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No. 7.)
BARIPADA MUSEUM PLATE OF DEVANANDADEVA.
77
This place, presumably the capital of the Nanda family of Orissa, has been identified with Jajpur of the Cuttack district by Dr. A. Banerji-Sastri and with Jeypur or Jeypore, the headquarters of a big estate of the same name in the newly constituted Koraput district of Orissa, by Mr. N. Tripathi. Both of these identifications are open to serious objections. As Jajpur cannot be regarded as a corruption of Jayapura, and as it was known as Virajās in the eighth or ninth century A.D., when it was held as capital by the Bhauma kings of Orissa, the identification proposed by Dr. Banerji-Sastri should be ruled out of consideration. As regards Mr. Tripathi's proposed identification, though no objection can be taken to it from phonetic point of view, several considerations prevent us from taking it as conclusive. On an examination of the pl.ce-names mentioned in this grant and others, it is revealed that Airăvatta mandala which included the vishaya of Potoda has been mentioned in the Talmul plate of Dhruvānandadēva and also in the Balijhari plates of Uddyotakēšari Mahābhavagupta". This mandala must be taken to bave comprised a tract of land along the Mahanadi river in view of the fact that the gift village Kontalanda, mentioned in the last-named charter, has pointedly been spoken of as situated on the bank of that river. So, if Jayapura is to be taken identical with Jeypur of the Koraput District, we have to suppose that the territories ruled over by Dēvānanda and Dhruvän anda extended far to the south-west of the Mahanadi river on the north. But their dominion over such vast territories is not warranted by their records which do not even give the title of mahārāja before their names, nor mention a single conquest to their credit. They must have been feudatories of some paramount power in Orissa as is indicated by their titles Paramabhaltāraka Samadhigata pafchamahäsabda Mahasamantadhipati. Begides, Jayānanda, the first known ruler of the family, probably the founder of the dynasty, has been credited with the coaquest of the whole of Gôndrama, which, as will be shown below, meant the hilly tracts now ruled over by the feudatory chiefs of Orissa, but never any tract along the Bay of Bengal. The last but not the least important is the fact that if these plates of the Nanda family were issued from Jeypur of the Koraput district, it is rather strange that the southern influence so conspicuong on the copper-plates issued from Kalinganagara and Svētaka should have been completely absent from the palaeography of their records. I should, therefore, suggest the identification of Jayapura of our records with Jaipur, a village situated in the Dhenkanal State from which and from the adjoining Narasinghpur State all the three copper-plate grants mentioning the name of Airāvatta 'mandala are reported to have hailed. Jayapura, as its name suggests, was possibly founded by Jayānanda, the first ruler of the Nanda family.
Among the other geographical names occurring in the inscription, Göndrama, which is also mentioned in four other copper-plate inscriptions of Orissa, is always found in conjunction with sakala . all', and in one plate with ashţāda sa 'eighteen'. It is thus clear that it was a geographical expression meaning a group of eighteen tracus of land and seems to be the same as ashţādas afavi-rājya (eighteen forest chiefdoms) of the Betul plates of Samkshobha. The name ashtādasa Gondrama applied to these tracts wos probably due to the predominence of the Gond tribe over other aboriginal tribes inhabiting these parts and seems to have survived in the geographical expression athara gadhjät still applied to all the feudatory states of Orissa by the people, though as a matter of fact their number at present is not eighteen but twenty-four. It should be 1J. B. O. R. 8. Vol. XV, p. 89.
Ibid., Vol. XVI, pp. 457 f. Pt. B. Misra. Orissa under the Bhauma Kings, p. 89. J. B.O.R.S., Vol. XVII, p. 17, text l. 33, Bhandarkar's List, No. 2076.
J. B.O.R.S., Vol. II, pp. 402 (text L. 18), 406 (text 1. 9) and 418 (text I. 1.) and Vol. VI, p. 230 (text I. 13). . Above YOL VIII, p. 287 (text L. 9) and discussion on p. 186.
