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254
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
LVOL. XII.
Paithan on the Godavari. This title does not imply that Chhittarăja had any dominion at Tagara, Tēr, which is far away from what was his territory; it only means that his family claimed that city as the original home of their ancestors. The same hereditary title belonged also to another branch of the same stock, that of the Silāhāras of Karad. From among various similar titles, and in illustration (if such is needed) of the point that they do not involve territorial dominion, we may conveniently quote here that of " lord of Mahishmati a best of towns," which belonged to the Ahihaya princes of the Gulbarga District. There is not the slightest reason for thinking that the power of any member of Chhittaraja's branch of the Silāhāra stock reached anywhere above the Western Ghauts : especially in view of the points that the actual extent of his territory is expressly defined in line 20 f. of this record as being "the whole land of the Konkaņa, comprising many territories acquired by his own arm and containing fourteen hundred villages headed by Puri," and that none of the records claim more than the Kohkaq. And even the expression " the whole land of the Konkaņa" must be taken with a limitation. The term Konkan denotes properly the whole strip between the Western Ghauts and the Arabian Sea, from the river Tapti as far certainly as Palghat at the south of the Malabar District, Madras, and perhaps as far as Cape Comorin: and the territory consisted of seven divisions which were known as the Seven Konkaņs.' The Silabiras certainly did not at any time possess the whole of that territory, from either point of view as to its southern limit. It is unlikely that their power extended on the north beyond the river Ambika, which falls into the sea some twelve miles north of Balsar in the Surat District; or at any rate beyond the Parpa, which flows into the sea some ten or twelve miles farther north in the same district: in A.D. 1051 the territory just above the river Miņdbola, about eight miles north of the Purņa, belonged to a Chalukya or Chaulukya prince Trilochanapala of Lātadēśam ; and we have also a record of his grandfather Kirtiraja from the same parts. Towards the south, Chhittaraja's uncle Arikësarin (the Kasidēva of the present record), who is similarly described in the Thiņa plates of A.D. 10178 as raling "the whole land of the Konkana, comprising many territories acquired by his own arm, and containing fourteen hundred villages headed by Puri," seeing to have gained for his family a domain reaching as far perhaps as Goa, by taking the country in that direction froin a member of the southern branch of the Silähära stock, the Mandalika Rattaraja, who was ruling there in A.D. 10089 : but that is the utmost limit that can be given to the Silāhāras in that direction.
Another of the titles given here to Chhittarāja is "the Mahasamantadhipati who has attained all the pañchamahāśabda" (line 16-17). As to the meaning of the term panchamabāšabda, regarding which there had been different views, in a fall note in my Gupta Inscriptions, p. 296, note 9, I arrived at the conclusion, in agreement with some other writers, that it denotes the sounds of five great musical instruments (pafcha-mahavadya), the use of which was allowed, as & special mark of distinction, to persons of high rank and
1 See my paper in JRAS, 1901, p. 637.
See Dyn. Kan. Distre., p. 546.
See farther on in this journal under my note on the Kembhävi inscription of A.D. 1054 attached to Dr. Barnett's paper on the Yowûr inscription A.
• This acquisition, however, was actually made by his uncle Arikësarin, the Kēsidēvs of the present record (it not by even some earlier member of the family), who is described in exactly the same way in the Thins plates of A.D. 1017 (see just below).
• Bee Dyn. Kan. Distrs., . 282, note 5, and p. 436.
• See No. 356 in Kielhorn's List of the inscriptions of Northern India, ante, vol. 5, appendix, and for the identification of the places mentioned in the record so Ind. Auf., 1902, p. 256.
Ibid., No. 354. See p. 252 above note 2, No. 306. See the Kháropataq plates of A.D. 1008, No. 301 in Kielborn's Southern List
