude seems to have been influenced by the fact that he had no knowledge of the existence of a city called Kandhāra which could be ascribed to the Rāṣṭrakūṭa period. It therefore appears that he would have modified his opinion on the subject if he had any knowledge of the town of Kandhār (also spelt Qandhār and Kandahār), the headquarters of the Qandharsharif Taluk of the Nander District of the former Hyderabad State, now in Bombay, and of the remains therein of numerous sculptures ascribable to the Rāṣṭrakūṭa age. This place, which appears to be none other than the city of Kandhāra of the Haṇṇikeri inscription, lies about twentyfive miles to the south of Nāndeḍ and a hundred miles to the north of Mālkheḍ.
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³ Ibid., p. 384, note 4.
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Sometime ago we came across a fragmentary Rāṣṭrakūṭa inscription engraved on a broken pillar lying in the locality called Bahādurpur in the suburbs of the town of Kandhār. The inscription is written in the North Indian alphabet of about the tenth century A.D. The extant parts of the record contain only the beginning of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa genealogy down to Kṛṣṇa I (756-75 A.D.) and mention a number of shrines that existed at the place when the inscription was set up about the tenth century, probably during the reign of Kṛṣṇa III. It is interesting to note that two of the deities mentioned in the inscription are Kālapriya and Kṛṣṇeśvara while the same two gods are also mentioned in the Karhad plates of Kṛṣṇa III.¹
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vo IV, p. 281.
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One of the deities worshipped at Kandhār about the tenth century A. D. bore the name Gojjiga-Somanātha. Since Gojjiga is a well-known name of Rāṣṭrakūṭa Govinda IV (929-33 A.D.), the deity may have been named after that monarch. If such was the case, the city of Kandhāra seems to have existed before the days of Kṛṣṇa III. But whether Kṛṣṇapura burnt by Guṇaka-Vijayāditya III is same as this Kandhārapura is difficult to say without further evidence.