________________
AUGUST, 1902.] NOTES ON INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
.897
The grant of a village in Gujarat could not possibly be of any practical use to a person residing at Badami: in a period when no railways, motor-cars, or even bicycles were available, it would take him, unless he could fly or was the happy possessor of a vimana or self-moving aërial chariot which could proceed independently of the direction of the wind, at least three months to travel to and fro by road for the annual inspection of crops and accounts; and he could not reduce that time very much, even if he should make his way to the coast and then travel by a sailing ship. In this case, it is absolutely certain that the specified place of abode was that of the grantee's father, and there is an implication that the grantee himself had become a settler in Gujarât, or was there and settled there when the grant was made to him. And, in this case, we must certainly insert a hyphen between Bådaddi-upddehydya and putra, and translate, "to Gobbaddi, a son of the Upádhyâya Bada ]di who dwells at Badavi and belongs to the Bharadvaja gôtra and is a student of the Taittiriya (school)."
We may gather, even from this last instance alone, that the intention, in all similar cases, was to connect a place of abode or of departure, not with the grantee himself, but with his father or any other ancestor mentioned just before him in the same compound. And, that this was the intended meaning in such compounds, is further emphasised by the construction to which recourse was had in certain spurious records, which, though of no historical value, are yet instructive on such points as the present one. For instance, the spurious Umêtâ plates, which purport to have been issued in A. D. 478, claim that a village named Nigada was granted, - Kanyakubjavâstavya-tachaturvidyasamanya-Vagishthasag ôtra-Bahfichasabrahmachari-bhatta Mahidharastasya sunu bhatta Madhava, 17 "the Bhatta Mahidhara, who dwells at Kânyakubja and is a member of the community of Chaturvédins of that place and belongs to the Vasishtha gôtra and is a student of the Bahvpicha (school); his son, the Bhata Madhava ; [to him ]." This nogrammatical construction is simply a partial analysis of what ought to have been presented in one continuous compound, similar to those which we have in the instances Nos. 10 and 11 above, namely, - KanyakubjavAstavya-tachchâturvvidyasamánya-Vasishthasagôtra-Bahvpichasabrahmacbêri-bhattaMahidhara-sung-bhatta Madhavaya, "to the Bhatta Madhava, a son of the Bhata Mahidbars who dwells at Kanyakubja," etc. Similar ungrammatical constructions are presented in the sparions plates which purport to record a grant made by Dharasena II. of Valabhi in A. D. 478, and in the spurious Bagumrâ plates which parport to have been issued in A. D. 493, and in the spurious Ilậð plates which purport to have been issued in A, D, 495,60 And they shew plainly how the person or persons who composed those documente, also, would have interpreted such compounds as those which we have in Nos. 10 and 11. But, further, we have, in fact, a partial analysis, grammatically correct, of precisely similar compounds, in the instances given under Nos, 5 and 6 above. In each of those cases, a description of the grantee which might have been given in one unbroken compound exactly like those under Nos. 10 and 11, bas been broken up into two separate words by the use of the datives sutaya and putráya, instead of the bases suta and putra, after the father's name. And these two cases also, Nos. 5 and 6, shew plainly how the composers of those two records, again, would have interpreted the unbroken compounds in Nos. 10 and 11.
I am not able to quote any instance of the use of these unbroken compounds in cases in which mention is made of any ancestor prior to the father of the grantee. This fact, coupled with a comparison of the general nature of all the instances given under Nos. 1 to 9 above, leaves an impression that it may have been the custom to use these unbroken compounds only when the father of the grantee was still alive. And, in translating both these passages and those in which different constructions were employed, I have used the past and present tenses in socordance with that impression.
Vol. VII. above, p. 64, line 16t. of plate i. It does not seem nooomary to enoumber the transcriptaon by correoting certain mistakes of the original, ** Vol. X. above, p. 284, line 17 ff.
Vol. XVII. above, p. 200, line 14 ff. - XIII. above, p. 117, line 18 1.
