Mahābhojas

The coastal chiefs

Bhojas appear in Aśoka's edicts among the peoples of the west, and in the Sātavāhana period the title Mahābhoja marks a rank of chief in the Konkan comparable to the Mahārathi rank inland. The caves at Kuda, on the coast south of Mumbai, carry a concentration of Mahābhoja inscriptions, and members of these families also appear as donors at Kanheri and Karle.

The Konkan mattered because of the ports. The coastal strip carried the traffic between the Arabian Sea and the passes up to the Deccan plateau, and control of it was worth a great deal to whoever held the interior.

Evidence and limits

As with the Mahārathis, the entire record is donative. Inscriptions name a Mahābhoja, sometimes his daughter or wife, and the gift made; there are no regnal years, no campaigns and no succession. The families are historically certain and biographically almost invisible.

The name has a long afterlife in Indian dynastic nomenclature — Bhoja is used by the Paramāra kings of Malwa and by others — but there is no demonstrable connection between those later houses and the Konkan chiefs.