12 PAUMACARIU Kuntă are significantly compared to the seven mouths of the Godavari. Sacallai satta-i puravaraho Goyāvari-muhaim va sāyaraho. RC. 21 18 5. "All the seven started towards the best of the cities, like the seven mouths of the Godāvari going towards the ocean." This simile cannot easily strike one who is not a South- erner. (2) At PC. 78 4 6 the months of the year are referred to as Phagguna-avasāna caitta-pamuha. 'Beginning with Caitra and ending with Phālguna'. This suggests a region where the Caitrādi year was cur- rent. (3) Yāpaniya Samgha, the Jain schism to which Svayam- bhū belonged flourished in the South and especially in the Karņāțaka region. (4) The graphic description of the Godāvari and the Nar- madă in Svayambhu's epics bear an unmistakable slamp of the first-hand observation, But then how to account for the adoption of Ap. as a literary medium in the Kannada-speaking area? "It appears that Svayam- bhū might be only an immigrant into Karnataka from some north- ern region like Berar. From the history of the Rāştrakúțas, we gather that from the seventh century onwards there was a close political and cultural intercourse between Berar and Karņāțaka. The main line of the Răstrakūtas ruled at Mặnyakheța, modern Mālkhed in Hyderabad. But the ancestors of Dantidurga, the first Rāstrakūța king of note were ruling somewhere in Berar and are supposed to be connected with the Rāştrakūta king Nannarāja Yudhāsura, who was ruling at Elichpur in Berar in the middle of the 7th Century A.D.' But Altekar thinks, 'Dantidurga and his ancestors not natives of Berar. Canarese was their mother- tongue'. Hence he conjectures that there may, quite possibly, have been a Rathi family holding local sway at Latur (==Lattalūra) in Bidar District of Hyderabad State. This family may have later migrated to Elichpur or some other place nearby in Berar, where Nannarāja was ruling in 631-632 A.D... This clearly shows close political relations betwecn Berar and the Kannada territory continuing for centuries. Similarly close cultural ties between the two regions can be surmised from what we know about Puşpadanta, another great Apabhramsa poet. Puşpadanta composed his Apabhramsa Purāņa at Mānyakheta under the patronage of the Rástrakūța minister Bharata in 959-965. It is very likely that Svayambhu's case also was analogous. He and his patrons, though residing in a Kan- nada-speaking region might have originally hailed from Berar. Only some such assumption can explain the apparent incongruity of a western literary dialect being employed by persons residing in Southern India where Dravidian tongues were current. We know it full well that apart from possessing inborn talent (pratibhā) the poet in ancient India was required to study hard Ivyutpatti) and undergo a rigorous course of training (amanda- 11) Altekar, 1934, 11. (2) Ibid., 11. 23.
