Mahavira Jain Vidyalaya Rajat Jayanti Mahotsava

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 211

KANTILAL D. KORA
M. J. VIDYALAYA
of the Cāvadās at Diu, the founding of Pattana and it is explicitly given out that Vananā ja, the founder of the Cāvadā dynasty was a Parmár.? Major Watson observes : "I have seen a varnávali in which the parentage of Vanaräja is traced up through Venrāja and Vacarāja to Vikramaditya of the Parmár tribe."? Doubt also hovers over the question as to whether there was a name like Kanaksen among the promogenitors of Vanarāja. It is possible that the Cavadãs may have extended their dominions along the coast until they acquired Diu. An inscription discovered at Wālāk, which includes Katpur shows that a Parmar sovereign ruled there in ancient times."
The above traditions are not sufficient to assert that the Cāvadās are a branch of Parmärs, yet they seem to convey the possibility of that being the case.
Forbes observes that the Cāvadās or Capas were a Gurjjara tribe, who came from Bhinmäl or Srimál, the great capital of the northern Gurjjara race." This view has been supported by Bhimbhai Kirparam as the census reports secm to establish the fact that the Cāvadās belong either to the Gurjjara race or white Hūņa race, who conquered Northern India in the 5th century.
It is also supposed that the Capotaküta or Cāvadā tribe to which the prince of Pancasar belonged, had its origin in the countries west of the Indus". The Cāvadās first appeared at Okhamandala in the northwest of Kathiawad and about the 6th century retired to Pancasar on the edge of lesser Runn of Kutch. Tod presumes in one of his famous historical treatises that the Cāvadās were of Scythian origin.* He traces them to Sankhodwara or Socotra off the coast of Africa and so concludes them to be descendants of Alexander's Greek Colonists, but Sankhodvāra which Tod mistook for Socotra is near Dvärka.Capt. Bell is also of the opinion that the Cāvaçãs were of the Saka or Scythian origin and he has given the Jethavas almost the same origin.am Legendary accounts maintain that Dhank was the scene of the first settlement in Saurashtra, while the Valabhis were paramount, the Căvaçās separated themselves from the Jethavas, who were of the same stock and settled at Okha in the west of the Peninsula. Mythical stories go so far in the case
It i
Vol. IV. p. vol. 1, Part 1, p.
1. I. 4.. Vol. IV, pp. 145-8.
2. Ibid., p. 148 3. Ibid. 4. Forbes, Räsamala, Vol. I, p. 37, f. 5. Bombay Gazelteer, Vol. IX, Part I, p. 124. 6. Forbes, Rasamālā, Vol. I, p. 37. 7. Tod, Travels in Western India, p. 412. 8. Tod, Annals und Antiquitics of Rajasthan, Vol. I, p. 105. 9. Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. V. p. 68, fn. 4: Bird, Misat-i-Ahmadi, p. 210. 10. Bell, The History of Kalkiawad, p. 50, 11. Ibid., p. 61.