________________
APRIL, 1882.)
IS BEZAWÅDA ON THE SITE OF DHANAKATAKAP
97
rock so veined and friable as to be but ill-adapted for the excavation of rock temples; and all of them appear to be of as late a date as, or even later than, the caves at Mahậvalipuram, Bay of from the 7th to the 9th century. There is none of the display of wealth in their extent and decoration that we find in the Brâhmaņical caves of Elura, Elephanta, Badami, &c.-nothing, in fact, to indicate that they were executed at the expense of powerful princes reigning in the city beside which they are.
Mr. Sewell cavils at General Cunningham's assumption that the name of the capital spoken of by Hiwen Thsang was Dhana kata ka, but an inscription at Násik and two others from Amaravati speak of Dhana kata or Dham. fi a kata ka as the name of a city, the Sanskrit equivalent of Dhanyakataka--the abode of the wealthy.' It was undoubtedly a different place from the Dhêņukakata mentioned so frequently in the inscriptions of the western caves, and which must have been somewhere on or near the west coast. But that Dhanakataka was at Amaravati itself or at Dharani. kota, I am not quite prepared to say. Hiwen Thsang would surely have mentioned the Krishna river by name, if it had been on its banks: he is in the habit of noting such natural features.
But in the gôpuram of the present temple of Amaresvara at Amaravati is an inscription of which Mr. Fleet has favoured me with the following outline :-'It is of the time of king Anna v Ata, the son of Vêma, who is said to be of the lineage of Prola, and whose kingdom was included between the rivers Brahma kundi and Krishna vêni and Gautami or God a vari. Annavâta's Man- tri or Sendpati was Vê ma or Mallayavoma, (called Pallavâditya--the sun of the Pallava's-in the Telugu version) the son of the hereditary Mantri Kê ta or Ketay &- malla; he woquired the title of Jaganobbaganda (sole hero in the world) by defeating the Yavanas (Musalmans), who came to attack his sovereign ; and he set up the god Amare. svara at the city of Sri-Dhân ya vâtipura on Vâchaspativara, the day of the hooded snake
(Guruvara, the 5th) in the month Sråvaņa of Saka 1283 (1361-2 A.D.) the Plava Samvatsara.' Mr. Sewell himself has referred to this inscription, which shows that the name of Amaravati was changed in or since the 14th century, and that its previous name Dhânyavâti bore a resemblance both in form and sense to Dhanya kataka-in fact may be taken as its exact equivalent.
But Amaravati, if we except the Di. paldinne Stúpa, has but little evidence of being a place of much antiquity. The temple in its present form and extent is probably not much over a hundred years old ; owing how. ever to the obstructiveness of the Brâhmang access is denied to its interior. It contains a number of inscriptions, mostly in Telugu, of which I have secured copies in facsimile, and when they are fully analysed we may learn more of its history : indeed one inscription on the wall south of the east entrance to the shrine, dated $. 1548, records the erection of a temple to Śiva at Dharanikota. The gôpnram is confessedly the work of the Zamindar of the place, towards the end of last century. Possibly the lowest portion of it may be the remains of a much older work; and in it are three pillars bearing inscriptions, one of which has been quoted above. But these pillars may well have been brought from some other temple, at Dharaņikota, and built in here; we know that the builder was in the habit of pulling down temples for materials with which to build others.
Dharaniko tay, on the other hand, is evidently a very ancient place, surrounded originally by great artificial ramparts, the height of the remains of which, especially on the west side, testifying to the prodigious labour that must have been expended on them and to the consequent importance of the place. To the north-west has been a great artificial lake, and one can scarcely doubt that in days whon the rampart and lake were entire, Amaravati was but one of its suburbs. To the east, and between this old city and the foot of the neighbouring hills, where so many dolmens or rude-stone burying places are still
• Madras Government Proceedings, 1st Nov. 1878, No. 11620, pp. 11, 15, and 16.
Childers gives dhañña as the PAli both of dhanya opulent,' &c. and dhanya, grain'; if therefore we take the PAli Dhamakata as equivalent to the Sans. krit Dhinyakata,' we have the exact correlative of
DhAnyavati: varf is only a feminine form of udta kalaka In such cases, Mr. Fleet points out, the feminine form gives the idea of largeness; conf. nada, 'a river,' and nadt, a largo river', aranya, m. and n. 's wood, aranyant, 'forest.'
