The Geography of the Puranas c11.s1.2

c11.s1.2

This was the 'Middle Country' of the Epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, as well as of the Purāṇas. ‘The Great Battle’ was fought on its north-western margins, the land of Kṛṣṇa’s early exploits was its western border, the home of Rāma was in Ayodhyā and the centre of Brāhmaṇism was at Vārāṇasī. The Buddha and his creed were born here, and it was the appropriate centre of the empire of Aśoka, traces of his Pāṭaliputra still surviving in the subsoil of Patna. It was the Hindustān of the Muslim historians and Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, Jaunpur and Lucknow were medieval capitals. It has always been the heart of India, typically Indian and securely Indian. Central India was almost as safe a bulwark as the Himālayas; both the north-western highlands (beyond Panjāb) and the south-eastern ocean were remote, and the lands of approach from both were difficult and unattractive. Its security helped to make it, in a ‘land of sanctuaries’, the richest in shrines; its nodality helped to make it the home of Hindi, the nearest approach amongst the Indian languages—to a *lingua franca*; and it has much fundamental unity—in structure and relief, in climate and its vegetational controls, in the density and occupation of its people.²