India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c7.s5.2

c7.s5.2

The two terms *grāma* and *nagara* were used indiscriminately in the Vāhīka country, whereas the distinction between them in eastern India was much more sharp. This may be due to the fact that in the Punjab the villages also had grown in prosperity like the towns, and hence the word *grāma* there included *nagara* also in its connotation. The Greek accounts testify to the existence of about five hundred towns, all rich and prosperous, in the Vāhīka country, where naturally the old distinction of *grāma* and *nagara* must have lost its sharpness as reflected in the *Ashṭādhyāyī*.