ब्राह्मस्फुटसिद्धान्त (ब्रह्मगुप्त - शून्य, कुट्टक, बीजगणित एवं सम्पूर्ण २१ अध्याय सान्वय सटीक)

50 PERSONAL REFERENCES OF BRAHMAGUPTA one of the old names of the modern Bhīnmāl or Śrīmāl¹ in southern Mārwāḍ close to the northern frontier of Gujarāt. Another work, which was composed a few years before Hiuen Tsiang's visit to Gujarāt, contains likewise a notice of this northern kingdom of the Gurjaras. The astronomer, Brahma- gupta, who completed his Siddhānta in Śaka-Samvat 550 or 628 A.D. calls himself Bhillamālakakācārya², "the teacher residing in Bhillamālaka and is called so by his commentator Pṛthūda- kasvāmin. He further states that he wrote under king Vyāghra- mukha who was 'an ornament of the Cāpa race.' This family, whose name recurs in the Haḍḍāla grant of Dharaṇīvarāha³ prince of Vadhvān, thus seems to have been the reigning house of Bhillamāla. It is most probably identical with the Cāuḍas, Cāvōṭakas⁴ or Chāpōtkaṭas, who from 756 to 941 A.D. held Aṇhilvāḍ and still possess various small districts in northern Gujarāt. The Gurjara kingdom of Broach was without a doubt an offshoot of the larger State in the north, and it may be that its rulers, too, belonged to the Cāpa family.

1. Bhillamāla means etymologically 'the field of the Bhil' and Śrī- māla 'the field of Śrī'. The latter name must also be ancient, as the Śrī- mālī Brāhmaṇ as are called after it. The Jainas narrate various, of course incredible, legends, which explain how Śrīmāla came to be called Bhillamāla. Merutuṅga says that king Bhoja invented the latter name, because the people of Śrīmāla let the poet Māgha die of starvation. According to another authority, the town had a different name in each Yuga. It is in India very common for ancient towns to have two or even more names. Thus Kanauj was called, Kānyakubja, Gādhipura, and Mahodaya.
2. See Professor A. Weber, Die Sanskrit und Prakrit Handschriften der Berliner Bibliothek Vol. II. pp. 297-298. In the first passage the MSS. offers incorrectly Bhilamācārya; in the second which occurs in the commen- tary on the Khaṇḍakhādyaka, we have Bhillamālavakācārya, a slightly cor- rupt reading. This latter varia lectio occurs also in other MSS., see Weber, Indische Streifen. Vol. III, p. 90, and has given rise to erroneous suppositions regarding Brahmagupta's home. The Gujarātī Joshīs still pre- serve the tradition that Brahmagupta was a native of Bhinmāla.
3. Ante, Vol. XII. p. 190ff. The remark which I have made there that the Cāpas are not named elsewhere, of course requires correction.
4. The form Cāvoṭaka, which occurs in Dr. Bhagavanlal's grant of the Gujarāt Cālukya king Pulakeśin of Samvat 490, is the immediate prede- cessor of the word Cāuḍa. Its Sanskrit original is certainly not cāpotkaṭa which probably has been coined in comparatively speaking modern times, in order to explain the difficult Prakrit word, just as the bards of Rajputana have invented Rāstrauḍha as etymon for Rāṭhoḍ.