Fw: [Ind-Arch] Erannoboas and Palimbothra

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--- On Mon, 4/20/09, sunil_bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya wrote:

sunil_bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjyaRe: [ind-Arch] Erannoboas and PalimbothraIndiaArchaeology Date: Monday, April 20, 2009, 8:04 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Francesco,

 

I am shocked at your inability to see the facts which are crystal clear. Or are you sleeping or unwilling to wake up? Anyway I am giving the reply to the points you made so that you can read them when you wake up.

 

1) The Yamuna is 1370 KM long as against 784 KM length os the Sone(e). Yamuna is the largest tributary of Ganga. Colloqually Yamuna is called Yamna or Yemna. Yamuna is a perennial river whereas Sone(e) 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. Why are you unable to see this clearly ?

 

2) Megasthenes and Arrian made distinct reference to Erannoboas and Son(e) as they were separate rivers.. Which river do you think that Eggermont identified Son(e) with? At least Jones had more common sense than Eggermont as Jones admitted that Sonus was Son(e) but it was his (Jones's) dishonesty and unscrupulousness that made him say that Megasthenes made a mistake by mentioning Son(e) separately. Look at the impertinence and the complete lack of integrity of this man, Jones, who despite being more than two millenia later than megasthenes dared to question the veracity of the statement of Megasthenes, who was the man on the spot in the capital of Sandracottus.

 

3) I have never questioned the well-known fact that Pataliputra at the confluence of Ganga and Son(e) and that Pataliputra is the same as Patna and also that Pataliputra was the capital of Chandragupta Maurya.

 

4) Do you know that the river Gandaki, a tributary of Ganga, was called Hiranyavati and Lord Buddha died near its bank in Kushinagar. During the Mahabharata war the Kauravas and the Pandavas camped on the either side of the river Hiranya. In Rigveda the river Sindhu is called Hiranmayi. The river Saraswati was also called Hiranyavartani in the Atharva veda. From Paunta Saheb downward the river Yamuna and a stream of this Hiranyavartini (Saraswati) flow together to meet Ganga at Prayag. Therefore even if the river Son(e) could have been called Hiaranyavahu at the time of Harsha, some nine centuries later than the time of Megasthenes, why should it have anything to do with Palimbothra?

 

Regards,

 

Sunil K. Bhattacharjya--- On Fri, 4/17/09, Francesco Brighenti <frabrig wrote:

Francesco Brighenti <frabrig[ind-Arch] Erannoboas and PalimbothraIndiaArchaeology Date: Friday, April 17, 2009, 2:42 AM

 

 

Sunil Bhattacharjya wrote:> 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. Megasthenes was *not* a modern geographer, and I don't think he could measure the length of North Indian rivers with much precision! Thus, his statement "third largest Indian river" can in no way reflect a scientific measurement of the "Erannoboas" river. Ancient geographers weren't certainly a model of mathematic precision!> 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 he calls "Sonus" (the present-day Son, Skt. Sona?) among the affluents of the Ganges, which we know through 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". 2) Patanjali (2nd century BCE) 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. Please bear in mind that the name of the river Son also means 'gold/golden' -- i.e., there is a strong semantic connection between the two hydronyms.5) According to Megasthenes, "Palimbothra" was built at the confluence of the Ganges with the "Erannoboas" river, identified with the Hiranyavaha (an epithet of the Son river) by William Jones on the ground of the close similarity of the Greek and Sanskrit names. 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 andFa-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) .Regards,Francesco