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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
or Aṇṇîgere, about twelve miles west of Gaṅga,─ was governing the Beḷvola three-hundred
district. And it mentions also a relative of Dêvaṇṇayya, probably named Kulappayya, who
was governing the circle of villages known as the Muḷgunda twelve. The object of it is to
record an assignment of the tax on clarified butter or ghee. The assignment was made under
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used to present, indifferently, either kere (kere), ‘ a tank,’ or kêri, ‘ a street ;’ and it is impossible to decide which
it represents, as the final of a place-name, unless one can hear the name pronounced by a resident of the village
itself, or can find it in an ancient record. In cases in which I have been unable to ascertain whether the real
termination is kere or kêri, I have used that nondescript word keri, as a reminder to myself that the name has
not been determined ; and it is for that reason that I have written, for instance, Kaṭṭageri, Beṇḍigeri, and
Haṇṇikeri (Dyn. Kan. Distrs. pp. 448, note 1, 526, 556). There is, perhaps, more trouble with the words kere
and kêri than in any other detail. But no one, who has not tried it in person, can realise how difficult it is to get
at the really correct and undeniable spelling of many a place-name, unless-some, indication is derivable from an
ancient record. My experience is that, among modern publications, the older sheets of the Indian Atlas, though
by no means infallible, are in many respects the best guide, in spite of the want of any definite system in them, or
rather, because no attempt was made in them to aim, in vain, at any uniformity of system on lines which, at that
time, had hardly become definitely fixed even among scholars. The revised sheets are not so useful a guide,
because in them (as also in the Bombay Survey sheets) the spelling is adapted to the modern official system. The
chief features of this system are, the use of a, á, i, and u, instead of u, a, ee, and oo, and the use of d, instead of r,
for the lingual ḍ. It would be good enough, if it were in safe hands ; that is to say, under the control of someone
who could determine the exact correct spelling everywhere, and could enforce the uniform use of it. But it is not
in such hands. It frequently gives the long á where it ought to give the short a, and vice versâ.
It has a
particularly weak point in failing to make any distinction between the dental d and the lingual ḍ, which latter
usually appears as r in the older sheets of the Indian Atlas. It has produced such monstrosities as ‘ Kánara’
and ‘ Kánarese,’─(supposed to be critical forms),─ instead of the purely conventional but thoroughly well
established words Kanara and Kanarese. And, as specific instances of the failure of this system in official hands,
we may quote, from the Bombay Survey sheet No. 272 (1894), Kanvad and Kutvad, which are given there instead
of Kanvád and Kutvád, and Shirti instead of Shirhatti, and from sheet No. 239 (1887), Bagni, instead of Bágni
(regarding these names, see Ind. Ant. Vol. XXIX. p. 278 and note 23, p. 276, and p. 277, note 17). The best way to
determine the real name of a place, is, naturally, to make local inquiries in person. And it is, of course, the
cultivators and the hereditary village-official,─ not the district officials and their clerks,─ who can best furnish
information as to the true names of their villages. But what they pronounce, has frequently to be written down by
an ordinary clerk who takes no real interest in the matter. And that is where all the mistakes come in now, and,
apparently, came in in earlier times also.─ In illustration of the way in which the cultivators can help towards the
identification of ancient places, we may refer to the case of Bâgalkôṭ in the Bijâpur district. The cultivators call it
Bâṅgaḍîkôṭe. This name is accounted for, though the exact form of it is not absolutely justified, by the fact that
the ancient name of the place was Bâgaḍageyakôṭe, Bâgaḍigeyakôṭe (see Ep. Ind. Vol. II. p. 170). This name,
adduced by the cultivators, first put me in the way of identifying Bâgaḍage with Bâgalkôṭ. And, in addition to
the epigraphic passage which I then quoted, I may now refer to a record of A.D. 1049 at Sirûr, eight
miles on the south-east of Bâgalkôṭ, which mentions Bâgaḍagâ-râjapatha, “ the highway to Bâgaḍagâ.”─
In illustration of the way in which the cultivators preserve the real names of places, we may take the
case of a village close on the east of Gadag and incorporated with that town for municipal purposes.
The name of it is certain in Bombay Places as ‘ Beṭgêri ;’ and, I may add, in the Dhârwâr volume of the
Gazetteer it appears as ‘ Bettigeri’ (pp. 712, 713), which illustrates very well the vagaries of official practice. But
the cultivators call it Baṭgere. And the ancient name occurs as Baṭṭakere in a record of A.D. 888. In this
instance, it happens, the official mistake, of substituting kêri for kere, is carried back to A.D. 1379 by the
Ḍambaḷ grant, which mentions the place as Baṭṭagêrî (loc. cit. in note 2 on page 98 above, text line 125), evidently
as the result of an ancient official failing to catch the name correctly ; and it may be remarked that the same
record also mentions as Kaujagêrî, in lines 126, a neighbouring village, the name of which is found in a record of
A.D. 933-34 as Kovujagere, or possibly Kovujaṁgere.─ I would make, here, a correction in the name of a village
in the Karajgi tâluka, at which some early Kadamba copper-plate grants were obtained (see Ind. Ant. Vol. VII.
p. 33 ff.). The name of it figures in the Indian Atlas sheet No. 42 (1827) as ‘ Dewgeeree,’ and in the Map of the
Dhârwâr Collectorate (1874) as ‘ Deogeree,’ and in the Postal Directory (1879) as ‘Deogiri,’ and in the Dhârwâr
volume (1884) of the Gazetteer as ‘ Devgiri ’ (p. 665). I was told that the cultivators call the place Dêvagere and
Dêogere. But I was assured that that is a mistake and that the real name is Dêvagiri. And I, therefore, gave the
name as Dêvagiri in editing the grants in question, and elsewhere (e.g. above, Vol. V. p. 173). Subsequently, I was
led to believe that the real name is Dêvagere ; and I have used that form in, for instance, Dyn. Kan. Distrs.
p. 287. But I have since then found, from records of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at the place itself, that
the ancient name was Dêvaṁgêri,─ sometimes perhaps written Dêvagêri, without the anusvâra in the second
syllable. I also notice that the Native gentleman, to whom I was indebted in the first instance for impressions of
them, wrote the name, on the first of the impressions, as Dêvagiri in English characters (according to official custom).
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