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JULY 5, 1872.]
most the same as in the Highlands; I say the Highlands-because a common surname implies a sort of consanguinity, an identity in fact of tribe. The other surnames commonest among Marathas,-the Smiths and Joneses of the Dekhan, are Sindé (Scindia), Jâdu, Bhoñsla, Powar, and Chauhan. It will at once be remarked that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th on this list are the names of noble Rajput races, and the Bhonslas claim descent from the Sisodias of Chitor, the oldest family in India. All the more respectable members of these clans wear the sacred thread, (" Bammans" to the contrary notwithstanding,) and any one who has met with the heads of the Powâr and Jâdu families (the chiefs of Wadhgaum, Phaltan, and Malegaum) knows that, in the qualities attributed to high descent in India, they are inferior to no Rajput whatever. I shall, therefore, tike up the rather hold ground of asserting my belief that the Marâțha clans inherit their names from common ancestors with Rajputs and other pure Aryan tribes of Central India. Taking this for granted, we find that there are Chauhans in Rajputana, Chauhan princes of great antiquity in Garha-Mandia, (Makawati) and Chauhan Marathas in the Dekhan. There are also Powârs or Pramaras at Dhar and Dewas in Central India, and Powârs in the Dekhan. The expulsion of the Powârs from their
THE RASHTRAKUTA DYNASTY.
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ancestral seats, their retreat to the Dekhan, and subsequent return to their own, as Maratha commanders, is, I think, historical,-certainly based on their traditions, but I write far from authorities. The Yâdavas or Jâdus hold barren principalities both in the great desert and in the Dekhan. The traditions connecting the Royal house of Bhonsla with that of the Udépur Rânâ are well known, and we find the family, when they first came into notice, established as Deshmukhs at Sind-Khera.
THE inscription, of which a translation is given below, is engraved on a stone pillar about 4 feet 10 inches in height, 1 foot 2 inches thick, and 1 foot 9 inches broad. It is cut in Devanagari characters on three of its four sides, and the letters are well preserved, except in one place, where a slip is broken off, and eleven letters from an important part have unfortunately been lost. This pillar, and another, also bearing an inscription, when visited by me two years ago, were put up at the end of a veranda before the village entrance-gate that the cattle might rub themselves against them.
Sâlotgi is a village in the Indi Taluka of the Kalâdgi district, and is about forty miles from Solapur and twenty miles south of the Bhîmâ. It has a Hindu temple, built after the fashion of a Muhammadan rozah, in which is worshipped a grave with a chaddar on it like the tomb of a Muhammadan. Neither Muhammadans nor
I think, therefore, that the most probable explanation of the Gauli Râj is this, that Gauli was the surname, or nickname, of a family of princes (and not of a nation) of Aryan race who established themselves in the valleys of the Tapti and Narmadâ during the great migration southward which ended in the colonization of the Dekhan by the Aryan Marathas. This is of course mere conjecture, but if it sets more learned men than myself on a new track it will have served my purpose. Of this I am quite sure, that any attempt to connect the Gauli Raj with the scattered bands of herdsmen, themselves of various origin and language, that now roam through the pastures of India, would be hopeless, and equally vain any theory of an invasion of pastoral tribes, "Scythians" or what not, after the somewhat mythical Egyptian pattern.
AN INSCRIPTION AT SÁLOTGI IN THE KALÁDGI DISTRICT, DATED
SAKA 867 OR A.D. 945, WITH REMARKS.
BY PROF. SHANKAR PANDURANG PANDIT, M.A.
the lower castes of the Hindus are allowed to enter within the outer walls of the temple, except on the occasion of an annual fair held in its honour on the full moon of Chaitra (April), when, within the walls, Brahman, Mahar, Máng, and Musalmân, mingle together without scruple about contamination, and, as at the great Jagannatha in Orissa, partake without caste distinction of food cooked for the occasion. In front and behind the temple there are two large wells, with steps descending to the water, and being entirely out of proportion to the size and importance of the present temple, attest the former existence of edifices which have disappeared amidst the many religious and political revolutions that have passed over the land. Part of a very much larger well, by the side of the present one in front of the temple, is now filled up and a garden cultivated on it, but the outer edges of the old well are in some piaces
