Some musings on Ancient Indian Geography

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Panini

mentioned some countries in his Ashtadhyayi

Kachcha

(IV, 2.133) , Avanti (IV. 1.176), Kosala (IV. i.171), Kalinga (IV. i. 170) and

Asmaka (IV. 1.173) He did not mention any countries in South India except for

Asmaka .

Sutta Nipata , one of the oldest pali texts in

Buddhist litt. speaks of a Brahmin guru called Bavarin from Sravasthi, Kosala

who settled in a village on the

Godhavari (R. Godavari) in the Assaka (Asmaka, today's Bodhan, Nizamabad dist)

territory in the Dakkinaptha (South India) (Vs 976-7)

Bavarin

sent his sixteen pupils to pay their homage to Buddha and confer with him. There

is a big story why he sent his disciples

but it is irrelevant here I think .

The route

by which the disciples proceeded northwards is also described. (Vs 1011-3)

First

, they went to Pattithana (Paithan) of Mulaka country , then to Mahissati

(Mahismati of MP?)

To Ujjain,

Gonaddha, Vedisa (Vidisha) and Vanasahvaya., Kosambi, Saketa and Savatthi

(Sravastri,the capital of Kosala) ; to Setavya, Kapilavastu and Kusinara; to

Pava, Vesali(capital of Magadha?) and

finally to Pasanaka Chetiya where Buddha then was.

In

the text of Sutta nipata edited by V Fausholl, the reading Alaka is adopted (Vs

977 & 1011) and the variant Mulaka was noted in the foot notes. There can

however, be no doubt that Mulaka must be the correct reading. We know of no

country of the name Alaka. Mulaka on the other hand, is well known.

Thus

in the celebrated Nasik cave inscriptions of Vasisthiputra Pulumavi the Mulaka country has been associated with

Asaka (Asmaka) exactly as it has been done in the Sutta Nipata (EI, VIII. 60)

The

same country seems to have been mentioned as Maulika by Varaha mihira in Brht

Samhita (XIV.8)

Further,

considering that Godavari has been called Godhavari in the Sutta nipata,

Gonaddha can very well be taken to stand for Gonadda-Gonarda, the place from

which Patanjali , author of Mahabhashya, hailed. Sir RamaKrishna Bhandarkar has

shown on the authority of the Mahabhashya that Saketa was situated on the road

from Gonarda to Pataliputra (IA,II.7c) This is exactly in accordance with what

the Sutta nipata says, for Saketa , according to the route taken by Bavarin's

pupils was on the way from Gonaddha to the Magadha country. The native place of

Patanjali was , there fore, in Central India, somewhere between Ujjain and

Besnagar near Bhilsa.

The description

of this route is very important in more than one ways.

In

the first place, it will be seen that Bavarom's settlement was much to the

south of Paithan, which is in Maharashtra, since Paithan was the principal town

of Mulaka province to the south of which lies Asmaka, where Bavarin then was.

Secondly, it is worthy of note that Bavarin's disciples went to North India , straight

through Vindhyas. This disproves the theory of some scholars that Aryans were

scared of Crossing Vindhyas and went southwards to the Deccan by an easterly

detour around the mountain range.

From

Paithan, the troupe reached Mahissati or Mahismati or Mandhata or Maheswari on the banks of

Narmada, in MP, near Indore. Evidently,

they must have passed to Mahismati

through Vidharbha .

Unlike

Panini, where Asmaka is the only country in South India to be mentioned by him,

Katyayana who wrote aphorism called Vartikas to explain and supplement Panini

and who has been assigned to the middle of 4th century B.c. goes

beyond this.

To a

Panini sutra : Janapada – Sabdat kshatriyad = an (IV. 1.168) , Katyayana adds a

vartika or aphirms , Pandor = dyan , from which we obtain the form Pandya.

Again

we have a sutra of Panini Kambojal = luk (IV.1.175) which lays down that the

word Kamboja denotes not only Kamboja country but also the tribe and their

king. But then there are other words which

are exactly like Kamboja in this respect but which Panini has not mentioned.

Katyayana is, there fore, compelled to supplement the above sutra with the vartika

Kambojadibhyo = lug – vacahannam Choddyartham.

This means that like kamboja, the words choda, kadera and Kerala denote not

only the country , tribe but also the king. It will thus be seen that choda and

Kerala were known to Katyayana but possibly, not to Panini.

However, Artha sastra mentions about Tamraparni river,

in Srilanka and also speaks of pearls being found among other places in the

Tamraparni river, in Pandya kavataka, and near the mt. Mahendra,all situated on

the extremity of the Southern Peninsula. Kautilya's

Pandya kavataka seem to be the same as Pandya vataka or Pandya vatabhava

of the Brihat Samhita (80.2 and 6) Mahendra hills could be Travancore Hills

(JRAS, 1894, 262)

It

is possible that Pandyans are an "Aryan tribe" unlike Cholas. This surmise is sought to be

proved as below:

1.

It is shown above that the word Pandya is

derived from Pandu

2.

Pliny, on the authority of Megasthenes tells us

that they were descended from Pandoea, The only daughter of Krishna. She went

away from the country of Saurasena whose principal town were Mathura and

Krishna Pura (Cleisobora) and was assigned by her father just" that portion of India

which lies southwards and extends to the sea" (IA VI 249-50 and 344) While this

could be taken as a combination of both truth and fiction, it lends credence to

our theory

3.

Ptolemy speaks not only of the Kingdom of

Pandion or Pandya but also of the country of Pandooui In Punjab. (IA, XIII, 331

and 349) these people could be Pandus.

4 Varahamihira

makes mention of a tribe called Pandus & places them in Madhya desa.

(Brihat samhita XIV 3)

That

Pandyans called their capital Mathura supports the above theories. This is

quite in accordance with the practice of the colonists naming the younger towns

after the older. However, we have to remember that there is a third Mathura in

Srilanka and a fourth Mathura in the Eastern Archipelago.

The

Arthasastra talks of a Bhoja king ruling Dandaka or Maharashtra. Bhojas must be

a north Indian tribe who have migrated south to Maharashtra. Similarly, it can be argued, Paithan which is

also in Maharashtra was named after Prathisthana situated near the confluence of

Ganga and Yamuna, the same tradition of

naming younger towns after older ones,as mentioned above, continuing here.