Art. XXI.—Tagara; Tēr.

Abstract

For more than a century, Indian archæologists have been greatly puzzled about the identity of an ancient city named Tagara. The city is referred to in some of the Indian epigraphic records. Thus, a record of a.d. 997 describes the Śilāhāra prince Aparājita, of the Northern Koṅkaṇ, as Tagara-pura-paramēśvara, or “ supreme lord of the town of Tagara,” giving to him a hereditary title commemorative of the place which his family claimed as its original home. Another Śilāhāra record, of a.d. 1058, similarly applies to Mārasiṁha, of the Karhāḍ branch of the family, the title of Tagara-puravar-ādhīśvara, or “ supreme lord Tagara, a best of towns, an excellent town, a chief town;” and it further describes his grandfather Jatiga II. more specifically, but less accurately, as Tagara-nagara-bhūpālaka, or “ king of the city of Tagara.” And a Western Chalukya record of a.d. 612 specifies Tagara as the residence of the person to whom the grant of a village, registered in that charter, was made. The city is further mentioned, as Tagara, by the Greek geographer Ptolemy, who, writing about the middle of the second century a.d., assigned to it a certain latitude and longitude which have the effect of placing it about eighty-seven miles towards the north-east from another place, mentioned by him as Baithana, which his details would locate about 270 miles on the east-north-east of Barygaza.