The Greeks in Bactria and India c31.10

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.