Indian Antiquary Vol 32

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 58

52
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(FEBRUARY, 1903.
of the record. And we can only arrive at the conclusion that these three villages all lay quite close to the coast, where the maps shew a few villages of the Sachin State and some large islands or banks on one of which there is a hamlet named. Kádi Phaliya,' close on the north-west of Dunias, '17 and that they have all disappeared in the course of timo. They may have been absorbed into Dumas' and Bhimpur.' Or they may have been washed away and destroyed by encroachments of the Tapti and the sea.
But the identifications of Kantâragrâma with Katargam or Kattargam, and of the river Madavi with the Mindhola,' and the mention of the sea, are sufficient to make it quite certain that this record is to be localised here, between the mouths of the Tapti and the Mindhola.' The places mentioned in the spurious Uméta plates which purport to have been
issued in A. D. 478. This record is No. 23 in the List of Spurions Records given by me in Vol. XXX. above, p. 214 ff. It has been edited, as a genuine record, by Dr. Bühler, in Vol. VII. above, p. 61 ff., with a lithograph. From the information given by him, we know that the original plates were obtained in 1875 by the Rev. J. Taylor at Umota in the Kaira district of Gujarat, Bombay Presidency. This place is on the west bank of the river Mahi, about ten miles towards the south east-by-east from Borsad, the head quarters of the Borsad tåluka of the Kaira district. The record, however, has no real connection with that locality.
The record purports to have been issued, -- rijaya-vikshepát Bharukachchha-prad vara-nâsakat (read vâsakat), - "from the victorious cantonment situated (lit., dwelling, abiding, halting) before the gates of Bharukachobha," that is, of Broach. And it claims that, on a specified day in the month Vaisakha, Saka-Samvat 400 (expired), falling in April, A. D. 478, the Gurjara prince Dadda II. granted to a Brahman, for the maintenance of the bali, charu, vaisvadeva, agnihátra, panchamahayajña, and other (unspecified) rites, a village (gráma) named Niguda, lying (antahpatin) in a territorial division which is mentioned as the Kamaniya bodasatam bhukti. Regarding the word dadasalan, thus presented, reference may be male to page 49 above
The alleged grantee is described as the Bhalla Madhava (for Madbava), son of the Bhatta Mahidhara (which name may, or may not be taken as standing for Mahidbara, with the long 1).18 His alleged father is described as dwelling (vástavya) at Kanyakubja, and as being a member of the community of Chaturvédins of that place, and as belonging to the Vasisbtha gôtra, and as being a student of the Bahvricha (school of the Rigveda). And we may, no doubt, take it that the Kanyakubja thus mentioned is Kanauj, in the Farukhabad district in the United Provinces of Agra and Oude, and that there is no confusion in this record between Kanyakubja-Kanauj and the name Korņakubja which the Girnar Mahatmya would put forward as a former name of Junagadh in Kathiawâr.19
In specifying the boundaries of Niguda, the record places on the east a village (grama) named Vaghauri. On the south, it places a village named Phalahavadra. On the west, it places a village named Vihana. And, on the north, it places a village named Dahithali.
This record has been localised by Dr. Bühler.20 Kamaniya is used in it as another form of the name of the ancient Karmandya and Kammanijja, 21 which is the modern Kamrej, the headquarters of the Kamrêj subdivision of the Nausâri division of the Barcda territory; it is on the south bank of the Tapti, and is to be found in the Indian Atlas sheet No. 23, S. E. (1888), in lat. 21° 17', long. 73° 2'. And, as pointed out by Dr. Bühler, Niguda is a village which is shewn as Nagod' in the same Atlas sheet and in the Trigonometrical Survey sheet No. 34 (1882) of Gujarat, ten and
17 The Atlas sheet places this hamlet on the mainlad. But the Trigonometrical sheet makes it quite cloar that it is on an island.
1* The whole passage specifying the alloged grantee and his father, has been quoted in Vol. XXXI. above, p. 337. 19 See Yol. XXXI. above, p. 352, note 12. 30 Vol. XVII, above, p. 184. 21 See Vol. XXXI, above, p. 393.