________________
JANUARY, 1998)
ANCIENT TOWNS AND CITIES IN GUJARAT AND KATAIAWAD
CHAPTER II.
Principles of Selection. We shall be confining our attention in the following pages only to important towns and cities; not to all towns and cities; 80 we must now address ourselves to the task of laying down some principles to govern the process of selection. Unfortunately it is not very easy to lay down universal and unmistakable criteria in this respect. The material itself is scanty and defies any attempt to lay down such principles. Inscriptions and copperplates' make only incidental reforences to towns and villages ; if any details are at all given they are usually of the villages granted, with which, however, we have nothing to do in this thesis. About the dimensions, population, trade or commerce of the headquarters of the district or sub. division to which these villages belonged, the plates say nothing; they simply mention them barely. Nor do literary prabandhas improve the matters muoh; for they generally describe in detail only the capitals of their heroes.
Under such circumstances we must be guided in our selection by general considerations.
(i) Those places which are mentioned as capitals, ports, arts, frontier forts or places of pilgrimage must have been in ancient times important towns or cities as a general rule. In modern times they may have dwindled into mere hamlets, but that does not prevent their inolusion in our list ; for, it can be shown that thoy had seen better days in ancient times.
(i) Those places again which do not come under any one of the above categories, but which nevertheless bear the epithet , git or TT after them, must be consi. dered important towns. In Sanskrit literature these epithets are invariably applied only to cities, and we are justified in oonoluding that a place which bears any of these epithets is entitled to demand inclusion in this thesis.
(ii) On the other hand places mentioned as TH need not be included; for that epithet usually denotes a village. Unless, therefore, there is clear evidence to the contrary that a particular place, though designated by the term gråma,' is not, as would appear prima facie, & village, we may safely exclude as a rule all those places bearing that appellation.
(iv) A place which is mentioned as the headquarters of an andra or dharan or vishaya may be safely considered to have been an important town or city. The territorial sub-divisions denoted by ahara, dharant and vishaya were as extensive as modern col. lectorates, and as a rule included under their jurisdiction a number of villages varying from 800 to 1,60043, Now Yasodhara, one of the commentators upon Vatsyâyana's Kamasútras, while commenting upon 1, 4, observes :
पत्तनं यत्र राजधानी स्थिता । नगरं अष्टशतप्राममध्ये तब्यवहारस्थानम् ।
सर्वर्ट द्विशतप्राममध्ये । चतुःशतग्राममध्ये द्रोणमुखं खटान्महद्भवति । From this it is clear that, since the headquarters of our vishayas were places from where affairs of villages ranging from eight to sixteen hundred were administered, they must have been important towns.
(v) The cases of the headquarters of desas and mandalas are still more unambiguous. These territorial divisions comprised territories as extensive as two or three of our modern oollectorates put together. It therefore goes without saying that their headquarters were important towns. 41 of megafreyfrut
a r art-Surat plates of Dhruva III. medgrave r a-Kapadwanj plate
