Geography of Early Buddhism c6.31

c6.31

It is thus obvious that the Chinese system of five divisions was directly borrowed, as Cunningham rightly points out, from the Hindu Brahmanical system as described in the Purānas and the Kāvyamīmānsā. The only difference is that the Antaravedi of the Kāvyamīmānsa was replaced by the ‘Middle Country’ (i.e. the Majjhimadesa of early Pāli texts or Mid-India of the Chinese) which included the western portion of the Prācya country or Eastern India.