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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[NOVEMBER, 1926
Bombay during the Maurya, Satavahana, and Gupta periods. From the sixth century onwards the northern Konkan, including Bombay, was governed by a succession of local dynasties Mauryas, Chalukyas, Silaharas,-whose capital was Puri-probably an old name for Thana, the chief town of the "Konkan fourteen hundred." Between A.D. 757, when Chalukya rule of the Deccan ended, and A.D. 810, when the Silahara family became hereditary local rulers of the Thana and Kolaba Districts, the western littoral, including the seven Bombay islands, was governed by the indigenous Deccan dynasty of Rashtrakutas, who were probably connected indirectly by descent with the Maharathis of the Satavahana age, and therefore also, possibly, with the Mahasenapatis who once served as Andhra viceroys in the Adoni region [and may for a time have administered the ancient Tondamandalam in the Madras Presidency]. It was during the Râshtrakuta hegemony of the Deccan and Konkan that the Parsis first migrated to Sanjan, which lies just north of Bombay, and thence spread northwards into Gujarat : it was about the same epoch that certain Jews of the Yemen, under pressure of the rising tide of Islam, fled to the coast of India and settled in the villages of Kolaba and Thana, whence they moved in the eighteenth century to the Island of Bombay.
Calling themselves Bene-Israel, scil, Children of Israel, these Jew refugees, on their arrival in the Konkan, adopted the trades of carpenters, masons, and oil-pressers, and in course of time relinquished most of their traditional beliefs and customs, except the observance of the Sabbath, the rite of circumcision, and the memory of the Prophet Elijah and the Day of Atonement. Their observance of the Sabbath, indeed, led to their being styled 'Shaniwar Telis' or 'Saturday oilmen,' to distinguish them from Hindu oil-pressers, who were dubbed 'Somawar Telis' or 'Monday oilmen.' In other respects they were gradually assimilated to the Hindu population, adopted Marathi as their language, and so modified their Jewish names as to resemble the names of their Hindu and Muhammadan neighbours. Thus Abraham became Abaji; Moses, Musaji; Isaac, Isaji; and Samuel, Samaji. After their arrival in Bombay, many of them adopted the military profession, and from 1760 onwards there was hardly an infantry regiment of the old Bombay Army that did not include a certain proportion of Bene-Israel. Some of them rose to the rank of officers and took part in the storming of Seringapatam, the siege of Multan, and the battle of Kirkee. The chief synagogue in Bombay City, styled the 'Gate of Mercy,' was built in 1796 by a Bene-Israel officer named Samaji (Samuel) in gratitude for his escape from the clutches of Tipu Sultan. Nowadays the Bene-Israel, who owe their educational advance to the labours of Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century, will be found in every profession and calling, and have long deserted their original ghetto, which was close to the modern Masjid Bandar railway station, in favour of certain streets in the Umarkhadi section of the municipal ward B.
Another prenent class, which had settled in the coast towns of western India by the beginning of the seenth century A.D. and was originally composed partly of sea-faring Arabtraders and partly of Arab and Persian refugees from Irak and other places, is known to-day as the Konkani Muhammadans. Reaching western India by sea at intervals between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, these Arab and Persian merchants and refugees formed permanent or temporary unions with the Hindu women of the coast, and thus produced the mixed Muhammadan stock called Nawayats or Naitias, who will be found all along the coast from Cambay to Goa. Those who settled in Alibag, Thana, Kalyan, Chaul, Bassein and neighbouring coast-towns, and who probably inhabited Mahim in Bombay in the thirteenth century, style themselves Konkani Muhammadans and recognise among themselves three separate divisions, viz:Konkani Jamatis, who claim direct Arab descent, Mandlekars or those descended from Konkani Muhammadan fathers and Hindu mothers, and Daldis or castaways, who are probably low-caste Hindu converts to Islam. The Konkani Muhammadans of Bombay were wellknown during the epoch of Portuguese dominion and in the earlier period of the East India
