Kon: तिसवाडी tisavāḍī
‘Thirty Settlements’ – Tehsil/Taluka/Sub-district
From Mar/Kon: tīsa, ‘thirty’; and Mar/Skt: vāda/vāti ‘colony’, ‘settlement’.
According to legend (and there must be some historical basis to this) the Saraswat Brahmins were the first wave of Brahmins to settle in Goa. A group of ninety-six families, it is said, migrated to Goa by sea from the Saraswati river basin in ancient times (sometime in the first millenium BCE, it is suggested), having been invited by the powers that be in the Konkani kingdom.
Lord Parashurama fires an arrow to hold back the sea Drshenoy
In the legend, Lord Parashurama (the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu) wanted to perform a sacrifice. He fired an arrow to part the waves and hold the sea back. The arrow fell at Benaulim [Bana-halli, ‘arrow village’]. The sacrifice was performed efficaciously thanks to the Saraswati Brahmins and they later settled nearby. Sixty-six of them settled at Salcete [Skt: ṣaṭ-ṣaṣṭi, ‘sixty-six’], south of the Zuari river. The other thirty settled north of the river in Tiswadi [Tīsavādi, ‘thirty settlements’]. Later migrations included Bardez [Bārādesh, ‘twelve regions’] and Pernem [Mar: pēraṇēm, ‘foundation’].
Tiswadi and North Goa Inshaanshah62
