The Yādavarāyā

Coelho begins his ‘The Hoysaḷa Vamśa’ with what he calls ‘an ambiguous problem’ : two diametrically opposite theories suggest themselves as for the origin of the Hoysaḷa – the tradition says that they are yādava by descent, while the inscriptions suggest that they were purely of an indigenous origin. [Coelho, 1950 : The Hoysaḷa Vamśa, 1] We are already past this ambiguity, having proved by now that the yādava of Deccan, or rather the yāḍava (yaddava), were very much of indigenous origin, though may be of a kshatriyā-vadugar descent. (For the yādava - yaddava difference see The Dhangar Dynasties Of The Deccan, 13 Aug 17) The key to the resolution of the ambiguity is the fact that both the yādava of the Indo-Gangetic Plain (the kshatriyā) and the vaḍukar yāddava of the Deccan had seamlessly mingled since very early times. [The Pastoralists of Deccan, 19 Mar 17; The Dhangar Dynasties Of Deccan, 13 Aug 17] According to Southworth even the word yādava could possibly have been derived from Dravidian yāddava, as the former has no known Indo-European etymology. [Southworth, 1995 : Reconstructing social context from language : Indo-Aryān and Dravidian prehistory, 266] Though Coelho has very little by way of proving the yāddava descent of the Hoysaḷa vamśa, the very opening of the book, bereft of its ‘ambiguous problem’, points to his affirmation of the thesis.