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No. 15.]
SORATUR INSCRIPTION OF AMOGHAVARSHA I.: A. D. 869.
lat. 15° 8', long. 75° 31'. The ancient name still survives in that of the Huligere-bana, which is a division of the village lands about two miles north-east of Lakshmeshwar.1
179
Manyakhēta: Mālkheḍ.
The capital of the Rashtrakuta dynasty to which Amoghavarsha I belonged was a city named Manyakhēta. It is not referred to in the inscriptions published herewith. But it is mentioned in various other records, bearing dates from A.D. 860 onwards. And those of A.D. 940 and 959 on the Deoli and Karhaḍ plates show that Amōghavarsha himself either founded the place or else developed and completed it as the capital. It was also perhaps for a time the capital of the Western Chalukyas, who succeeded to the kingdom of the Rashtrakutas: at any rate, the earliest known mention of the Chalukya capital Kalyanapura is found in a record of A.D. 1054 of the time of Somosvara I; and Bilhana tells us in his Vikramankadevacharita, 2. 1, that Someévara made Kalyana, i.e. either founded it or adapted. it as his capital. In fact, it appears that an inscription at Kulpak mentions Manyakheta as a city at which Vikramaditya VI was ruling in A.D. 1110.6
A Mysore inscription of A.D. 902 presents the name of this city as Manyakhēḍa, with the second component in its Prakrit form, and marks the place as the chief city of a 6000 province, that is, of a province comprising, whether actually or conventionally, six thousand cities, towns, and villages, and includes its province, with the Banavāsi 12,000, the Palasige 12,000, the Kolanu 30, the Lokapura 12, and the Togegare 60, in a group which it calls "the 31,102 towns (bada) ":" and it may be noted, in passing, that this statement is further of interest in helping us to explain two other inscriptional statements which were previously obscure; namely, the mention of "30,000 villages of which VanavasI is the foremost" in the record of A.D. 860, and the mention of "the Banavasi 32,000 province" in a record of A.D. 919 these statements were puzzling because everywhere else the Banaväsi province is presented as a 12,000 province. This half-Prakrit form Manyakheḍa is found again in a Mysore inscription of A.D. 1151, which mentions a Samanta Güli-Bachi, of the Adala family, who had the hereditary title of "over-lord of Manyakheda a best of towns ".10 The city is mentioned by a fully Prakrit name as Mannekheda, the capital of Nityavarsha-Khottigadeva, in a Mysore inscription of A.D. 968,11 and as Mannakheda in the Paiyalachchhi, verse 276, where Dhanapala tells us that he wrote that work at Dhara in the Vikrama year 1029 expired
1 This is not shown in the Atlas map, but may be seen in the Map of the Dharwar Collectorate (1874), where the name is entered as "Hoolgereebun". Other divisions of the lands, also shown there, are the Desai-bana on the north and the south-west; the Basti-bana or "temple-division" on the east; the Hire-bapa or "senior divi sion" on the south-west; and the Pête-bana or " market division" on the south.
* See Professor Kielhorn's List of the Inscriptions of Southern India, vol. 7 above, appendix, Nos. 74, 86, 91 to 94, 105.
Vol. 5 above, p. 193, verse 12; vol. 4, p. 287, verse 13: and compare the Kharda record of A.D. 972, Ind. Ant., vol. 12, p. 268. It is an open question whether Amoghavarsha's father and predecessor Govinda III had anything to do with the selection of the site and the beginning of the city: see vol. 6 above, p. 64, note 3. See Dyn. Kan. Distrs., p. 335, note 1, and p. 440. See the Journ. Hyderabad Archaeol. Soc., 1916, p. 31.
See vol. 12 above, p. 291.
See the Mysore Archæological Report of 1911, para. 79; and Journ. R. As. Soc., 1912, p. 709, in my note on "Ancient Territorial Divisions of India." The details actually given only add up to 30,102; as a result, very likely, of a careless omission of the Tardavadi 1000 in the present Bijapur District, just beyond the Lökāpura 12.
8 Vol. 6 above, p. 35, verse 21.
See Ind. Ant., 1903, p. 225.
10 Epi. Carn., vol. 12 (Tumkur), Tm. 9.
11 Epi. Carn., vol. 11 (Chitaldroog), Cd. 50. It is assumed that the transcription represents the original correctly but we might expect to find manna or manneya, rather than manne, as the first component of the
name.
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