India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c12.s6.3

c12.s6.3

MOUNTAINEERS—A very important group of martial *Saṅghas* comprised those occupying *Parvata* or some mountainous region in the north-west. According to the true import of Pāṇini’s rule, those whose ancestors once lived in the Parvata region continued to retain their original appellation of the ancestral homeland (*abhijana*), although for the time being they might have migrated elsewhere (*Āyudhajīvibhya-* *śchhaḥ parvate*, IV.3.91; *so'syābhijana iti vartate, Kāśika*). Evidently this Parvata region must have been outside the plains of the Vāhīka country, which brings us to the highlands of north-west as the home-land of the *āyudhajīvins*. The *Kāśikā* mentions the *Hṛdgolīyas* of Hṛidgola, probably Hi-lo of Yuan Chwang (modern Hiḍḍā south of Jalalabad); *Andhakavartīyāḥ* of Andhakavarta, perhaps Andkhui, a district in the north-east of Afghanistan (*Imp. Gaz.*, Afghanistan, p. 80), and *Rohitagirīyas* of Rohitagiri, which last is important as reminiscent of Roha, old name of Afghanistan. All this portion of the country is up to the present day peopled by hardy and warlike mountaineers. The *Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa* refers to mountain-dwellers (*parvatāśrayiṇaḥ*) of the west, including such names as the *Nihāras* (*Nigrahāra* of *Vāyu*, same as Nagarahāra or Jalalabad where Hṛidgola or Hiḍḍā is situated) and the Haṁsamārgas (modern Hunza in the north of Dardistan). Thus the country of the mountaineers extended from Kashmir to Afghanistan and most of the people settled in these mountains and their valleys were of the *āyudhajīvin* class. The Bhīshmaparva especially mentions the Girigahvaras, dwellers of mountain caves, as a people of the north-west (Bhīshmaparva, 9.68; cf. *Pratīchyāḥ Pārvatīyāḥ*, Udyoga, 30,24), and this epithet appropriately applies to the tribes of the north-west. They were the same as the *saṅghāḥ girichāriṇaḥ* and *girigahvara-vāsinaḥ* (Droṇaparva, 93.48). Arrian mentions these mountainous Indians as fighting in the army of Darius against Alexander at Arbela (*Anabasis*, III,8.3-6). It was these Parvatīya Āyudhajīvins that offered stout resistance to Alexander in Bactria and Gandhāra. The approximate location of these Parvatīyas should be sought for in the region of the Hindukush on both sides of it. Roha, of medieval geographers, Rohitagiri of Pāṇini, the ten *maṇḍalas* of Lohita (Sabhā, 24.16) and Rohitagirīyas of the *Kāśikā*, all together point to the mountainous regions of central and north-east Afghanistan as being the *Parvata* country, which name survives in Kohistan. We may now form a clear conception of the geographical distribution of the three types of *Saṅghas* in Pāṇini: (1) the *Āyudhajīvins* of Vāhīka from the Indus upto the Beas and the Sutlej, of whom a special group occupying the mountainous Kangra region was called *Trigarta-Shashṭha* (V.3.116); (2) *Pūgas*, under the leadership of *grāmaṇīs*, settled on the right bank of the Indus (*Sindhukūlāśritā grāmaṇīyāḥ*, Sabhāparva, 32.9), corresponding in all probability to the present day “Tribal Area” to the west of the Indus; (3) *Parvatīyas*, or the Highlanders of Afghanistan and the Hindukush, who included also the tribes of Dardistan. These contained many living only in the *Vrāta* stage of existence. It is evident that the *Saṅghas* in the innermost belt were the best organised of all and lived in a higher stage of civilization owing to Aryan contact and proximity and those in the outlying parts were much less civilised.