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TRIBES IN ANCIENT INDIA
The Ceylonese chronicles (Dipavamsa and Mahāvamsa) refer to the country of Lala in connection with the first Aryan migration to Ceylon, led by Prince Vijaya. Attempts have been made to identify Lala both with Lata or Laḍa in Gujrat, and Radha in Bengal, and both countries claim the honour of the first Aryanization of Ceylon. Prince Vijaya is described in the chronicles as having been the greatgrandson of a princess of Vanga; hence one school of scholars mainly depending on historical evidence proposes to equate Lala with Radha, while the other school finds Lala to be philologically more closely akin to Lata or Lāda. It is not impossible that the tradition of two different streams of immigration came to be knit together in the story of Vijaya, as Dr. Barnett thinks.1
In the days of the early Imperial Guptas, the Lața country came to be formed into an administrative province as Lata-viṣaya, along with Tripuri-visaya, Arikina-viṣaya, Antarvedi-visaya, Valavi-visaya, Gaya-viṣaya, etc. These visayas or pradeśas seem to have been subordinate to the larger administrative division, called bhukti.
It is likely that the Laṭa country was the same as the Latesvara country mentioned in one or two early Gurjara and Raṣṭrakūṭa records. In the Baroda Copperplate Inscription (verse II) the capital of the kingdom of Lateśvara is said to have been at Elapur. The inscription also gives the genealogy of the kings of Latesvara. K. M. Munshi, in his work 'Gujarata and its literature', gives us some information about Läța. He says: 'From about c. A.C. 150, the tract between Khambhata (Cambay) and Narmada acquired the name of Lata which, thereafter, came to include the country south of the Narmada up to the Damaṇaganga. Under the Chalukyas of Aṇahilavāḍa Pātaṇa (A.C. 961), the name Lața was gradually displaced by the name Gurjara Bhūmi. The whole of Lața up to Damanaganga became part of Gujarata in c. A.C. 1400.'2 Lata, then, was evidently the equivalent of South Gujarata. Lassen, however, identifies Lärike with Sanskrit Rästrika, in its Prakrit form Lätika, which is easily equated with Lata, though the equation of Rāṣṭrika and Lätika is not convincing enough.
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Lata is mentioned twice in Vatsyāyana's Kamasutra. Vatsyayana does not give any clue as to location of the country, but contents himself with describing the characteristics of the men and women respectively. Lata is also referred to by the author of
1 J.A.S.B., Vol. XVIII, 1922, No. 7.
2 Ibid., pp. 2-3. See also ibid., p. 20 n., p. 36.
$ See chapter on Rästrikas. It may be that Rästrika formed the northern part of Gujarat, and Lata, the southern.
4 Ibid., pp. 103 and 126.
