Geography of Early Buddhism c6.14

c6.14

Early Buddhist sources are, however, silent about the size and shape of India, though the ancient Indians had a very accurate knowledge of the true shape and size of their country. Alexander's informants gathered their knowledge from the people of the country, and described India as a rhomboid or unequal quadrilateral in shape, with the Indus on the west, the mountains on the north and the sea on the east and south³.... At a somewhat later date the shape of India is described in the Mahābhārata as an equilateral triangle which was divided into four smaller equal triangles⁴.... Another description of India is that of the Navakhaṇḍa or nine divisions which was first described by the astronomers, Parāsara and Varāhamihira, and was afterwards adopted by the authors of several of the Purāṇas.⁵ According to this description, India of the times had the shape of an eight-petalled lotus encircling a round central division. 'In the geography of Ptolemy, however, the true shape of India is completely distorted, and its most striking feature, the acute angle formed by the meeting of the two coasts of the Peninsula at Cape Comorin is changed to a single coast line running almost straight from the mouth of the Indus to the mouth of the Ganges.’¹ For a Buddhist conception of the shape of India, we have to turn to the Mahāgovinda Suttanta (DN., II, p. 235), and to the itinerary of Yuan Chwang, the celebrated Chinese traveller. The former authority states that the great earth (i.e. India) is broad on the north whereas in the south it is ‘Sakaṭamukham,’ i.e. has the form of the front portion of a cart, and is divided into seven equal parts. The description of the shape of India as given in the Mahāgovinda Suttanta thus corresponds to a great extent to the actual shape of the country which is broad on the north having the Himalayas extending from east to west and ‘Sakaṭamukham,’ i.e. triangular towards the south. The description of the shape as we read in the Mahāgovinda Suttanta agrees wonderfully with that given by the Chinese author Fah-Kai-lih-to. According to him, the country in shape is broad towards the north and narrow towards the south, a description to which he humorously adds the ‘people’s faces are of the same shape as the country’.² The next important information in this connection is derived from Yuan Chwang’s itinerary; and it is interesting to compare his description with those just noted. He describes the shape of the country as a half-moon with the diameter or broadside to the north, and the narrow end to the south. This description, however, is just like what Yuan Chwang’s conception could possibly be; for he did not visit the south; in fact, he hardly crossed the Vindhyas. His travels were thus mainly confined to the north of India which may be said to resemble a half-moon with the Vindhyas as its base and the Himalayas spreading its two arms on two sides as the diameter.