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.
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.â7
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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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