The Geography of the Puranas c9.3

c9.3

The mountains forming the boundaries of Bhadravaṛṣa, as mentioned earlier are the Nila and the Niṣadha. The Nila is the Tienshen range and the Purāṇics extended it further towards the east to include the Bagdu Ula, the Barkol and the Karlik Tagh ranges in order to give it a parallelism with the southern range, the Niṣadha. As mentioned earlier the Niṣadha or rather its eastern extension is the Kunlun range, while, as will be seen later, the Devakūṭa, from all descriptions coincides with the Nan Shan and the Tsing-Ling ranges which run across China very nearly to the sea, since it is expressly mentioned in the Purāṇas that 'the lower part of this Devakūṭa mountain spreads up to the sea.'¹