The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c6.s3.t17.12

c6.s3.t17.12

As this legend of Bakula is sufficient to prove that the famous city of Kausâmbi was situated on the Jumna, it now only remains to show that the distance of Kosam from Allahabad corresponds with that between Prayâg and Kosâmbi, as recorded by Hwen Thsang. Unfortunately this distance is differently stated in the life and in the travels of the Chinese pilgrim. In the former, the distance is given as 50 *li*, and in the latter as 500 *li*, whilst in the return journey to China, the pilgrim states that between Prayâg and Kosâmbi he travelled for *seven days* through a vast forest and over bare plains.* Now, as the village of Kosam is only 31 miles from the fort of Allahabad, the last statement would seem to preclude all possibility of its identification with the ancient Kosâmbi. But strange to say, it affords the most satisfactory proof of their identity; for the subsequent route of the pilgrim to Sankissa is said to have occupied one month, and as the whole distance from Prayâg to Sankissa is only 200 miles, the average length of the pilgrim's daily march was not more than 5½ miles. This slow progress is most satisfactorily accounted for, by the fact that the march from Prayâg to Sankissa was a religious procession, headed by the great king Harsha Vardhana of Kanoj, with a train of no less than 18 tributary kings, besides many thousands of Buddhist monks, and all the crowd of an Indian camp. According to this reckoning, the distance from Prayâg to Kosâmbi would be 38 miles, which corresponds very closely with the actual road distance as I found it. By one route on going to Kosam, I made the distance 37 miles, and by the return route 35 miles. The only probable explanation of Hwen Thsang's varying distances of 50 *li* and 500 *li* that occurs to me is, that as he converted the Indian *yojanas* into Chinese *li* at the rate of 40 *li* per yojana, or of 10 *li* per kos, he must have written 150 *li*, the equivalent of 15 kos, which is the actual distance across the fields for foot passengers from Kosam to the fort of Allahabad, according to the reckoning of the people of Kosam itself. But whether this explanation be correct or not, it is quite certain that the present Kosam stands on the actual site of the ancient *Kosâmbi*; for not only do the people themselves put forward this claim, but it is also distinctly stated in an inscription of the time of Akbar, which is recorded on the great stone pillar, still standing in the midst of the ruins, that this is *Kausâmbi-pura*.