[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Historical geography](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography) › [Tribes in Ancient India](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.law-1943) › c19.3 # Tribes in Ancient India c19.3 Tribes in Ancient India c19.3 - **Language:** English ### [c19.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.law-1943.c19.3) According to the \*Mahābhārata\* (\*Sabhāparvan\*, Chap. 51), the Ābhīras were located in the western division of India (Aparāntaka). The Epic evidence is supported by that of the author of the \*Periplus of the Erythrean Sea\*, a Greek record of commercial geography of the first century B.C., as well as by Ptolemy, the Greek geographer who flourished in the middle of the second century A.D. Later epigraphic evidence also definitely places the Ābhīras in the west, but the Purāṇas seem to locate them in the northern division or Uttarāpatha. ‘The fact seems to be’, says Wilson, ‘that the people along the Indus, from Surat to the Himalayas, are often regarded as either western or northern nations, according to the topographical position of the writer’.¹ A more definite location of the tribe is provided by a śloka in the \*Mahābhārata\*, which places them in West Rajputana, ‘where the Sarasvatī disappears’.² - [Previous: c19.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.law-1943.c19.2) - [Next: c19.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.law-1943.c19.4) - [Up: c19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.law-1943.c19) ## Linked texts (1) - [Mahābhārata](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.mahabharata.vyasa.2.51) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.law-1943.c19.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.geography.law-1943.c19.3) · Pramāṇa