India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c7.s3.19

c7.s3.19

Another river Rathaspā is mentioned in the *Gaṇa-pāṭha* to *sūtra* VI.1.157 (*Bhāshya*, III. 96, *Rathaspā nadī*). This name occurs in the *Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa* (Caland, *JB.*, Extract 204) and in the Ādiparva (172.20) where it is one of the seven sacred rivers between Sarasvatī on the one side and Gaṇḍakī on the other. Most probably it was a river of Pañchāla and the name may correspond to Rhodopha which is mentioned by the Greek writers as marking an important stage on the great royal road from the frontier to Pāṭaliputra. Rhodopha is stated there to be 119 miles from the Gaṅgā; although it is called a town but the mention of the stages generally between two well-known rivers as Jhelum and Beās, Sutlej and Jamna, suggests its having been the name of a river (*Megasthenes*, Fragm. LVI; Rawlinson *Intercourse between India and the Western World*, p. 64). the distance of 119 miles lands us on the banks of the Rāmaganṅgā which is the only big river between the Gaṅgā and the Sarayū to present difficulties of crossing so as to merit the name Rathasthā, given to it in the Vedic period, and which is still in its upper course known as Ruhut or Ruput (*Imp. Gazetteer, U. P.*, I.166). The distances from Hastināpur on the Gaṅgā to Bareilly on the Rāmaganṅgā, and from Bareilly to Kanauj where the Rāmaganṅgā falls into the Gaṅgā, are equal to the stages of the Royal Road mentioned by Megasthenes from the Gaṅgā at Hastināpura to the town of Callinipaxa identified with Kanauj as the river Kālindī joins the Gaṅgā near it.