India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c13.18

c13.18

*PĀṆINI AND THE PARŚUS*—Pāṇini refers to a people called Parśus as a military community (*Āyudhjīvī Saṅgha*, V.3. 117). The term *Parśu* corresponds to the Old-Persian form *Pārsa* as given in the Behistun inscription. The Babylonian form of the name in the same Inscription is *Par-su* which comes closer to Pāṇini’s *Parśu* (*Behistun Ins.*, British Museum, pp. 159-166). It appears that Parśu was the name of a country as noted in the Babylonian version, and Pārśava was a designation of an individual member of that *Saṅgha*, a form of the name which corresponds to Babylonian *Par-sa-a-a*. A part of India was already a province of the Achaemenian empire under Cyrus and Darius, which it enriched with its military and material resources. Indians were already serving in the army of Xerxes and fighting his battles about 487 B.C., while that very small part of India paid as much revenue as the total revenue of the Persian empire. There was thus an intimate intercourse between north-western India and Persia, and Pāṇini as one born in that region must have had direct knowledge of such intercourse. Not only Gandhāra but also Sindhu corrupted into Persian *Hindu* in the inscriptions of Darius (corresponding to the Sind-Sagar Doab of the Western Panjab) came under the occupation of the Achaemenians at one time (cf. Hamadan Plate Ins., *J.R.A.S.*, 1926, pp. 633-6; *Jour. Cama Ins.*, 1927; *Memoir A.S.I.*, No. 34). (Cf. *ante*, p. 445).