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Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s32: Tribes

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s32

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Tribes

c11.s32.1

In the inscriptions we find the names of a number of tribes, and not all of them can be identified with certainty. There is also some room for doubt about their political relation to the empire. Rock Edict V (J) mentions the Yonas, Kambojas, Gāndhāras, Raṭhikas, Peṭenikas and other Western borderers, and says that all the religious sects among these tribes were looked after by the new officials of the empire, the dharmamahāmātras. Rock Edict XIII(R) speaks of the tribes ‘here in the king's territory’ (iha rājavishye), viz., ‘the Yonas and Kambojas, the Nābhakas and Nābhapaṅktis (Nābhiti-Shab.), the Bhojas and Piṭinikas, the Andhras and Pārindas’. Clearly the Yonas and Kāmbojas of the lists are identical, and the ‘western borderers’ must be taken to have lived within the empire, ‘in the king's territory.’¹ The Yonas in this period obviously means Greeks, and they seem to have formed a small state ruled over by Greek princes in the north-west frontier². The Kāmbojas are to be located in the region of the Pāmirs, to the north of Kashmir³.

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¹ Contra Hultzsch p. xxxviii. Anta is a dubious term which may describe a ‘borderer’ inside or outside the boundary, and the interpretation must depend on the context.

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² Hultzsch p. xxxix and Tarn, Greeks in Bactria and India p. 101.

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³ Hultzsch says Kabul region. I prefer on this point to follow Jayachandra Vidyālankara, Proc. Sixth All-India Or. Conference, pp. 102-9.

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The Gāndhāras lived round about Peshawar, the ancient Purushapura, now included in the North-West Frontier province. We are less certain of the location of the other tribes named. The Raṭhikas may be the people of Kathiawad, if the name stands for Rāshṭrika; the governor of this region was known as Rashṭriya in Chandragupta's reign¹. The Peṭenikas or Piṭinikas who are coupled with the Bhojas in Rock Edict XIII must also be looked for in the west; but Peṭenika is not Pratishṭhāna as the identification is ‘phonetically impossible’, and the Bhojas could not be located in Berar. The Nābhakas and Nābhapaṅktis have been plausibly assigned to the Nepalese frontier, and the Andhras and Pārindas were in Eastern Deccan².

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¹ Junāgadh Rock Inscr. of Rudradāman EI. viii p. 46, n. 7.

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² Hultzsch p. xxxix. The Purāṇas, however know of a land of the Pāradas in Eastern India watered by the Ganges and noted for its horses, Br. II 18, 50 : 31, 83, : Mats. 121, 45.

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