India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c7.s5.34

c7.s5.34

Pāṇini also must have known the Śakas, not in Seistan but in their original home in Central Asia. How a string of *kanthā*-ending place-names was found in the Uśīnara country in the heart of the Panjab, is an unexplained problem. It points to an event associated with Śaka history even before Pāṇini, possibly an intrusion which left its relics in place-names long before the Śaka contact with India in the second century B.C. Kātyāyana mentions *Śakandhu*, *Karkandhu*, two kinds of wells of the Śakas and the Karkas (*Karkians*), which may be identified as the stepped well (*vāpī*) and the Persian wheel (*arghaṭṭa*) well respectively.