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APRIL, 1910.]
NOTES ON INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY,
NOTES ON INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
BY J. F. FLEET, 1.C.S. (RXTD.), PA.D., C.L.E. The placos mentioned in the Pārdi plates of A. D. 466 or 457. THE record on the Pardi plates was brought to notice and edited, but without a lithograph,
- by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji, in the Jour. Bo, Br. R. As. Sue., Vol. XVI, p. 346 ff. It is now being re-edited by Professor Hultzsch, with a facsimile, in the Epigraphia Indica. The plates were found in 1884, in digging a tank at Pardi, the head-quarters town of the Pārdi subdivision of the Sarat District in Gujarat, Bombay.
The charter contained on these plates was issued by the Traikutaka Maharija Dabrasēna from his "victorious camp” located at Amrakā. It conveyed to a Brāhman named Naņņasvāmin, a resident of Kāpura, a village named Kaniyas-Tadākāsärikā," the smaller or younger (later) Ta ļākāsäriki," situated in a territorial division known as the Antarmandali vishaya. It is dated on Vaišākba sukla 13, the year 207: The year is the year 207 of the 80-called Kalachuri or Chēdi era of A. D. 249: and the date falls in 456 1. D. if the year is taken as current ; in 457 A. D. if it is taken as expired.
I identify Kāpura with a fairly large village on or near the southern bank of the River Mindholā, algo called Madão,' the ancient Mandakini and Madāvi, three miles south-southwest from Vyårā, the head-quarters town of the Vyārā sab-division of the Baroda State: the place is shown as Kapura' in the Indian Atlas quarter-sheet No. 23, S. E. (1888), in lat. 21° 4', long. 73° 25', and in the Trigonometrical Survey sheet No. 34 (1882) of Gujarat. And, bearing in mind the great and sometimes apparently irregular changes which many placenames in Gujarāt have undergone, as is illantrated in some of my previous Notes of this series, we have no difficulty in identifying Kaniyas-Tadākāsārikā with the Tarsari, Tarsári,' of the maps, fifteen miles almost due west from 'Kapara,' and about half-way between the Mindholā and the Pūrņā: there is another Tarsari,' Tarsári,' apparently a larger village, ten miles south-west-by-west from it, on the south bank of the Pürņā ; and the existence of this latter village may account for the village which was granted being known as “the smaller or younger (later) Tadākāsărikā.” I take the appellation Antarmandali vishaya as meaning “the district of the territory between " the Mindholā on the north and the Pūrņā on the south. From the mention of the Kāpurs āhārs in the inscription dealt with in my next Note, we learn that Kāpura was the chief town of, and gave its name to, & subdivision of the Antarmandali vishaya.
The place Amrakā, at which Dahrasēna was encamped when he made the grant, may possibly be the Ambachh, Ámbáohh,' of the mape, about two miles towards the south-west from Kapora.' But it would not necessarily be anywhere near the other places mentioned in the record.
The places mentioned in the Nasik insoription of A, D, 120. An inscription in Cave No. 10 on the so-called Panda löna Hin, about five miles sonth-west of Näsik, has been edited by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji in the Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XVI, p. 578, by Professor Bühler in Archæol. Sury. West. Ind., Vol. IV, p. 102, No. 9, and by M. Senart in the Epi. Ind., Vol. VIII, p. 82, No. 12. It registers the fact that in the year 42, in the month Vaibikha, Dinikapatra-Usbavadāta, son-in-law of the king the Kshaharāta Kshatrapa Nahapāna, presented the cave to the commanity of monks from all the foar quarters. The year is the year 42 (expired) of the so-called Saka era of A. D. 78: and the given month falls in A, D. 120. Amongst the endowments of the cave, the record mentions
1 Seo Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXI (1902), p. 254 t.
