The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s1.16

v1.c19.s1.16

We have here seven territories evidently, from the context, regarded as the principal ones, before the rise of Buddhism, in the centre of what was then known as Jambudīpa (India). Though quite independent of the list just discussed these mnemonic verses tell a similar story. Here also appear the Assakas, Aṅgas, and Kāsis. Only the Kaliṅgas are added; and the name of their capital, Dantapura, ‘the Tooth city,’ shows incidentally that the sacred tooth, afterwards taken from Dantapura to Ceylon was believed, when this list was drawn up, to have been already an object of reverence before the time of the Buddha. This tradition of a pre-Buddhist Dantapura, frequently referred to in the Jātakas, is thus shown to be really of much greater age. And it is clear that at the time when the four Nikāyas were put into their present form⁴ it was believed that, before the Buddha’s life-time, the distribution of power in Northern India, had been different from what it afterwards became.