The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.139

v1.c24.139

The Avestan fragment above cited from the gloss to Vd. I, 18—‘from the Eastern Indus (India) to the Western Indus (India)’—is best interpreted as alluding to the extreme ends of the Irānian world; for Spiegel has clearly shown by sufficient references that, at least in Sassanian times and doubtless earlier, there prevailed an idea of an India in the west as well as an India in the east.³ This is borne out by a passage in Yasht X, 104, in which the divine power of Mithra, the personification of the sun, light, and truth, is extolled as destroying his adversaries in every quarter. The passage (Yt. X, 104), which is metrical and therefore relatively old, runs thus: ‘The long arms of Mithra seize upon those who deceive Mithra; even when in Eastern India he catches him, even when in Western [India] he smites him down; even when he is at the mouth of the Ranhā (river), [and] even when he is in the middle of the earth’.⁴ The same statement is repeated in part in Yasna LVII, 29, regarding the power of Sraosha, the guardian genius of mankind, as extending over the wide domain from India on the east to the extreme west: ‘even when in Eastern India he catches [his adversary], even when in Western [India] he smites him down.’