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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
POLITICAL HISTORY describes a Parivrājaka king, Hastin, as master of the Ḍabhāla kingdom included in the Eighteen Forest kingdoms (ashṭādaś-āṭavī-rājya). Ḍabhāla must be the older form of Ḍahālā, the modern Bundelkhand, which practically coincided with the territory held by the Kalachuris of Tripurī in later times. The Aṭavī Country, which comprised no less than eighteen tiny kingdoms, must correspond to the forests spread through and along with Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand,1 whereas Mahākāntāra must have extended from the south of Madhya Pradesh right up to the seacoast of Orissa. The inscription thereafter (lines 22-23) enumerates the names of the frontier (pratyanta) countries and also of the tribes that propitiated the monarch by payment of all tributes (sarva-kara-dāna), execution of commands (ājñā-karaṇa), and attendance at his court to offer homage (praṇām-āgamana). The pratyanta countries specified are as follows: (1) Samataṭa, (2) Ḍavāka, (3) Kāmarūpa, (4) Nēpāla and (5) Karṭripura. Varāhamihira places Samataṭa in the Eastern Division. But that does not help us to locate it properly. According to Yuan Chwang, Samataṭa was to the east of the Tāmraliptī and to the south of the Kāmarūpa country, and bordered on the sea. On the strength of these data and also the Bāghāurā image inscription, N. K. Bhattasali has satisfactorily identified it with the natural geographical unit “comprising the eastern half of the present Mymensingh and Dacca districts lying east of the Brahmaputra, the greater part of Sylhet, and the whole of the Tippera and Noakhali districts.”2 He further holds the opinion that Baḍkāmtā, twelve miles west of modern Comilla was the capital of Samataṭa.3
Fleet suggests that Ḍavāka may be another form of Dacca.4 According to Smith it corresponded to the modern Districts of Bogra, Dinajpur and Rajshahi in Bengal.5 Yuvan Chwang
informs us that in this region five countries were conterminous, Puṇḍravardhana; to its
east or rather north-east, Kāmarūpa; to the south of Kāmarūpa, Samataṭa; to the east of
Samataṭa, Tāmraliptī; and to the north-west of Tāmraliptī, Karṇasuvarṇa.6 Ḍavāka cannot
thus be coextensive with Dacca or with Bogra, Dinajpur and Rajshahi, which must have then
been included, in part, in Puṇḍravardhana, Suhma, Samataṭa and Kāmarūpa. It seems
more reasonable to locate Ḍavāka somewhere in the eastern half of Assam. For the same
reasons Kāmarūpa seems to have comprised the western half of Assam and parts of the
northern districts of Bengal so as to make it contiguous with Puṇḍravardhana, Samataṭa and
Tāmraliptī provinces. The suggestion of the late K. L. Barua seems thus worthy of all consideration in regard to the location of Ḍavāka. “Very probably, the present Cachar District,
including the north Cachar hills and the Kopili valley which in later times constituted the
Cachari kingdom, was known as Davaka. Even now the Kopili valley, comprising an area of
about 400 square miles, is known as Davakā.”7 Nēpāla is too well-known to require any identification. It forms the mountainous country bordering, on the north, Magadha, Ayōdhyā and
so forth. As regards Kartṛipura, Fleet suggests that the name may survive in Kartārpur in the
Jullundur District, Panjab.8 C. F. Oldham refers to the Katuria Rāj of Kumaon, Garhwal
and Rohilkhand.9 To speak more accurately, Kartṛipura denotes the Katyūr Valley with 1 K. P. Jayaswal’s Hist. of India, etc., p. 139. The Aṭavī kingdom was known also in the time of Aśōka who
refers to it in Rock Edict XIII.
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