Tribes in Ancient India c16.2

c16.2

The earliest mention of the Trigarttas to which a fairly definite date can be assigned is made in the *Aṣṭādhyāyī* of Pāṇini, the celebrated grammarian, who flourished in the middle of the sixth century B.C. at the latest. Besides a direct reference to the tribe or country of the Trigarttas in a certain Sūtra,¹ there are indirect references to the tribe in at least two other Sūtras, according to the scholiast on Pāṇini. In ‘*na prācya Bhargādi Yaudheyādibhyaḥ*’ (Sūtra IV, 1, 178) *Bhargādi* is said to stand for the regions (*janapada*) of the Bhargas, Karūṣas, Kaśmīras, and Śālvas, whereas *Yaudheyādi* is taken to include the country or tribe of the Trigarttas as well as of the Yaudheyas (see chap. on Yaudheyas). The other reference to ‘*Yaudheyādi*’ is in Sūtra, V, 3, 117, which mentions the Yaudheyas (and Trigarttas implicitly) as forming an ‘*Āyudha-jīvī Saṃgha*’. We may infer, then, that the Trigarttas, like the Yaudheyas, were a Kṣatriya tribal republic depending mainly on arms. This close association of Trigarttas and Yaudheyas probably means that their territories were contiguous.