Palimbothra, Erannoboas etc.

[Guest guest]

Dear Francesco,

 

I am shocked at your inability to see the facts which are crystal clear. Or are you sleeping or pretending not to wake up? Anyway I am giving the reply which you can read if you ever wake up.

 

 

--- On Thu, 4/16/09, Francesco Brighenti <frabrig wrote:

 

Francesco Brighenti <frabrigPalimbothra, Erannoboas etc."Sunil Bhattacharjya" <sunil_bhattacharjyaThursday, April 16, 2009, 11:28 AMDear Sunil,You wrote me off-List: > Megasthenes said that Palimbothra was at the confluence of Ganga and > Erannoboas and he also said that Erannoboas was the third largest river > after Ganga and Sindhu (Sind). Okay, no problem if you do not think that> Erannoboas was not the third largest river Yamuna. The Son (length: 784 km) is one of India's largest rivers. It is the largest of the Ganges' southern tributaries.

 

1) THE YAMUNA IS 1370 KM LONG AS AGAINST 784 KM LENGTH OF SON(E). IT IS THE LARGEST TRIBUTARY OF GANGA. COLLOQUALLY YAMUNA IS CALLED YUMNA OR YEMNA. YAMUNA IS A PERENNIAL RIVER WHEREAS SON IS A SEASONAL RIVER. YAMUNA MEETS GANGA FROM THE SOUTH SIDE. MEGASTHENES RIGHTLY CALLS IT THE THIRD LARGEST RIVER AFTER THE GANGA AND THE SIND (IN THE GUPTA KINGDOM). WHY ARE YOU UNABLE TO SEE THIS CLEARLY?

> Megasthenes also mentioned the river Sone separately. Tell me then how > can Palimbothra could have been at the confluence of Ganga and Sone as > Jones assumed. I give you some more clues to meditate upon:1) As regards Megasthenes’ mention of a river ha calls "Sonus" (i.e. the present-day Son, Skt. Sona?) among the affluents of the Ganges, which is quoted by Arrian: McCrindle and other scholars after him have suggested that the Son may perhaps in Megasthenes' times have joined the Ganges by two channels, which he may have mistaken for two separate rivers -- the "Erannoboas" and the "Sonus". Some scholars (e.g. Eggermont) even deny that Megasthenes' Sonus was the Son river.

 

1) MEGASTHENES AND ARRIAN MADE DISTINCT REFERENCE TO ERANNOBOAS AND SONE. WHICH RIVER ACCORDING TO YOU EGGERMONT IDENTIFIED SON WITH? AT LEAST JONES HAD MORE COMMON SENSE THAN EGGERMONT. JONES ADMOTTED THAT SONUS WAS SON BUT IT WAS HIS DISHONESTY AND UNSCRUPULOUSNESS THAT MADE HIM SAY THAT MEGASTHENES MADE A MISTAKE BY MENTIONING SON SEPARATELY. LOOK AT THE IMPERTINENCE AND THE COMPLETE LACK OF INTEGRITY OF THIS MAN JONES, WHO BEING MORE THAT TWO MILLENNIA LATER THAN MEGASTHENES DARES TO QUESTION THE VERACITY OF THE STATEMENT OF MEGASTHENES, WHO WAS THE MAN ON THE SPOT IN THE CAPITAL OF SANDRACOTTUS.

2) Patanjali speaks of Pataliputra as situated on the banks of the Sona.3) The Mudrarakshasa, a historical play dating from the Gupta Age, indicates that Pataliputra was situated at the confluence of the Ganges with the Sona.4) In the Amarakosha the Sona is called Hiranyavaha, perhaps in view of its golden coloured sand or owing to the presence of gold dust in its water. The Harshacharita too shows that Hiranyavaha is just another name of the Sona.5) Fa-hsien calls Pataliputra (in modern Patna), where he resided for some years at the beginning of the 5th century CE and where he saw the great royal palace of Asoka still in good conditions, "Pa-lien-fu". Chinese philologists say this name was pronounced as <pa-liän- piu@t> in Ancient Chinese. The form used by Fa-hsien coincides remarkably with the form "Palimbothra" used by Arrian: indeed, in both forms the syllable /ta/ of Skt. Pataliputra is lost, and

the syllable /li/ is nasalized. Both Arrian's Palimbothra and Fa-hsien's Pa-lien-fu probably reflect a spoken Gandhari form *Palimputr(a), as has been suggested by Bailey, Mayrhofer, etc. Ptolemy and Strabo's Greek transcription "Palibothra" may likewise reflect a de-nasalized form of the same word -- i.e., *Paliputr(a).

 

1) IT IS WELL-KNOWN THAT PATALIPUTRA AT THE CONFLUENCE OF GANGA AND SON IS THE SAME AS PATNA AND THAT PATALIPITRA WAS THE CAPITAL OF CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA.

 

2) DO YOU KNOW THAT THE RIVER GANDAKI, A TRIBITARY OF GANGA, WAS CALLED HIRANYAVATI AND LORD BUDDHA DIED AT ITS BANK IN KUSHINAGAR. DURING THE MAHABHARATA WAR THE KAURAVAS AND THE PANDAVAS CAMPED ON EITHER SIDE OF THE RIVER HIRANYA. SON WAS CALLED HIRANYAVAHA AT THE TIME OF HARSHA. WHAT HAS IT GOT TO DO WITH WITH PALIMBOTHRA?

 

REGARDS,

 

SUNIL K. bHATTACHARJYA

 

 

[Guest guest]

Bosworth Megasthenes 1996.pdf,

Narain Karttunen review 1992

Tarn 1923.pdf in the file section of this group.

 

Bosworth Megasthenes 1996.pdf in the files section needs to be reread with

Ranjit Pal's thesis and the archaeological finds of Jiroft in mind.

Particularly pages 123-125.

" Rather he (Chandragupata) is definied as king of the Prassi whom Megasthenes

regarded as the most powerful people of India, (Bosworth 1996, p. 124). "

It is well known that the word India comes from Indus the Greek version of

Sindhu. What did Megasthenes have in mind when he titled his book " Indica. "

The totality of the Greek accounts have created substantial confusion about the

relative status of Porus and Chandragupta. Were they equal in stature or was

Chandragupta the lesser one and Porus the great emperor? Bosworth 1996

(pp.115-117) labors to explain why the Greeks may have thought that Chandragupta

was lesser than Porus. But it would make sense if his capital was Patali in

Iran and not Patna (Pataliputra) as Pal suggests.

 

http://www.ranajitpal.com/

 

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2007/2007-12-39.html

 

See Narain Karttunen review 1992 in the files section. Karttunen as reviewed by

Narain laments that about the disconnect between the Greek accounts of " India "

and the Sanskritic literature.

" He (Karttunen) observes that " the earliest Greek descriptions of India contain

very little such information which is familiar to us from San- skrit sources and

this is because they were not describing the same country and culture (Narain

1992, p516). "

M. Kelkar

 

Tarn (1923) on Alexander

The conclusion then is that Alexander, when he turned back knew of the Sutlej

and vaguely of some kingdom beyond it with which the name Gandaridae or

Tyndaridae was connected. He never knew of the Ganges or the Magadha, any more

than he ever knew of the vast Middle Country between the Sutlej and the Ganges.

...The story that he knew of the Ganges and the Magadha, which is unknown to the

good tradition, has been written into the vulgate from Megasthenes through a

mistake which I (Tarn) have traced; and by means of this story the vulgate has

attributed to Alexander a scheme of conquest which has no basis in fact, because

he knew nothing of the existence of the place whose conquest was the object of

the scheme (Tarn 1923, p. 100). "

Tarn, W. W. (1923). Alexander and the Ganges. The Journal of Hellenistic

Studies, Volume 43, Part 2, pp. 93-101.

 

M. Kelkar

[Guest guest]

" Alternate views on Maurya origin "

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestry_of_Chandragupta_Maurya

 

M. Kelkar