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Early History of the Dekkan down to the Mahomedan Conquest c9: Section II. Settlement of the Âryas in the Dekkan

Early History of the Dekkan down to the Mahomedan Conquest c9

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English

Section II. Settlement of the Âryas in the Dekkan

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[3] IT is now a recognised fact that the Âryas who came to India were at first confined to eastern Afghanistan and the Panjâb Thence they emigrated to the east and for a time the easternmost province occupied by them was Bramhâvarta or their holy land, lying between the rivers Sarasvatî the modern Sarasuti, and Dṛishadvatî,¹ a stream in the vicinity, that is, the country about Thanesar There the system of castes and orders and the sacrificial religion seem to have been fully developed Thence they spread to the east and the south, and gradually occupied the whole country between the Himâlaya and the Vindhya This last mountain range must for a long time have formed the southern boundary of their settlements For the name Âryâvarta or the region occupied by the Âryas, as explained by Manu² and even by Patañjali,³ the author of the Mahâbhâshya on Pâṇini's grammar, signified exclusively the part of the country situated between those mountain ranges The Vindhya, which by its height seemed to obstruct the passage of the sun, was impassable to them The name Pâriyâtra was given to the more northern and western portion of the range from which the rivers Chambal and Betvâ take their rise, probably because it was situated on the boundary of their Yâtrâ or range of communication After a while, however, the sage Agastya, in poetical language, bade the mountain not to grow high, that is, crossed it and established an Âsrama or hermitage to the south and thus led the way to other settlements

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¹ Manu, II 17

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² Manu, II, 23

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³ Patañjali's Mahâbhâshya under Pâṇini, II 4, 10

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The first or oldest Âryan province in the southern country must have been the Vidarbhas or the Berârs For in the Râmâyana when Sugrîva the monkey-king sends his followers to the different quarters in search of Râma's wife Sîtâ and Râvaṇa her ravisher, he directs them to go among other southern countries to Vidarbhas, Ṛichîkas, and Mahishakas, and also to Daṇḍakâraṇya (the forest of Daṇḍakâ) and the river Godâvarî ⁴ This shows that while the country about the Godâvarî, that is, the Dekkan or Mahârâshṭra in the narrowest sense of the terms, was a forest, Vidarbha was an inhabited country In the Mahâbhârata also Agastya is represented to have given a girl that he produced by his miraculous powers to the king of Vidarbha, and after she had grown to be a woman demanded her of the king in marriage ⁵ In the Râmâyana, Râma is represented to have lived for a long time in Daṇḍakâraṇya, at a place called Pañchavaṭî situated on the banks [4] of the Godâvarî about two yojanas from the hermitage of Agastya ⁶

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⁴ Râmâyana, IV Chap 41, Bombay Edition

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⁵ Mahâbhârata, Bombay Edition, III Chap 96, 97

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⁶ Râmâyana, III 13, 13 Bom Ed

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That this Daṇḍakâraṇya was the modern Mahârâshṭra is shown by the fact stated above, that it was watered by the river Godâvarî, and by several others According to the Hindu ritual it is necessary when beginning any religious ceremony to pronounce the name of the country in which it is performed The Brâhmans in Mahârâshṭra do not utter the name Mahârâshṭra but Daṇḍakâraṇya with the word *desa* or "country" attached to it In the introduction to Hemâdri's Vratakhaṇḍa, a work written more than six hundred years ago, Devagiri, the modern Daulatâbâd, is spoken of as situated in a district on the confines of Daṇḍakâraṇya Nâsik claims to be the Pañchavaṭî where Râma lived But the poet could hardly be expected to have brought his hero from the Vindhya to such a remote westerly place as Nâsik The river Godâvarî must, from the description occurring in the Râmâyaṇa as well as in Bhavabhûti's Uttara Râmacharita, have been wide at Râma's Pañchavaṭî It could hardly have been so at Nâsik, which is very near its source On the other hand, "the region about the northern part of the Sahyâdri through which flowed the river Godâvarî and in which Govardhana was situated" is in the Purâṇas represented as "the most charming on earth, and there, to please Râma, the sage Bhâradvâja caused heavenly trees and herbs to spring up for his wife's enjoyment, and thus a lovely garden came into existence"⁷ In the Mârkaṇḍeya, Govardhana is spoken of as a town, but the Vâyu and the Mâtsya seem to mean it to be a mountain This Govardhana must, from the given position, be the same as the village of that name near Nâsik, and thus the three Purâṇas must be understood as supporting the identification of Pañchavaṭî with Nâsik

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⁷ Mârkaṇḍeya, Chap 57 Verses 34-35, Vâyu, Chap 45 Verses 112-114, and Mâtsya, Chap 112 Verses 37 39 The passage, however, is corrupt The three Purâṇas evidently derive their reading from the same original, but the text has been greatly corrupted The most ancient version of it seems to be that in the Vâyu

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But though Mahârâshṭra was the last country occupied by the Indian Âryas, their subjugation of it was no less thorough than that of all the northern countries Here, as there, they drove some of the aborigines to the fastnesses of mountains and jungles, and incorporated the rest into their own society The present Marâṭhî language is as much an offshoot of the Sanskrit as the other languages of Northern India The ancient representatives of these dialects—the Mahârâshṭrî, the Saurasenî, and the Mâgadhî, as well as an earlier form of speech, the Pâlî—show extensive corruptions of Sanskrit sounds, reducible however to a few general laws These cannot be accounted for by the natural operation of the causes which bring about the decay of a language spoken throughout its history by the same race For, this operation is slow and must be in continuance for a very long time in order to produce the wide-going phonetic changes which we observe in those Prâkṛit dialects, as they are called This long-continued process must at the same time give rise to a great many changes in other respects Such, [5] however, we do not find in those dialects, and they do not in those respects show a very wide departure from the Sanskrit

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The extensive corruptions of Sanskrit sounds, therefore, must be accounted for by the supposition that the language had to be spoken by races whose original tongue it was not Those alien races could not properly pronounce the Sanskrit words used by the conquering Âryas , and thus the Prâkṛit forms of Sanskrit words represent their pronunciation of them A few sounds unknown to Sanskrit as well as some words not traceable to that language are also found in the Prâkṛits, and these point to the same conclusion It thus appears that the Indian Âryas in their progress through the country came in contact with alien races, which were incorporated with their society and learnt their language, at the same time that they preserved some of their original words and phonetic peculiarities ⁸ This was the state of things in the north down to the Marâṭhâ country But farther south and on the eastern coast, though they penetrated there and communicated their own civilization to the aboriginal races inhabiting those parts, they were not able to incorporate them thoroughly into their own society and to root out their languages and their peculiar civilization On the contrary, the Âryas had to learn the languages of those races and to adopt a portion at least of their civilization Thus the Kanarese, the Telugu, the Tamil, and the other languages now spoken in Southern India are not derived from the Sanskrit but belong altogether to a different stock, and hence it is also that southern art is so different from the northern The reason why the result of the Âryan irruption was so different in Southern India from what it was in the north appears to be that when the Âryas penetrated to the south there existed already well-organized communities and kingdoms In the passage in the Râmâyana, referred to above, the monkey-soldiers are directed to go to the countries of the Andhras (Telugu people), the Pâṇḍyas, the Cholas, and the Keralas, in the south, and are told that they will there see the gate of the city of the Pâṇḍyas adorned with gold and jewels And these races, their country, and their kings are alluded to in other Sanskrit works, as will be noticed hereafter In the north, however, at the time of the Âryan invasion, the condition of the country must have been similar to that of Daṇḍakâraṇya, which is represented in the Râmâyana as a forest infested by Râkshasas or wild tribes who disturbed the religious rites of the Brâhmaṇ sages And throughout the older portion of Sanskrit literature, which is to be referred to the times when the Âryas were gradually progressing from the Panjâb, the wild tribes they met with are spoken of under the name of Dasyus, Râkshasas, and others

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⁸ These points I have developed in my Lectures on Sanskrit and the Prâkṛit languages derived from it, Jour Bom B R A S Vol XVI pp 290-91

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