The Indian Analyst
 

North Indian Inscriptions

 

 

Contents

Introduction

Contents

Preface

List of Plates

Abbreviations

Additions and Corrections

Images

Introduction

Political History

Administration

Social History

Religious History

Literary History

Gupta Era

Krita Era

Texts and Translations

The Gupta Inscriptions

Index

Other South-Indian Inscriptions 

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Vol. 4 - 8

Volume 9

Volume 10

Volume 11

Volume 12

Volume 13

Volume 14

Volume 15

Volume 16

Volume 17

Volume 18

Volume 19

Volume 20

Volume 22
Part 1

Volume 22
Part 2

Volume 23

Volume 24

Volume 26

Volume 27

Tiruvarur

Darasuram

Konerirajapuram

Tanjavur

Annual Reports 1935-1944

Annual Reports 1945- 1947

Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum Volume 2, Part 2

Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum Volume 7, Part 3

Kalachuri-Chedi Era Part 1

Kalachuri-Chedi Era Part 2

Epigraphica Indica

Epigraphia Indica Volume 3

Epigraphia
Indica Volume 4

Epigraphia Indica Volume 6

Epigraphia Indica Volume 7

Epigraphia Indica Volume 8

Epigraphia Indica Volume 27

Epigraphia Indica Volume 29

Epigraphia Indica Volume 30

Epigraphia Indica Volume 31

Epigraphia Indica Volume 32

Paramaras Volume 7, Part 2

Śilāhāras Volume 6, Part 2

Vākāṭakas Volume 5

Early Gupta Inscriptions

Archaeological Links

Archaeological-Survey of India

Pudukkottai

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS

sense of āvarta, namely, “a crowded place where many men live close together.”1 Anyway, Āryāvarta of Manu corresponds to what we now understand by Northern India. In earlier times, however, it did not denote such a wide region. Thus Patañjali (c. 150 B.C.) speaks of Āryāvarta twice, once in connection with Pāṇini II, iv, 10 and another time with VI, vi, 109, but each time specifies the same boundaries. Thus, according to this grammarian, Āryāvarta was bounded on the west by Ādarśa, on the east by Kālaka-vana, on the north by the Himālaya and on the south by Pāriyātra. In later times Pāriyātra, no doubt, denoted the western half of the Vindhyas, but here it seems to be intended for the whole of the Vidhyas. The western boundary of Āryāvarta was Ādarśa. Bühler has pointed out that the correct reading here must be Ādarśa, which, later on, when its identity was forgotten, was changed into adarśana,2 to bring it on a par with the Vinaśana of the Manusmṛiti, that is, the disappearance of the Sarasvatī as just pointed out. Bühler, however, seems wrong in thinking that Ādarśa was the name of a mountain range, because there is no authority for this statement. Varāhamihira,3 on the other hand, speaks of Ādarśa as a country and places it in the Northern Division. And it is the people of this country, no doubt, who are represented by Adraïstai of Arrian and the Adrēstai of Diodorus.4 They appear to be settled somewhere between the Rāvī and the Beās in the Panjab, as is quite clear from the statement of these classical authors. As regards the eastern boundary of Āryāvarta, there is some doubt as to the correct form of its name. Scholars have so far taken it as Kālaka-vana, in the sense of ‘the Black Forest.’ But there is also another good reading, viz., Kālakā-vana, meaning ‘the Kālakā Forest.’ The Purāṇas know of only one Kālakā, namely, the daughter of the Asura Vaiśvānara who was married to Marīchi (Kaśyapa). She and her sister Pulōmā, who was also married to Marīchi, “bore him sixty thousand Dānavas, called Paulōmas and Kālakēyas, who were powerful, ferocious and cruel.’5 It is very difficult to say which of the two readings is the correct one: Kālaka-vana or Kālakāvana. In favour of the former reading it may be urged that similar to Kālaka-vana on the border of Āryāvarta we have the Black Forest or Schwarzwald, a mountain range of south-west Germany. But, in this case, the suffix ka in Kālaka is superfluous.
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At any rate, we should have expected the reading Kāla-vana from at least one manuscript. As a matter of fact, the reading Kāla-vana is not traceable even once, wherever the passage about Āryāvarta is found, whether in Patañjali’s Mahābhāshya or in the two Dharmasūtras, Baudhāyana and Vasishṭha, to one of which Patañjali is undoubtedly indebted. The reading Kālakā-vana appears thus to be preferable to Kālaka-vana. This accords with the fact that the ancient name of Bihar was Prāchya, which was the country of Asuras.6 It is natural that a wild region or vana associated with Kālakā, herself an Asura princess and mother of several Asura warriors, should be somewhere in Bihar on the outskirts of Āryāvarta. Another name like Kālakā-vana is Daṇḍakāraṇya. Both are called vana or araṇya as they were flanked by mountain ranges which were overgrown with dense jungle and which presented an almost insurmountable barrier to Aryan emigration, eastward or southward. Whatever the correct reading may be, whether it is Kālaka-vana or Kālakā-vana, this much seems almost certain that it is represented by the modern Jhāḍkhaṇḍ, a tract “which lay to the south of Gayā, to the east of Shāhābād, to the north of Bhāgalpur, and to the west of Bankura and Midnapur.”7
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1 Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, sub voce.
2 SBE., Vol. XIV, p. 2, n. 8.
3 Ind. Ant., Vol. XXII, p. 172.
4 McCrindle, Invasion of India by Alexander the Great, p. 116, note 1.
5 Vishṇu-Purāṇa (translation by Wilson), Vol. II, pp. 71-72.
6 This point has been developed by us in our paper Aryan Immigration into Eastern India, published in ABORI., Vol. XII, pp. 108 ff.
7 B. C. Mazumdar, The History of the Bengali Language, p. 32.

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