Padampur Gondia
| Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R) |
Padampur (पदमपुर) is a village in Amgaon Tahsil in Gondiya district of Nagpur Division in the state of Maharashtra, India. It is connected to NH-543.
Origin
Variants
Location
Padampur is a Village in Amgaon Taluka in Gondia District of Maharashtra State, India. It belongs to Vidarbha region . It belongs to Nagpur Division . It is located 22 KM towards East from District head quarters Gondia. Padampur Pin code is 441902 and postal head office is Amgaon. Padampur is surrounded by Salekasa Taluka towards East , Goregaon Taluka towards west , Gondia Taluka towards west , Lanji Taluka towards East.[1]
An Unfinished Durg Plate issued from Padmapura (Gondia)
[p.76]: This plate was discovered at Mohalla, the headquarters of the former Panabaras Zamindari in the Durg District of Madhya Pradesh. An ink impression of it was sent to the late Dr. Hiralal, but he did not consider it of sufficient importance for being included in his Inscriptions in C.P. and Berar. I came to know of it in January 1934 from a casual reference in his letter. Later, he sent me an ink impression of it on which he had fortunately jotted down the name of its owner. In the course of inquiries made by Mr. B. A. Bambawale, Deputy Commissioner of Durg, it was elicited that the plate was originally found at Mohalla. It is now deposited in the Central Museum, Nagpur. I edited it with a facsimile in the Bhārata Itihāsa Samsodhaka Mandala Quarterly, Vol. XV1 Later, I re-edited it in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXII, pp. 207 f. The inscription is edited here from the original plate.
This plate was intended to be the first of a set of three or four copper-plates recording the charter of a Vakataka king. It is inscribed only on one side.....The size of the plate and the position of the hole show that it does not belong to the same set as the Indore plates or the Patna Museum third plate of Pravarasena II.
The plate contains five lines only. The letters are very neatly cut and do not show through on the reverse, though the plate is very thin. The ends of the plate are neither fashioned thicker nor raised into rims ; still the inscription is in a perfect state of preservation.
The characters are of the box-headed variety of the southern alphabets. They resemble in a general way those of the Riddhapur plates of Prabhavatigupta. The only peculiarities that call for notice are as follows: The medial au is bipartite as in other Vakataka grants; ḍ has a round back and is not clearly distinguished from d, see -shoḍasy-, line 1 ; m appears in a transitional cursive form, with the lower box attached to its left arm as in Agnishtom-, line 1 ; its other form with the box attached to the right vertical, which is generally seen in the charters of Pravarasena II, does not appear in this record. The two forms appear side by side in the Riddhapur plates of Prabhavatigupta. The form of m used in the present plate develops ultimately into that found in the charters of the kings of Sarabhapura as well as in those of Tivaradeva. The final t and m appear in a much reduced size and the latter has a looped base. The language is Sanskrit and the extant portion is wholly in prose. The orthography shows the usual reduplication of the consonant preceding y and of that following r; see Bhāgiratthy-, line 4 and Aptoryyām-, line 1.
With the exception of the place of issue, the record is identical, so far as it goes, with the initial portion of the charters of Pravarasena II and Prithvishena II. It mentions by name only one king of the dynasty, viz., Pravarasena I. It then refers to his grandson who was a great devotee of Svami-Mahabhairava, and who was the daughter’s son of Bhavanaga, the Maharaja of (the family of) the Bharasivas. The record on the plate stops just before the
1 The article is included in G. H. Khare’s Sources of the Mediaeval History of the Deccan, Vol. II, pp. 1 f.
[p.77]: mention of this grandson of Pravarasena I, viz., Rudrasena I. The plate purports to have been issued from Padmapura.
It seems that the inscription on the present plate was not completed; for the word drishtam ‘seen’ which usually occurs in the beginning of finished charters of the Vakatakas as a mark of authorization1 is conspicuous by its absence here. There is in fact sufficient space for three letters in the beginning of the first line, wvhich shows that the word drishtam was intended to be incised there after the record was completed. It may again be noted that the present plate leaves space sufficient for five letters at the end of the last line. The word Gautamiputrasya which follows Bhavanaga-dauhitrasya in other Vakataka records could very well have been written in that space. In fact the engraver seems to have begun to incise that word; for faint traces of the top portion of the first syllable of that word can be noticed on the plate. That the engraver left so much space at the end shows that he received an order to stop before he could complete the line. Whether the record was incised on another set of plates cannot be determined at present.
It is also difficult to determine who intended to issue the present plate. The general resemblance between the characters of the present plate and those of the grants of Pravarasena II suggests that it might be that Vakataka king. It may, however, be noted that almost all the grants of Pravarasena II are issued from either his earlier capital Nandivardhana or the later one, Pravarapura. If he had intended to issue the present plate, Pravarapura, not Padmapura, would, in all probability, have been mentioned as the place of issue. Besides, the palaeographic evidence detailed above seems to show that the present plate may be assigned to a later date. Padmapura is not known to have been a holy place ; nor is a word like vāsakāt added to it, showing that it was the site of the donor’s camp. It seems therefore that Padmapura was the capital of a successor of Pravarasena II who intended to issue this charter.
It seems that the capital was shifted to Padmapura during the reign of Pravarasena II’s son Narendrasena. The description in the Balaghat plates that Prithivishena II raised his sunken family suggests that there was some foreign invasion during the reign of his father Narendrasena when he was reduced to great straits. The invasion was probably by the Nala king Bhavadattavarman, who later occupied the western portion of the Vakataka dominion and ruled from the erstwhile Vakataka capital Nandivardhana. The Vakataka king Narendrasena in this emergency appears to have shifted the seat of his government to Padmapura in the east where he had the support of his loyal feudatories, the rulers of Mekala and Kosala. Later, Narendrasena’s son Prithivishena II drove the enemy out of his ancestral dominion and even carried the war into his territory. He appears to have invaded and burnt the Nala capital Pushkari as stated in the P-dagadh stone inscription.
The mention of Padmapura in the present plate is also interesting from another point of view. The well-known Sanskrit poet Bhavabhuti, who flourished towards the close of the seventh century a.c., mentions Padmapura in Vidarbha as his ancestral home. It is not unlikely that his ancestors who were great Mimansakas and performed such great Vedic sacrifices as the Vajapeya were specially invited to their capital Padmapura by the Vakataka kings who were patrons of Vedic learning and themselves performed great Vedic sacrifices. After the decline of the Vakatakas there were no great royal dynasties ruling in Vidarbha. Bhavabhuti seems there-
1 The only exceptions known so far are (i) the Riddhapur plates of Prabhavatigupta (No. 8) and the India Office plate of Devasena (No. 24). It does not occur also in the Balaghat plates of Prithvishena II, but that charter also was unfinished.
[p.78]: fore to have gone to the north where he found a patron in Yashovarman, the king of Kanauj.1 As stated before, Padmapura was situated in Vidarbha. The country of Vidarbha was not confined to what is known now as Berar, but extended considerably to the east of the Wardha. The Siwani, Indore and Tirodi plates of Pravarasena II show that the country under the direct rule of that Vakataka king extended to the eastern boundary of the Bhandara and Balaghat Districts. As a matter of fact, there is now no village named Padmapura in Western Vidarbha, while there are at least six villages of that name in the Chanda and Bhandara Districts of Eastern Vidarbha. Of these, Padmapur, 2 miles from Amgaon, a station on the Nagpur-Calcutta line of the South-Eastern Railway, is probably the Padmapura of the present plate. The village contains many ancient remains such as images of Hindu gods like Vishnu, those of Jain Tirthahkaras like Parsvanatha and Rishabhadeva, fragments of massive stone pillars and a large lintel measuring 8' x 17' x 1' 6". There are, besides, remnants of some old temples in a dilapidated condition. One beautifully carved mediaeval image of Shiva seems to have been brought over from there and is now preserved in the Central Museum, Nagpur. No other Padmapur in Vidarbha is reported to have such ancient relics. I therefore feel no hesitation in concluding that Padmapur near Amgaon in the Bhandara District was the Vakataka capital and the ancestral home of Bhavabhuti1
[p.78]: From Padmapura —
(The subsequent plates of the grant have not been found.)
1 For further discussion of this matter, see my article 'The Birth-place of Bhavabhuti ’ in IHQ Vol. XI, pp. 287 f. and Studies in Indology, Vol. I, pp. 21 f.
History
Padampur is believed as the birthplace of the Sanskrit poet Bhavabhuti. Kali Mata (Hindu Goddess Kali) temple and Sai Baba temple (located on salekasa road) are two of the main attractions in Amgaon.
पद्मपुर
विजयेन्द्र कुमार माथुर[2] ने लेख किया है ...पद्मपुर, जिला भंडारा, महा., (AS,p.524) : आमगांव से एक मील पर एक प्राचीन ग्राम है. प्रोफेसर मिरासी तथा अन्य कई विद्वानों का मत है कि संस्कृत के प्रसिद्ध नाटककार महाकवि भवभूति इसी पद्मपुर के निवासी थे. भवभूति ने महावीरचरित्र नाटक में पद्मपुर का उल्लेख किया है तथा मालतीमाधव नाटक के प्रथम अंक में अपनी जन्मभूमि पद्मपुर नगर में बताते हुए इसकी स्थिति दक्षिणापथ में कही है-- 'अस्ति दक्षिणापथे पद्मपुर नाम नगरम्....तदामुष्यायणस्य तत्रभवतो भट्टगोपालस्य पौत्र: पवित्रकीर्ते नीलकंठस्य पुत्र: श्रीकंठपदलांछन: पदवाक्यप्रमाणज्ञो भवभूतिर्नाम कवि निसर्ग-सौह्रदेन भरतेषु वर्तमान: स्वकृतिमेवगुणभूयसीमस्माकं हस्ते समर्पितवान्'.
ग्राम के निकट एक पहाड़ी है जिसे आज भी लोग भवभूति की टोरिया कहते हैं और महाकवि की स्मृति में कुछ अवशेषों की पूजा भी होती है. मालती-माधव में उन्होंने जिस भ्रष्ट बोध तांत्रिक समाज का वर्णन किया है उसका अस्तित्व आठवीं सदी में देश के इस भाग में वास्तविक रूप में ही था-- इस दृष्टि से भी भभूति के निवास स्थान का अभिज्ञान इसी पद्मपुर से करना समीचीन ही जान पड़ता है. पद्मपुर का उल्लेख दुर्ग (मध्य प्रदेश) से प्राप्त एक [p.525] वाकाटक अभिलेख में है- देखें इंडियन हिस्टोरिकल क्वार्टरली 1935,पृ. 299; एपिग्राफिका इंडिका- 22,207. प्राचीन समय में यहां जैन मंदिर भी अनेक होंगे क्योंकि खेतों से जैन तीर्थंकरों की खंडित मूर्तियां प्राप्त हुई हैं. कलचुरिकालीन अवशेष भी यहां मिले हैं.