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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY,
A JOURNAL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH.
FAH HIAN'S KINGDOM OF THE DAKSHIŅA. BT THOMAS FOULKES, F.L.S., M.R.A.S., CHAPLAIN OF SAINT JOHN'S, BANGALORE.. TT was apparently Fah Hian's original inten- regarding the correctness of this identificaI tion to pass from North India to Ceylon tion. through Southern India, but on making inqui- | The limitation of the word 'Dakhan' to ries into the state of the country through that portion of South India which lies between which his ronte would lie, he was obliged, for the Vindhyas and a moveable line in the neighsome unmentioned reason, to give up this por- bourhood of the Krishna, I need scarcely say, tion of his enterprise. The short report which is comparatively modern ; in Fah Hian's time he has left of the results of those inquiries is the word 'Dakshiņa,' when used in • geogravery interesting, and contains allusions which phical sense, embraced the whole country beseem to me to be capable of being developed tween the Vindhyas and Cape Kumari(Comorin). into an outline of the condition of an important It is therefore remarkable that he should use portion of Southern India during the earliest this word as the name of a kingdom. He does centuries of the Christian era.
not indeed say that there was no other kingHe tells us that "two hundred yeouyan to the dom besides this within those limits, and south there is a kingdom called Tha-thsen," it is well known from other sources that the and he then proceeds to describe two or three whole of that region was not in his time under circumstances respecting it which had come to the rule of a single monarch; still, what had his knowledge. The object of this paper is been conveyed to his mind by his informants, to try to identify this kingdom by a develop- who were themselves people of the country, ment of the meaning of these words and their was, that there was a kingdom in the south, context, and by a comparison of the interpre- whatever its other name or names may have tation so obtained with other information re- been, which was at that time sufficiently prespecting the condition of South India at the eminent amongst its neighbours to be entitled to time to which his description refers.
be called The kingdom of the south.' PerM. Klaproth long ago recognized the word haps it may be allowable to infer that this Tha-thsen' as Fah Hian's equivalent of the word kingdom had received that name on account of "Dakshina ("the South'), a denomination its comparatively large extent of territory, or applied to the vast country called at present the from having established some kind of paramount Dakhan, which is the valgar pronunciation of authority over the rest of the kingdoms of South Dakshina :" and no question is likely to arise India.
The present paper is based on Mr. Laidley's translation of the French edition of MM. Rémunat, Klaproth, and Landresse.
