[Bombay Gazetteer CHAPTER lII. THE RASHTRAKUTAS OF MALKHED. So far, we have seen that, begining, about A. D. 550, with the acquisition' of the country round Bâdâmî in the Bijâpur District, by the end of the sixth century the Western Chalukyas had created a kingdom which embraced nearly the whole of the Bombay Presidency, —up to the river Kîm, certainly, and possibly up to the Mahî,—with a large extent of adjacent terrtory to the east and south; and that, save for a short interruption of their sovereignty by the Pallavas of Kâñchî from A. D. 642 to 655 or thereabouts, they held the supremacy over the dominions which they thus put together, until about A.D. 757. Their sway then ceased; the sovereignty being wrested from them by the Râshṭrakûṭas. In the north, the Lâṭa country, with part of the Gurjara territory, was taken by a branch of Râshṭrakûṭa family which had but a short career, and in which the last known name is that of Kakkarâja II. : at some point, however, north of the Narmadâ, —probably at a line which ran through the southern point of the Pañch-Mahâls District straight to the Mahî on the west and to Chhôṭâ-Udêpur on the east,—the Râshṭrakûṭas must, for the time being, have been kept back by the kings of Valabhî; for, a record of A.D. 7661 shews that the territory which was known as the Khêṭaka âhâra or Khêṭakâhâra vishaya, the modern Kaira District, with the Cambay State and some outlying parts of the Gaikwâr's dominions,—named after Khêṭaka, the ancient form of the name of Kaira itself,—was still a portion of the Valabhî kingdom, and a record of A. D. 760 2 places the country round Gôdhrâ in the Pañch-Mahâls in the dominions of 'Sîlâditya VI. of Valabhî. From the central and southern parts of their dominions, the Western Chalukyas were ejected in the tirst instance by Dantidurga,—the conquest being completed by his uncle Kṛishṇa I.,—who belonged to a more powerful branch of the Râshṭrakûṭa family, which eventually selected Mâlkhêḍ in the Nizâm's Dominions as its capital, and retained the sovereignty till A.D. 973. The territory of the Mâlkhêḍ line was at first bounded on the north, towards the coast, by the southern limit of the Lâṭa country, where the other branch of the family was then reigning. - Shortly after A. D. 783-84, however, Gôvind III. took that province from his relatives, and made it a part of his own kingdom, in charge of his brother Indrarâja; and the Mâlkhêḍ dominions were thus extended up to the southern limit of the Gôdhrâ province of Valabhî. Somewhere about the end of the eighth century A. D. the Valabhî dynasty came to an end.3 And the 1 Gupta Inscriptions, p. 171. 2 Ind. Ant.Vol. VI. p.-16. 3 The latest certain date for it is A. D. 766-67, for 'Sîlâditya VII. But the apoery-phal 'Satrumjaya-Mâhâtmya, which speaks (see Ind. Ant. Vol. II. p. 195) of a 'Sîlâditya who lived in Vikrama-Saṁvat 477 and reigned till 286. ( ? 486), may possibly preserve a distorted reminiscence of later dates for him, or for a successor, in Valabhî-Saṁ-vat 477 and 486, = A. D. 796-97 and 805- 806. General Chapters.] THE RASHTRAKUTAS OF MALKHED. 383 Râshṭrakûṭas probably then at once annexed all the territory to the north, as far as the Sâbarmatî : at any rate, the grants of Suvarṇavarsha-Karkarâja or a. D 811 or 812, and of Prabhûtavarsha Gô- vinḍarâja of A. D. 812,1 suffice to corer the intervening country up to the Mahî ; the grant of Dhârâvarsha-Nirupama-Dhruvarâja, son of Suvaṇavarsha-Karkarâja,2 shews that in A. D. 834 or 835 Kaira was a Râshṭrakûṭa town ; and the grant of A. D. 909 or 910 3 shews that the country round Kâpaḍwaṇaj, further to the north even than Kaira, was then a part of the dominions of Kṛishṇa II. What be-came of Kâthiâwâḍ and northern Gujarât after the end of the Valabhî period, is not yet known. The statements of some of the Arab travellers4 would suggest that the Râshṭrakûṭas pushed on to the frontier of Sindh. But it does not seem likely that they long retained any possessions in that direction. For, in A. D. 914 the territory on the west of the Sâbarmatî was in the possession of a king named Mahîpâla, who had a local representative, Dharaṇîvarâha, of the Châpa family, at Waḍhwâṇ in the north-east corner of Kâthiâwâd.5 And in A. D. 941-42 6 Mûlarâja established the Chaulukya dynasty of Aṇhilwâḍ, to the north-west of Ahmedâbâd, which retained the sovereignty of that part ot the country for the next four centuries : the records of Kṛishṇa III. point to wars between him and Mûlarâja; and very possibly in his time the Râshṭrakûṭa frontier in that direction had to be drawn back to the Mahî, or even to the Narmadâ. The extent to which the territory acquired by the Râshṭrakûṭas from the Western Chalukyas was enlarged by them to the east and south, and the various means by which this was done, will be best gathered from the details given in the following pages ; in these directions, the climax was reached in the time of Kṛishṇa III., who penetrated even to the Chingleput District, near Madras, on the east coast, and took Conjeeveram and Tanjore. The later records of the Mâlkhêḍ family represent the Râshṭrakûṭas as descendants of Yadu in the Sômavaṁśa or Lunar Race;7 some of them adding that they belonged to the Sâtyaki branch or clan.8 But this statement, which appears first in the Nausârî grants of Indra III. of A. D. 915, simply belongs to a period when all the great families of Southern India were devising Purâṇic pedigrees,9 and does not necessarily prove that the Râshṭrakûṭas were" Âryans. And Dr. Burnell was apparently inclined to look on them as being of Drâvidian origin : for, he gave the word râshṭra as a mythological perversion of raṭṭa, which he held to be equivalent to the Kanarese and Telugu raḍḍi or. reḍḍi ;10 and the latter word is explained in the dictionaries as de- 1 Page 399 below, Nos. 5, 6. 2 Page 404 below, No.2 3 Page 413 below, No. 4. 4 See page 388 below. 5 See Ind. Ant. Vol, XII. p. 192 ; and, for the date, Vol. XVIII. p. 90. 6 See id. Vol. VI. p. 213. 7 Id. Vol. XII. pp. 252, 267. 8 Jour. Bo. Br. R. As. Soc, Vol. XVIII. pp. 219, 265. 9 See page 342 above, note 1, 10 South-lndian Palieography, second edition, Introd. p. x.— According to Native authorities, however (e.g., Trivikrama ; see Ind. Ant. Vol. XIV. p. 14), raṭṭa is a, Prâkṛit from of the (Sanskṛit râshṭra. [Bombay Gazetteer 384 DYNASTIES OF THE KANARESE DISTRICTS. noting " the easte of aborignal Teragu farmers," or as being a title annexed to the proper names of members of that caste, and also as meaning "the head man of a village." Unless, however, the Guṇṭûr grant of Attivarman,1 is a Râshṭrakûṭa record,the earliest traces of the Râshṭrakûṭas are obtained from Central India and the more northern parts of the Bombay Presidency, where, now at all events, the Reḍḍi caste does not seem to exist. And this fact appears rather to indicate that the fall name Râshṭrakûṭa is either the origin, or a Sanskṛitised form, or Rahṭôr or Rahṭôḍ; and so to connect the Râshṭrakûṭas with Râjputânâ end the Kanauj country in the North-West Provinces, which seem to have been the original habitats of the Rahṭôr clan of Râjputs. On this view," Raṭṭa " would be an abbreviation of " Râsh-ṭrakûṭa," rather than " Râshṭrakûṭa," an amplified form of "Raṭṭa;" and it may be noted that " Râshṭrakûṭa" is the name that is met with in the earliest documents,— for instance, in the grant of Abhimanyu, the Multâî grant of Nandarâja, and the Sâmângaḍ grant of Dantidurga: the cases in which the name " Raṭṭa " appears in the records of the Râshṭrakûṭas, distinctively so-called, are very few ;2 and it was specially affected only by the Raṭṭa chieftaina of Saundatti,3 who did not use the name Râshṭrakûṭa except in metrical passages that aim at grandiloquence. It may also be remarked that the Râshṭrakûṭas had the hereditary title of "lord of the town of Lattalûr or Lattanûr," indicative of the place from which they originally started: this place has never yet been identified ;6 but, if any representative of it still exists, it may not impossibly be found in Ratanpur in the Bilâspur District, Central Provinces ; and this identification would be another point in favour of the Râshṭrakûṭas being of northern and Âryan origin. And finally, as another possible way of accounting for the name, it may be remarked that in early times there was a class of officials named Râshṭrakûṭa, which title seems to have designated 1 See page 384 above. 2 the earliest instance, in the family records, is in conncetion with Amôghavarsha I. (Ind, Ant. Vol. XII. p. 220).— Among the Eastern Chalukya records, it in used first in the grant of Amma 1. (South-Ind. Inscrs. Vol, I. p. 42). 3 See chapter VIII. below. 4 Lattatûra-pura-paramêśvara (Ind. Ant Vol. XII, p. 220), So, also, the Raṭṭa chieftains of Saundatti styled themselves Lattalûer and Lattanûr-puravar-êśvara (e.g., id. Vol. XIX. pp. 165, 248).— Another form in which the name appears, is Latalaura,— doubtless by mistake for Lattalaura, It occrurs in an inscription of the time of the Western Chalukya king Vikramâditya VI., dated in A.D.