Written on 1st August 2002. I have since been in touch with Alfred Braganza. ---------
Just today afternoon while doing some research at the Shri Saraswati Mandir Library I came across this excellent little book 'Discovery of Goa' by Alfred Braganza (Brooks Publications 1964). There is a fascinating chapter titled Ancient Names for 'Goa'. I thought this would interest many Goans so I proceeded to borrow the book and type it out verbatim and post it. I hope I am not breaking any copyright laws here. Alfred Braganza has to be given full credit for the content below. I merely typed it out. On the inside jacket of the book it is also mentioned that the same author has written in Portuguese 'Canca da Alma' (Book of Poems), Hosanas a Terra Mae (Poem on India) and Guerra Junqueiro (Study of a Portuguese writer).
If anyone out there knows Alfred Braganza (or the publishers) please tell him to get in touch with me so I can take his permission to excerpt more material from his excellent book to share with everyone.
============ Ancient Names for 'Goa' from Discovery of Goa (pages 7 to 9) by Alfred Braganza
Goa earned many designations from the most ancient times. This is indeed little surprising when we witness nowadays how for political or sentimental considerations names of countries are metamorphised: Zambia for Northern Rodhesia, Malawi for Nyassaland, Malagasy for Madagascar, Ghana for Gold Coast, Taiwan for Formosa etc. Originally Goa which enclosed a larger slice of Konkan, was known as Kalyan, meaning happy because, unlike some interior regions where droughts and food scarcity struck the land, it was blessed with bountiful rainfall. So happiness was where rain was. Hence the name Kalyan. Her capital was Kayanpuri, puri signifying city, which still survives as Kalafura - Kulyanpuro, named Santa-Cruz by the Portuguese.
Mahabharata, the great Epic of epics, refers to Goa as Goparashtra,'a nation of cowherds or of nomadic tribes'. Parshuram, the Hindu god, according to legend, flung his arrow on the coast and made the waters recede, thus founding the Konkan). The Southern Konkan was called Govarashtra. In ancient Indian texts in Sanskrit she is also known as Gopakapuri or Gapakapattana. This only corroborates the idea that Goa was a very prosperous State, since cattle was the criterion of wealth. The name Gomant for Goa also occurs in the said Indian epic Mahabharata and in the sacred Hindu texts like Harivansa and Skanda as well. In the latter, Goa is even known as Gomanchala. They equally refer to her as Govapuri. Suta Sanhita, an Indian classic, for instance, has a revealing passage: "To the north of Gokarn is a 'kshetra' with seven 'yojanas' in circumference: therein is situated Govapuri, which destroys all sins. By the sight of Govapuri the sin committed in a previous existence is destroyed, as at sunrise darkness disappears. Even by making up his mind to bathe once in Govapuri one attains a high place (in the next world). Certainly there is no 'kshetra' equal to Govapuri."
The old Greek geographical name roughly corresponding to Goa was Ariake. In the 2nd. century A. D., Pliny and Ptolomy called her Nekanidon and Melinda respectively. ln the map drawn by the self-same Ptolomy, Kouba and Mururi are marked for Goa and Mormugaon, uri being ganv or village. The general toponymy of Goa makes indeed a fascinating study. Students interested in tracing the origin of names of various places, will find that Goa had relations from the most ancient times with foreign countries, particularly with West Asia around the Arabian Sea. Those countries found that Goa was of strategic importance to establish their centres of trade and commerce. For example, the wealthy merchants from Palestine had a flourishing city in their homeland, called Beitim, which name they gave to their settlement in Goa, today merely a village near Panjim. Saxtti, a name for Salcete district in Konkani, the regional language, means sixty. This conglomeration of 60 villages is apparently the direct influence ot Chaldean civilization in which 60 was a standard measurement like 10 in the present decimal coinage.
As from the 7th. century and during most of the Middle Ages, Goa was known to the spirited Arabs and Persians as Kawa or Kawe corresponding to Gova or Gove. It is a phenomenon of linguistics to change 'g' into 'k' and vice-vera eg., Kafur into Gafur. In Gova too 'v' is half-vowel, and as such it is almost non-extant. Old Kannada inscriptions of this time called her Gove. During the earliest Kadamba rule, however, the ancient term was still popular and the appellation of Goa was Kalyana-gudi, 'abode of Happiness'. The name still survives with the village Kalangutt, the well known sea-resort in Bardez district. Not a few Arab, Persian and other writers, like the celebrated Ibn Batuta in the 14th. century, are all praises for Sindabur, another name for Goa. An old Turkish book of navigation, Mohit, the translations of which have appeared in the Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, speaks of the "24th. voyage from Kuvai Sindabur to Aden".
During the first centuries of foreign domination some Portuguese historians tried to establish the meaning and ethymology of the word 'Goa'. Diogo Couto traces it to the term Goa-moat which, according to him, signifies 'refreshing land'. Fr. Francisco Sousa avers that the word 'Goa' descended from the name of a local deity Goubat. Such explanations appear to have been based merely on hearsay and conjecture. They do not have the stamp of authority.
The present appellation 'GOA' was, in fact, alreadly widely current some centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese in India.
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