The Greeks in Bactria and India c31.4

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.