Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s5.t4: Foreign Notices down to the Second Century A.D.

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s5.t4

Language
English

Foreign Notices down to the Second Century A.D.

v1.c6.s5.t4.1

If we omit the obscure allusions in the Bible to Ophir or Sophir which Cunningham seems to place on the Gulf of Cambay, but which really may point to Sauvīra or Sovīra in the lower Indus valley, the Persians and Greeks are the earliest foreign peoples to leave accounts of India. But the Achaemenid inscriptions of Persia (sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) and the contemporaneous works of early Greek writers like Hekataios and Herodotus, while showing acquaintance with Gandhāra and the Indus valley as far as the desert of Rājputāna, do not seem to make any clear mention of the region south of the Tapti valley. Some of the ‘wool-bearing’ trees that figure in the narrative of Herodotus may have reference to the silk cotton trees so graphically described by Bāṇa in his *Kādambarī* in connexion with the forest stretching from the Godāvarī to the Pampā. But this is not a necessary inference. Onesikritos, the pilot of Alexander (325 B.C.), mentions the island of Taprobane (Tāmraparṇī, Ceylon) and was presumably acquainted with portions of southern India. Megasthenes is quoted by Arrian as conveying detailed information about the Indus and the Ganges with their tributaries. No notice, however, is taken of the rivers of the Deccan unless we find a reference to the Tuṅgaveṇā or the Tuṅgabhadrā in the river ‘Tagabena’ mentioned in a doubtful fragment.² A knowledge of the Far South of India on the part of Megasthenes may, however, be inferred from his allusions to that part of south India where the daughter of Herakles (Pandaia) reigned as queen. We have also a reference to pearl fishery, apparently in this region.³ There can hardly be any doubt that the realm of the ‘Pandae’ (Pāṇḍyas) in the Far South was known to the famous Greek ambassador. But if he knew anything about the tribes or rivers of the Deccan proper the information has not been transmitted to us by his epitomizers.

v1.c6.s5.t4.2

² McCrindle, *Megasthenes and Arrian* (1926), p. 120.

v1.c6.s5.t4.3

³ Ibid., 207.

v1.c6.s5.t4.4

Some additional details are available from Pliny (died A.D. 79) who speaks of several tribes known to have lived in the Deccan proper. Among these must be included the Asmagi (Aśmakas on the Godāvarī), the Calingae ‘nearest the sea’ (doubtless identical with the Kaliṅgas of the eastern coast), the Andarae or the Andhras, occupying the deltas of the Godāvarī, and the Kṛṣṇā, the Molindae, Uberae, Suari, and Modubae probably corresponding to the Pulindas, Śavaras, and the Mutibas of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa.

v1.c6.s5.t4.5

We have some important details about the Andhras and the Kaliṅgas. The first-mentioned people are described as a powerful race, which possesses numerous villages, and thirty towns defended by walls and towers, and which supplies its king with an army of 100,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and 1,000 elephants.

v1.c6.s5.t4.6

As to the Kaliṅgas they seem to have been divided into several branches. The Calingae proper, who probably constituted the main branch, were ‘nearest the sea’, that is to say, they dwelt in the coastal region as we learn from Indian evidence. The windows of the capital city in the days of Kālidāsa looked out on the sea, and the deep roar of the waves drowned the sound of trumpets. One passage of Pliny includes them among the tribes ‘which dwell by the Ganges’. Another passage has been taken to mean that they were connected with the Gangaridae of lower Bengal. But Monahan points out that an alternative reading would make the Gangaridae and the Kaliṅga people quite distinct. Pliny may also have confounded the valley of the Bhāgīrathī Gaṅgā in northern India with that of the Gautamī Gaṅgā or the Godāvarī.

v1.c6.s5.t4.7

The royal city of the Calingae is styled Parthalis which probably answers to the city of Potali mentioned in the Assaka Jātaka as the capital of Assaka (Aśmaka). The Chulla-Kaliṅga Jātaka refers to victories won by the Assakas over the Kaliṅgas which may have led to the foundation of a united realm with its capital at Potali. Besides the capital, Pliny mentions a Cape Calingon, and the town of Dandagula which doubtless corresponds to the Dantakūra of the Mahābhārata and Dantapura of other texts. Dandagula is mentioned as lying 625 miles from the mouth of the Ganges. It has been identified with a place near Chicacole near the mouth of the river Lāṅguliyā.

v1.c6.s5.t4.8

Besides the Calingae proper Pliny mentions the Maccocalingae and the Modogalingae. In the epics, the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, we find references to the Matsya-Kaliṅgas and the Madra-Kaliṅgas¹ which may represent the two tribes mentioned by the classical writer. It has, however, been suggested by some² that Modogalingae should be analysed as Modaga (Telugu Mūḍuga, three)+linga = Triliṅga or Telugu country, or as Modo = Mūḍu = three+galiṅga = Kaliṅga, i.e. Trikaliṅga. In other words the term is taken by these writers to correspond to Triliṅga (Andhra country), or to Trikaliṅga (parts of Mahānadī valley and Vizagapatam district), preferably the latter. It is difficult to come to a final conclusion until further evidence shall be forthcoming. The Matsya-Kalingas may have occupied the Oḍḍavādi country in the Vijagapatam region mentioned in the Dibbida plates.¹

v1.c6.s5.t4.9

¹ Rāmāyaṇa, iv, 41, 10; Jambukhaṇḍa, ix, 42; Maccocalinga is something taken to be equivalent to Mekala (JBORS, 1928, 540).

v1.c6.s5.t4.10

² Lévi, Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India (trans. Bagchi), p. 79.

v1.c6.s5.t4.11

¹ Ep. Ind., v, 108.

v1.c6.s5.t4.12

Evidence of a commercial connexion between the islanders of Ceylon and the ‘Kalingai’ is furnished by another classical writer.²

v1.c6.s5.t4.13

² McCrindle, op. cit. 175.

v1.c6.s5.t4.14

A distinct advance in knowledge of the coast of the Deccan is noticeable in the *Periplus of the Erythrean Sea*, the work of an anonymous Greek navigator, which is almost contemporaneous with the work of Pliny. It knows the regional name ‘Dachinabades’ (*Dakṣiṇāpatha*) and mentions numerous market-towns on the western seaboard of the Deccan. The inland country is also described though not so fully as the coast. We find reference to the great cities of ‘Paethana’ and Tagara identified respectively with Paiṭhaṇ on the banks of the Godāvarī in the Aurangābād district of the Hyderabad State, and Ter (Thair) in Osmānābād district, about ninety-five miles south-east of Paiṭhaṇ. Mention is also made of many arid regions and great mountains and all kinds of wild beasts—leopards, tigers, elephants, enormous serpents, hyenas, and baboons of many sorts. This reference to the animals possibly points to the existence of extensive forest-tracts in the Deccan during the first century A.D.

v1.c6.s5.t4.15

The great mountains referred to by the *Periplus* are not specifically named. For these we have to turn to the ‘Outline of Geography’ (*Geographike Huphegesis*) of Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) written about the middle of the second century A.D. We have in this work allusions to the Oroudian (Vaidurya, apparently the northern part of the Sahya) and the Adeisathros (south Sahyādri—a case of metathesis) mountains, sources respectively of the Maisolos (the Kṛṣṇā) and the Khaberos or the Kāveri. It is clear that we have here reference to parts of the Western Ghāṭs and some connected ranges. Ptolemy, however, had no first-hand information of the country. He mentions the Goaris and the Benda, apparently the Godāvarī and the Bhīmā,³ bifurcations of a river styled the Nanagouna, apparently the Taptī, which is represented as taking its rise from the Ouindion or Vindhya range along with the Namados or the Narmadā. Ptolemy also wrongly represents the Western Ghāṭs as protruding into the interior of the country, instead of running parallel with the coast. He not only shortens and dislocates the Godāvarī and the Bhīmā but makes them flow in a direction different from that which should properly be assigned to them.

v1.c6.s5.t4.16

³ Some identify the Goaris and Benda with the Vaitarna and the Bhiwandi rivers respectively (McCrindle, *Ancient India as described by Ptolemy* (1927), pp. 41-2). But it is difficult to believe that Ptolemy omits all references to the Godāvarī and the Bhīmā which will be the case if their identification with the Goaris and the Benda be regarded as unacceptable.

v1.c6.s5.t4.17

The geographer places a Mount Maiandros in India beyond the Ganges. In all likelihood we have here a reference to the Mahendra-parvata in the Trans-Gangetic Peninsula referred to in Cambodian epigraphs. But the possibility that it alludes to the Eastern Ghāṭs is not entirely excluded, because Ptolemy had in several cases ‘carried by error to the east of the mouths of the Ganges an itinerary really directed to the south-west of the delta’. The question, however, ‘must remain open pending further discoveries’.

v1.c6.s5.t4.18

The *Periplus* draws a distinction between Dachinabades (Dakshiṇāpatha, Deccan) and ‘Damirica’, i.e. the Tamil country lying farther to the south. It also refers to Masalia (the Masulipatam tract or the Andhra country) on the east coast as a separate region. Similar distinctions are noticeable in the account of Ptolemy. The geographer of the second century, however, calls the country round ‘Baithan’ and ‘Tagara’ not Dachinabades but Ariake. This last name is known to the *Periplus*, but used in a restricted sense to mean only the country near the Gulf of Barygaza (Broach).

v1.c6.s5.t4.19

The word Ariake has been taken by various scholars to correspond to ‘Aparāntika’, western border, and ‘Arya-nāḍu’, Aryan country, respectively. The identification with Aparāntika does not seem to be quite plausible in the case of Ptolemy’s Ariake as the region in question included not only the Koṅkaṇ coast from Sopāra (north of Bombay) to Nitra (possibly the Pigeon, Netram, or Nitrān Island off the coast of north Kanara or on the river Netravati in south Kanara), but the inland territory stretching from Paiṭhaṇ on the Godāvarī to Banaouasei or Bavavāsi in north Kanara. Tagara (Ter) in the Hyderabad State, Hippokoura (probably near Kolhāpur), and Modogoulla, possibly Mudgal, are all located in this country. The equation of the region with Ārya-nāḍu is less open to objection. The expression means ‘land of the Aryans’ which is a suitable designation for the tract of the Deccan inhabited by Aryan-speaking peoples as distinguished from the land of the Tamils. Varāhamihira mentions a territory called Aryaka in south India along with Kāñchī (near Madras), Maruchipaṭṭana (Muziris on the Malabar coast), Siṃhala (Ceylon), and Ṛishabha in the Pāṇḍya country. We have here possibly the Sanskrit equivalent of the term Ariake. It is, however, to be noted that Aryaka was a comparatively small territory distinguished not only from the Dravidian lands in the Far South but also from Banavāsi, Koṅkaṇ, &c., which must have been included within Ptolemy’s Ariake.

v1.c6.s5.t4.20

The geographer divides Ariake into two parts. To the northern portion he gives the name Ariake Sadinon. This is taken to extend from Soupara or Sopāra, six miles to the north of modern Bassein on the Bombay coast, to Baltipatna or Balepatna, the Palaepatmae of the *Periplus* and Baladevapattana of the *Brihatsaṃitā*, identified by some with Baleyavaṭṭana of inscriptions situated in the Malabar district,¹ and by others, with greater plausibility, with Valipattana in south Koṅkaṇ.² In the interior the country stretched as far as Baithan or Paiṭhaṇ on the Godāvarī. In the *Bombay Gazetteer*³ the name Sadinoi is regarded as possibly a corruption of Sātavāhana.

v1.c6.s5.t4.21

¹ *Ep. Ind.*, xix, 32. The identification would be unexceptionable had not the place been too far to the south.

v1.c6.s5.t4.22

² Ibid., iii, 294-5; Fleet, *Kanarese Districts*, 537.

v1.c6.s5.t4.23

³ I, i, 540.

v1.c6.s5.t4.24

The other part of Ariake, styled ‘Ariake Andron Peiraton’ (Ariake of the pirates, or, as some ingeniously suggest, of the Andrabhṛtyas), covered the coast from Mandagara, identified with Mandangaḍh south of the Bānkot creek, to Nitra in the extreme south of the Bombay Presidency or on the Netravatī in south Kanara.

v1.c6.s5.t4.25

Quite distinct from the two Ariakes was another territory, styled Masalia by the *Periplus* and Maisolia by Ptolemy, which not only included the district at the mouth of the Maisolos, or the Kṛṣṇā, but stretched as far as Kalliga (possibly some part of Kaliṅga), Bardamana (probably to be identified with the Vardhamānapura of a Hanamkoṇḍa inscription, now represented by Vardhanapet or by Waddamarri in the Hyderabad State), and Korounkala which recalls Waraṅgal. In other words, Masalia was virtually identical with the country of Andhra or Teliṅgāna. The metropolis was, in the second century A.D., at Pityndra, which has been identified by Sylvain Lévi with Pihuṇḍa mentioned in the Jain *Uttarādhyayana Sūtra* and with Pithuḍa occurring in the Hāthigumphā inscription of Khāravela. The exact location of the city is uncertain. It is, however, distinguished from Benagouron, possibly Veṅgipura. The identification with Dhaññakaḍa, Dhānyakaṭaka, or Dharaṇikoṭ, near Amarāvatī in the Guntur district, suggested by some scholars, or with some place in its neighbourhood, deserves attention.

v1.c6.s5.t4.26

Ptolemy draws a distinction between Maisolia and a city called Trilingon or Triglypton which he locates in India beyond the Ganges. As pointed out by Lévi the name may have reference to Talaing in Burma. But in view of the errors of information that disfigure certain parts of Ptolemy’s narrative, the connexion of the city in question with the Telugu country, where he locates the point of departure (*apheterion*) for ships bound for lower Burma and the Malay Islands, is not entirely excluded. It is to be remembered that Mount Maiandros (Mahendra) and the metropolis Tosalei (which recalls Tosali, the Kaliṅgan city mentioned in the Aśokan inscriptions) are also placed or misplaced in Farther India.

v1.c6.s5.t4.27

Some writers find evidence of intercourse between South India and China in the second century B.C. in Pan Kou’s reference to the realm of ‘Hou-ang-tche’ which they seek to equate with Kāñchī near Madras. Apart from the uncertainty of the proposed identification it may be pointed out that in regard to the second century B.C. the testimony of Pankou has not the weight of contemporary evidence, and must be regarded at best as but a tradition, the credibility of which should await further discoveries.

Cites (9)