The Greeks in Bactria and India c16: Appendix 4. The Yuga-Purāṇa of the Gārgī Saṃhitā
The Greeks in Bactria and India c16
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Appendix 4. The Yuga-Purāṇa of the Gārgī Saṃhitā
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The Gārgī Saṃhitā is an astrological work of uncertain date (it has been dated anywhere from the Christian Era to the third century A.D.), one of whose chapters, the Yuga-purāṇa, contains an historical account of (among other matters) the Greek advance to Pāṭaliputra, written as usual in the form of a prophecy. The existing texts of the Yuga-purāṇa are written in Sanscrit with (it is said) traces of Prakritisms; in the opinion of the late Dr Jayaswal, who devoted special attention to this work,¹ the extant account must go back to a historical chronicle,² written either in Prakrit or in mixed Sanscrit-Prakrit, which he dates in the latter half of the first century B.C. on the ground that it mentions no dynasties later than the Sacas. Historians of India have usually considered the historical account of the Yavanas in the Yuga-purāṇa as valuable, an opinion shared by Jayaswal, who regards the work as the earliest known Purāṇa and as exhibiting an independent tradition; occasionally someone has dissented from this view,³ but the manner in which the accounts of the Greek Apollodorus and of the Yuga-purāṇa complement each other (Chap. IV) ought to be conclusive for the Yavanas sections, as the two are presumably independent.
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¹ K. P. Jayaswal, *Historical Data in the Gārga-Saṃhitā and the Brahmin Empire*, JBORS XIV, 1928, p. 397. This is his publication of the text of the Yuga-purāṇa, with a translation.
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² The worthlessness of the other Purāṇas on the Yavanas (pp. 133 n. 3 and 324 n. 1) makes this, to me, quite certain.
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³ As J. F. Fleet, *JRAS* 1914 p. 795, who called it historically worthless, but gave no reasons.
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The history of the Yuga-purāṇa in modern times is peculiar. H. Kern in 1865 first brought it to notice in the preface to his edition of the Brihat Saṃhitā;⁴ he possessed a single MS, apparently rather broken, and he gave a translation⁵ of the greater part (not all) of what are §§ 5 and 7 in Jayaswal’s translation (p. 453). Of § 6 he merely said that it contains complaints against heretics, presumably Buddhist monks.⁶ Nothing more was published, and what was known of the Sanscrit text so far as it related to the Greeks was confined to these parts of §§ 5 and 7, which Weber subsequently reprinted,⁷ and to one line of § 6 which Kern had quoted; except for Lévi,⁸ § 6 has gone unnoticed, though many writers have quoted or paraphrased Kern’s translation.
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⁴ H. Kern, *The Brihat-Saṃhitā of Varāha-Mihira*, vol. XLVIII of the *Bibliotheca Indica* of the Asiatic Society of Bengal; Calcutta, 1865.
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⁵ *Ib.* pp. 37-8 of the preface.
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⁶ *Ib.* p. 38.
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⁷ A. Weber, *Indische Studien* XIII, 1873, p. 306.
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⁸ P. 456, *post*.
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lations of parts of §§ 5 and 7. I am informed by Dr L. D. Barnett of the British Museum that the MS used by Kern has been lost; consequently the bits of Sanscrit text mentioned above are of some value. It is also of interest that, on the strength of the historical passage, Kern dated the Gārgī Samhitā to *c.* 50 B.C.,¹ that is, he agreed very nearly with Jayaswal’s dating of the original, for that he should confuse the date of the Gārgī Samhitā itself with the date of certain information contained in it was in 1865 inevitable; even to-day it is unhappily not uncommon to find statements preserved by some secondary Hellenistic writer assigned to that writer’s own date.
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¹ *Op. cit.* p. 40.
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This was the position till quite recently, when Jayaswal discovered two other MSS of the Yuga-purāna, one in the possession of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the other in the Government Sanscrit College of Benares; these he has edited with a translation,² of which I reproduce the material part. A third MS also exists in Paris, and Lévi sent Jayaswal a list, which he published,³ of the readings in which it differs from his edition; I gather that the variants, which in the Yavana sections are few, have as regards those sections no historical importance and that, speaking generally, the Paris MS confirms his results, but naturally I cannot be sure.
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² P. 452 n. 1.
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³ *JBORS* xv, 1929, p. 129; the variants, usually single words, are only given in Sanscrit, with one exception which is translated; if that be the most important, the others are presumably, to the historian, negligible.
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Jayaswal has conveniently divided his translation into fifteen sections, and I now give his translation of §§ 5 to 7; the section headings are his own.
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§5. [The Greek invasion and the Battle of Pushpapura.]
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‘After this, having invaded Sāketa, the Pañchālas, and Mathurā, the viciously valiant Yavanas (Greeks) will reach Kusumadhvaja (“the town of the flower-standard”). Then the thick mud-fortification (embankment) at Pātaliputra being reached, all the provinces will be in disorder, without doubt. Ultimately a great battle will follow with tree (-like) engines.⁴
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⁴ The *Arthasāstra* mentions that on the walls of a city there should be engines of war (Jayaswal’s note).
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§6. [Condition of the people at the end of the Kali age.]
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‘In the end of the Yuga there will be non-Aryans following the religious practices of the Aryas. The Brahmanas, the Kshatriyas, the Vaisyas as well as the Sūdras will be low men. They undoubtedly will dress themselves all alike and will have conduct all alike. In that end of the Yuga men⁵ will be united with heretical sects; they will strike friendships for the sake of women. This is without doubt. Without doubt there will be in this world Bhiksukas (religious mendicants)⁶ of the Sūdra caste, wearing Chīra (Buddhist religious cloth) and bark, wearing matted hair and bark. At the approach of the end of the Yuga in this world, the Sūdras will offer oblations to fire with hymns proclaimed with *omkāra* and (will be) keepers of the three fires with little hesitation.¹ Without doubt in the end of the Kali age there will be Sūdras who will address with ‘Bho!’ and Brahmanas who will address others with ‘Arya!’ They will be alike in dress and conduct.
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⁵ *I.e.* the orthodox (W.W.T.).
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⁶ Buddhists (W.W.T.).
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¹ I.e. Sūdras will usurp the functions of Brahmans (W.W.T.).
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§7. [Exactions of Dharma-mita, and Greek retirement from Madhadesa.]
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‘The tamā-elders of Dharma-mita will fearlessly devour the people. The Yavanas (Greeks) will command, the Kings will disappear. (But ultimately) the Yavanas, intoxicated with fighting, will not stay in Madhadesa (the Middle Country); there will be undoubtedly a civil war among them, arising in their own country,² there will be a very terrible and ferocious war.’
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² I.e. not in India (W.W.T.).
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I now give for comparison a translation, kindly made for me by Dr Barnett, of those parts of §§ 5 and 7 which Kern gave and of which the Sanscrit text of his lost MS survives; it will be seen that it differs from Jayaswal on one important point, the definite statement that the Greeks took Pāṭaliputra.
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§5. Thereupon advancing to Sāketa, the Pañchālas, and Mathurā, the Yavanas, wickedly valiant, will win Kusumadhjava. Thereon, when the goodly (?) Puspapura has been gained... [Kardame prathite are unintelligible], all regions will become disturbed, without doubt.
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§7. The Yavanas furious in battle will not stay in the Middle Country; there will be without doubt mutual conflicts [reading saṃgrāmā for sembhāva]; out of their own circles will arise an awful and supremely lamentable strife.’
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Before going further, I must mention one later study. Diwan Bahadur Professor K. H. Druva,³ after premising that in all the MSS all the lines but twelve and many proper names are corrupt and many lines misplaced, has reconstructed the story with liberal alteration of proper names and, as he admits, free use of conjecture, inference, and ‘guesses at truth’;⁴ his ideas of Greek history are somewhat antiquated, and the result, I fear, is too arbitrary to be of any use to the historian. But he has made one or two acute suggestions, which will be noticed where they belong.
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³ *Historical contents of the Yuga-purāṇa*, JBORS XVI, 1930, p. 16.
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⁴ Ib. p. 59.
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Certain points about the document must now be considered. Jayaswal points out, as is clear if the Yuga-purāṇa be taken as a whole, that to the author the history of India centres on Pāṭaliputra;⁵ he has in fact no further interest in the Greeks once they have quitted the Middle Country. It seems to me equally clear that the document as we have it speaks from the Brahman standpoint and rather dislikes Buddhists, Sūdras, and foreigners, whether Greeks or Sacas. But this was by no means an inevitable feature of a historical document written from the point of view of Pāṭaliputra, where Buddhism was strong; and in fact the work contains two curious exceptions to this dislike of the Greeks. One is the name Dharma-mita. Undoubtedly Jayaswal is right that this name is yet another transcript of Demetrius,¹ but he has not noticed that it has been ‘adjusted’ in order to make the word Dharma part of the name, ‘Friend of Justice’, and thus recall the phrase Dharmarāja; that is, Demetrius is made a King of Justice. The allusion to Demetrius is dealt with elsewhere (pp. 178, 411). The other exception is the characterisation of the civil war between the Greeks which was to damage the Euthydemid power in India so badly as ‘supremely lamentable’. The original chronicle or document, therefore, on which the Yuga-purāṇa as we have it was based was probably favourable to the Euthydemids, and the tone has been somewhat altered in transmission by the later author. As to the tamā-officials, Jayaswal has pointed out that the word is unknown and has suggested a connection with ταμιεῖον;² certainly ‘tax-collectors’ gives the sense required. The objection to the tax-collectors might find a place in the original document, even if it was favourable to Demetrius; few people love taxes.
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⁵ Op. cit. (1928) p. 415.
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¹ For a list of the known transcripts of the name see p. 458 n. 2. This form, as Dharmamitra, occurs again as the name of Demetrias in Sogdiana; Lévi, JA 1933 p. 27 n. 1, and see p. 118.
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² JBORS XIV, 1928, p. 128.
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Jayaswal thinks that §5 means that the Greeks did not take Pāṭaliputra.³ But even in his MSS the first two lines of §7 show that Demetrius and the Yavanas had the supreme power, which entails the occupation of the capital, and Kern’s MS gave its capture; the translations of both Lévi⁴ and Barnett (above) are clear as to that. There is no doubt that in actual fact the Greeks did take Pāṭaliputra, from the passage of Apollodorus given on p. 144, a passage which has not found its way into the stock Greek quotations available to the Orientalist and is therefore usually overlooked.
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³ Ib. p. 417.
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⁴ Quid de Graecis p. 17; he translates ‘deinde capta urbe Puspapuro’.
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Section 8 says that after the Yavanas have perished by the power of the Age seven kings will reign in Sāketa, and then with §§9 and 10 we come to the advent of the Sacas. I mention this because Jayaswal, by certain synchronisms with the Sunga kings which I am not competent to check, has reached the date of c. 100 B.C. for the coming of the Sacas, which is very much the dating I have adopted on quite other grounds.
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In §11 are mentioned five Mlechchha kings, greedy and powerful, who will destroy the four castes: (1) red-eyed Amlata, the invincible; (2) Gopalobhama, reigning one year; (3) Pushyaka the just, one year; (4) Savila the invincible, three years; (5) Viknayas a non-Brahman, three years. Jayaswal suggests that the first four are the Greek kings Amyntas, Apollophanes, Peucolaos, Zoilus. I think this most improbable. These Greek kings have nothing to do with the story of Pāṭaliputra; their coin-titles, except perhaps in the case of Peucolaos, do not agree with those given to the kings of §11;⁵ and Zoilus δίκαιος and Peucolaos are certainly, and Zoilus σωτήρ probably, earlier than Amyntas. These Mlechchha kings are well down in the Saca period; I fortunately do not have to guess who they are.
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⁵ On the coins Amyntas is νικάτωρ and the two kings named Zoilus are δίκαιος and σωτήρ (see Chap. VIII); none are ἀνίκητος. Peucolaos is δίκαιος and σωτήρ.
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Finally §6, which Kern so tantalisingly omitted. Lévi’s brief paraphrase in 1890¹ of this section, based I suppose on Kern’s indications, was ‘tunc pravae religioni addicti populi (Buddhistae scilicet) imperabunt’, and a section in this sense would have been invaluable to the historian; but Jayaswal’s full translation has nothing in it about ruling. What the section seems to mean is that the world will be turned upside down, distinctions of caste will vanish, and low-caste Sūdras will do many things which they have no business to do. The reference to Sūdras becoming Buddhists seems to me meaningless, as Buddhism knew no castes and equally accepted Brahman and beggar; it *may* be a way of saying that Buddhism will get the upper hand, but I do not so read it. But whether this picture is meant for the result of the Greek conquest at all may be doubtful; the section begins ‘In the end of the Yuga’, the Age, and it looks as if Druva might be right in transferring the whole section to the final period of destruction which will follow all the wars and close the Yuga. Also this section clumsily cuts in half the chronicle of the acts of the Yavanas and looks like an interpolation; it may be that the destruction of caste was a common-form accusation which could at any time be brought against any foreign ruler, as it is against the Mlechchhas in §11. One thing is clear: a Greek historian could only use §6 with the greatest reserve, and I am not using it.
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¹ *Quid de Graecis* p. 17. It will be understood that this need not necessarily have been Lévi’s opinion later.
Linked texts (2)
- Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit
- Vṛddhagārgīyajyotiṣa — Garga, Sanskrit