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No. 33.]
UNFINISHED VAKATAKA PLATE FROM DRUG.
situated in Berar, some scholars were inclined to take it as identical with Padmavati, the scene of Bhavabhuti's Malati-Madhava, which is now clearly shown to be Pawaya 25 miles north-east of Narwar in Gwalior State. The discovery of the present plate has settled this disputed point and proved incontrovertibly that Bhavabhuti was born in ancient Vidarbha. The Vākāṭaka kings were patrons of Vedic learning and performed many important Vedic sacrifices. It is no wonder, therefore, that we find such learned Mimamsakas as the ancestors of Bhavabhuti, who themselves performed such sacrifices as the Vajapēya, settled in Padmapura, where they must have received the patronage of the Vākāṭakas. After the decline of the Vākāṭakas, there were no great royal dynasties ruling in C. P. and Berar in the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century A.D. Bhavabhuti seems, therefore, to have gone to the north where he found a patron in Yasōvarman, the mighty king of Kanauj, as stated in the Rājatarangini.
211
We have seen above that Padmapura was situated in Vidarbha. From the Malavikāgnimitra of Kalidasa we learn that the river Wardha divided Vidarbha into two parts. Ancient Vidarbha, therefore, comprised not only modern Berar but also the Marathi districts of the Central Provinces, which, as I have shown elsewhere, were under the direct rule of the Vākāṭakas. As a matter of fact there is no village named Padmapura in modern Berar proper, while there are at least six villages of that name in the Chanda and Bhanḍārā districts of C. P. Of these Padampur, 2 miles from Amgaon, a station on the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, is probably the Padmapura of the present plate. As I have shown elsewhere the villages mentioned in the Siwani plates of Pravarasēna II can be identified in its vicinity. The village contains many ancient relics. When I visited the place during the Christmas of 1934, I found four finely carved but broken images of the Tirthankaras Pārsvanatha and Rishabhadeva, some others of Hindu gods like Vishnu and remains of two Mediaeval Hindu temples, such as fragments of massive stone pillars, a large lintel measuring 8' x 1'-7" x 1'-6" and bases of door-jambs, in the adjoining fields. No other Padampur in C. P. is reported to have such ancient relics. There are at present no Brahmin families in Padampur itself which is now a small village of 112 souls, but there are many Brahmins in the neighbourhood of Padampur. It is noteworthy that they follow the Taittiriya branch of the Black Yajurvēda to which Bhavabhuti's family belonged. I, therefore, feel no hesitation in concluding that Padampur in the Amgaon Zamindari of the Bhanḍārā district, C. P., was the last Vākāṭaka capital and. the ancestral home of Bhavabhuti.
xxxvi.
1 Cf. Dr. S. K. Belvalkar's Introduction to the Uttara-Ramacharita (Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. XXI), p. 2 A. S. R., for 1915-16, pp. 1-10.
• अति दक्षिणापथे पद्मपुरं नाम नगरम् । तत्र afefefer: काश्यपाश्चरणगुरवः पङ्क्तिपावनाः पश्चाप्रयो धृतव्रताः सोमपीथिन उदुम्बरनामानी ब्रह्मवादिनः प्रतिवसन्ति । तदामुष्यायणस्य तत्रभवतो वाजपेययानिनी महाकवेः पञ्चमः.... श्रीकण्ठपदलान्छनी भवभूतिर्नाम जातूकर्णीपुत्रः
(Mahaviracharita pp. 2-3,
ed. Oxford University Press).
Act V, st. 13.
s Above, p. 169.
Above, p. 171, footnote 1.
1 An old farmer of Padampur told me that one more image was taken to the Nagpur Museum about forty years ago. It cannot however be definitely identified there, as no accurate record of the findspots of images has been kept in the Museum and the provenance of many is not known. But from the dimensions of its stone prabhavali, which is still in situ at Padampur, the image seems to be identical with that of Siva (A.-22 in the Descriptive List of Exhibits in the Nagpur Museum) which is said to have come from Bhandārā' (district ?).
It may be noted in this connection that the Siwani plates of Pravarasens II which record the gift of the village Brahmapuraka in the neighbourhood of Padampur, were granted to a Brahmin of the Taittiriya-sakha.
....
