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POPULAR SUPPORT Next in importance to Sravana Belgola was the mahātirtha of Kopaņa (mod. Kopbal in the south-west of the Nizam's Dominions). This place has not yet been properly surveyed and examined. However the researches conducted since the days of Rice, enable us to give a meagre account of the mahā-tirtha of Kopaņa. From the seventh century A.D. till the sixteenth century Kopana was reckoned to be a holy place of the Jainas. But there are valid grounds to assume that it was a place of considerable importance to the Buddhist world before it sprang into fame as a mahā-tirtha of the Jainas. Like some other holy places it passed from the hands of the Buddhists into those of the Jainas only to come into the custody of the Hindus afterwards.
The word Kopaņa has been derived from kuppe (hill, heap, elevated spot) + ane (situation, direction), signifying thereby its location on a hill top. This derivation seems to be correct in view of the fact that in some records to be cited pre
1. This is admitted by Mr. C. Krishnama Charlu who, on behalf of the Government of H. E. H. Nizam, conducted the first official survey of Kopaņa, although just before him, Mr. Panduranga B. Desai, M.A., had made personal investigations on his own initiative and discovered many interesting inscriptions in Kopbal and its neighbourhood. Mr. Charlu's results are embodied in Hyderabad Archäological Series, No. 12. The Kannada Inscriptions of Kopbal : while Mr. Desai's in the Karnataka Historical Review, II, pp. 11-15. The late Mr. N. B. Shastry of Kopbal is said to have written an excellent paper on the antiquities of Kopbal, which seems to have been forwarded to the Hyderabad Archäological Dept. This, however, is not accessible to me. The researches of Fleet and Narasimhacarya should also be noted in this connection.
2. Desai, K. H. R. II, p. 15. But ane, according to Kesirāja, also means sparsane, touch. Sabdamaņidarpaņa, p. 314, (Kittel's ed. Mangalore, 1899).
