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174
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1912.
assembled, princes, counsellors, priest ministers, superiors, inferiors, subject to his commands, also the lords of districts, the governors of towns, chiefs of villages, the masters of families, employed or unemployed servants of the king, and his countymen. Thus he greets all the holy men and others inhabiting the city of Hanyamana." (Asiatic Researches, Vol. I, p. 361).
2.
The great provincial chief, the illustrious Chhittarâjadêva addresses with salutations, worship, and respect all the assembled men of royal caste, ministers, Purohitas, councillors, chief and minor officials, whether connected with himself or strangers, as well as the lords of rashtras (zillus), the lords of vishayas (tâlûkâs), the lords of towns, the lords of villages, officials, and non-official persons, servants of the king, and rayats, likewise the citizens of the town of Hamyamana, belonging to the three (twice-born) castes and others as follows . .
.""
(Ante, Vol. V, p. 280, Col. 1).
3. Illustrious Mahamandaleśvara king Anantadeva, announces with salutations, honour, respect, and directions, to all princes, councillors, priests, ministers, principal and subordinate officers, both those connected with himself and others, as also all heads of rashtras, heads of vishayas, heads of towns, heads of villages, royal officials, specially appointed or not, country people, as well as townspeople of the town Hanjamana of the three classes and so forth.
(Ante, Vol. IX, p. 38).
The learned translators of the three grants do not say what Hanjamana or Hamyamana is. Pandit Râmalochan and Dr. Bühler, the translators of the first two grants, say nothing about the word. Mr. Telang says of it: "I do not understand this."1 Further on he adds: "I can say nothing about Hanjamana. "2
The Bombay Gazetteer, in the Volumes on Thânâ, refers to these Silâhâra grants, and says that the town of Sanjân, which is about ninety miles from Bombay, on the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, is probably referred to under the name of Hamjaman. The writer does not give his grounds of probability. I fancy that the fact of the three copperplates being found in Konkan, wherein Sanjan is situated, and the fact of some similarity between the names "Hamjamana" and "Sanjân" were his only grounds. The object of this paper is to supply two or three facts, giving some further grounds of probability, amounting well-nigh to certainty.
"Firstly, the donors address the tenor of their grants in general terms to all the people of the country, to members of the royal family, to their high and low officials, to officials and non-officials, to all their raiyat, and then make a special reference to the people of the town of Hamjamana. Why were these people not included in the general terms of the address in the general term raiyat? What was the reason of separately addressing the people of the town of Hamjamana? Did not the people of that town form a part and parcel of the raiyat of the donor-princes ?"'4
The answer to all these questions is, that the town of Hanjamana, though ruled by the donor-princes, was a separate colony of people, who formed a "foreign element" in the midst of the great Hindu people. It was a colony of the descendants of the first Parsee emigrants, who had come to India from Persia at the end of the 8th century and had settled at Sanjân in A.D. 735, with the special permission of the ruler of the land. They had continued to live as a "foreign element" following their own Zoroastrian creed, manners and customs, even retaining their own autonomy.
The Kissa-i-Sanjan, i.e., the Story of Sanjân, a Persian poem, written in A. D. 1000 on the strength of authentic oral tradition, gives a pretty full account of how they came to Sanjân, how they corresponded with the ruling Râjâ, how they explained to him their religion and customs, and how they, at last, got his permission to found a separate colony of themselves at a place which they named Sanjân. For an account of all these subjects I would refer my readers to my book entitled A Few Events in the Early History of the Parsees and their Dates,
The poem says: "A place in the desert was accepted. The ground was excellent and they made it their place of abode. The place was acceptable to all persons. A city was created, where Vol. XIV, p. 302.
1 Ante, Vol. IX, p. 38, n. 45. 2 Ibid, p. 44, Col. 1. Vide my paper on "Sanjan" in Jour. Bomb. As. Soc., Vol. XXI, p. 418.
