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The Greeks in Bactria and India c31: Appendix 19. Pāndava-Pāndu and Pāndhya

The Greeks in Bactria and India c31

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Appendix 19. Pāndava-Pāndu and Pāndhya

c31.1

Ptolemy VII, 1, 6 calls the country between the Jhelum and the Ravi, with the cities of Bucephala, Iomousa, and Sāgala, ἡ Πανδοούων or Πανδαούων χώρα. The readings vary;¹ that of the best MS, X (Πανδόπων), is too corrupt to make anything of, and the others vary between Πανδούων, Πανδοούων² (which Renou prints), and Πανδαούων; the word is certainly Pāndava, the form last mentioned being an exact transliteration. The Latin versions give Pandanorum, Pandonorum, Pandorum, and Pandiana regio.

c31.2

¹ The readings throughout this Appendix are taken from the apparatus in L. Renou, *La géographie de Ptolémée, l’Inde*, 1925.

c31.3

² Γ has Πανδοούως, which is obviously a mistake for Πανδοούων.

c31.4

The location of the name, which is part of Ptolemy’s Hellenistic material (Chap. VI), shows that it can have nothing to do with the kingdom of the Pāndhya in the extreme south of the Indian peninsula, which moreover only really came within the purview of the West about the time of Augustus, though the two names have sometimes been confused, both in the Latin versions of Ptolemy and in modern writers. The Pāndhya are the Πανδíονες of Ptol. VII, 1, 89, with a king Pandion (ib. 1, 11 Πανδíονος χώρας) whose capital (1, 89) was Μόδουρα, the ‘southern Mathurā’. All the ll. without exception, both in 1, 11 and 1, 89, and whether Latin or Greek, retain either the i or the n or (more usually) both. Consequently, when the Latin versions of 1, 6 give the forms Pandanorum, Pandonorum, Pandiana regio, these readings have nothing to do with the name Pāndava, but are a confusion with, and are taken from, the Πανδíονες; Pandiana regio explicitly occurs in 1, 11 as a Latin rendering of Πανδíονος χώρα. The only Latin reading therefore of 1, 6 which belongs there is the form Pandorum; this is the reading of the majority of the Latin versions, and implies a Greek form Πάνδοι or perhaps Πάνδαι, which would represent the name Pāndu.

c31.5

The Pāndya of southern India are mentioned in other classical writers.³ Megasthenes (Arr. Ind. 8), who calls their country Pandaea (Πάνδαια), had heard dimly of them—that the Pāndya and not the Pāndus are meant is shown by the reference to their wealth of pearls—but had nothing else to tell about them except a foolish and unpleasant legend; the reference to this legend shows that they are also the gens Pandae of Pliny VI, 76, though he separates them from the king Pandion (ib. 105); probably Pandae here ought to be Pandaea, for Solinus, who usually copies Pliny, gives Pandaea gens (52, 15). That there has been a good deal of confusion is obvious. But there is one other notice which has been overlooked and which almost certainly refers, not to the Pāndya, but to the people of Ptolemy VII, 1, 6 (Pāndava-Pāndus). Dionysius in the Bassarica, in what survives of his list of the Indian peoples who followed Deriades (corresponding to book XXVI of Nonnus, who substantially copied him), has a name Πάνδαι,¹ which is not in Nonnus. Dionysius' date is quite uncertain² and he may have been earlier or later than Ptolemy; but all his names must *ex hypothesi* belong to northern India, like those of Nonnus, for Bacchus' conquest of India is merely a reflection of Alexander's, and with one exception (Πάνδαι apart) all his genuine known names, like those of Nonnus, are taken from the Alexander story. But he has *one* Hellenistic name, Kaspeiroi,³ which Ptolemy also has; so the possibility of a real name outside the Alexander story is not ruled out. Now we have seen that the majority of the Latin versions of Ptol. VII, 1, 6 imply the existence of a name Πάνδοι or perhaps Πάνδαι; and this name is the Πάνδαι of Dionysius, whether he took it from Ptolemy or whether both ultimately go back to a common source.

c31.6

³ Renou’s Index attaches these passages to Πανδοούοι instead of to Πανδíονες, but does not cite Dionysius.

c31.7

¹ Stephanus *s.v.* = fr. 21 in Müller, *GGM* II p. xxvii. The new fragments of Dionysius (*Arch. f. Pap.* VII p. 3; identified as Dionysius by R. Pleydell, *Phil. Woch.* XLIX, 1929, col. 1101) add nothing to the names of peoples already known.

c31.8

² Christ-Schmid⁶ II, 2, 1924, p. 672 can only say between A.D. 100 and 300.

c31.9

³ Steph. *s.v.* = fr. 16. See pp. 238, 487 n. 5.

c31.10

We get then in northern India two versions of the name of the same people, Πανδοῦοι or Πανδαοῦοι and Πάνδαι, connected by the form Πανδοῦοι (Pandui of one of the Ptolemy maps⁴); and these Πανδαοῦοι-Πάνδαι have nothing to do with the Pāndya of southern India but are the Pāndava-Pāndus of the Mahābhārata. Ptolemy must be wrong in fact in making the country between the Jhelum and the Ravi belong to this people (who in the epic are near Delhi), for, in the period when Greeks are concerned, the country between the Jhelum and the Chenab was Paurava country and that between the Chenab and the Ravi belonged to the Madras (p. 170); but that is not the point. The point is that the Pāndava-Pāndus do not appear in later history; they belong solely to the epic. The name therefore came to Ptolemy and Dionysius from some Greek who knew the Mahābhārata (see pp. 380 *sq.*); this was its ultimate source, and they could not have got it in any other way.

c31.11

⁴ After Venetus 516 (R), in Renou. The location, on the sources of the Jhelum and the Chenab, does not agree with Ptolemy's text; but I only want the spelling.

c31.12

The possibility of a connection, legendary or otherwise, between the historical Pāndyas and the Pāndavas of the epic need not be discussed.

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