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Tribes in Ancient India c76: Chapter LXXIV. The Pāriyātras

Tribes in Ancient India c76

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Chapter LXXIV. The Pāriyātras

c76.2

It is doubtful whether Pāriyātras, or Pāripātras as they were also called,¹ can ethnologically be classed as a tribe or people, to be distinguished from the Vindhyas with whom they lived contiguously, or from other peoples who had their habitat in and around the same locality. The Purāṇas, however, always enumerate them as a distinct people, associated with the Pāripātra mountains, from which they evidently took their name.

c76.3

¹ Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, 58, 8.

c76.4

As already noticed, there are two variant forms of the mountainous region inhabited by this people, as given in the Purāṇas: Pāriyātra and Pāripātra; Pāripātra seems to be the more usual reading, though Pāriyātra occurs not infrequently. In the topographical list of the Purāṇas, the Pāriyātra or Pāripātra hills are mentioned as one of the seven hill ranges together forming the Kulācalas or Kulaparvatas, ‘family mountains’, i.e. mountain ranges or systems. These are the Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya, Śuktimat, Ṛkṣa, Vindhya and Pāripātra.² The Bhāgavata, Vāyu, Mārkaṇḍeya and Padma Purāṇas and the Bhīṣmaparvan of the Mahābhārata add a list of inferior mountains to these seven.³ The seven principal hill ranges are similarly enumerated by all the Puranic authorities, and their situation is easily determined by the rivers which are listed as flowing from them.

c76.5

² E.g., Viṣṇupurāṇa, Wilson's Ed., Bk. II, Chap. III, pp. 127-8; also Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, 57, 10; Mahābhārata, VI, 9, 11.

c76.6

³ Bhāgavatapurāṇa, V, 19, 16ff; Mārkaṇḍeya P., LVII, 12ff.; Mbh., Bhīṣmaparvan, śl. 317-378. ‘As subordinate portions of them are thousands of mountains; some unheard of, though lofty, extensive and abrupt; and others, better known, though of lesser elevation, and inhabited by people of low stature.’

c76.7

Pāripātra in particular is always associated with the Vindhyas. Vindhya, as is well known, is the general name of the chain of hills that stretches across Central India, dividing India into its well-defined and natural north and south divisions; but it is evident from the Puranic list and the situations of the hills mentioned in it that in the Purāṇas the name Vindhya is generally restricted to the eastern division of the long range of hills. According to the Vāyu-purāṇa, however, it is the part south of the river Narmadā, or the Sātpurā range of hills. Pāripātra constitutes the northern and western portion of the Vindhyas, and may be said to include the range of hills now known as the Aravalli.

c76.8

The *Viṣṇupurāṇa*, for example, mentions Pāriyātra or Pāripātra as situated on the west, associated with the semi-mythical mount Meru. ‘Niṣadha and Pāriyātra are the limitative mountains on the west (of Meru), stretching, like those on the east, between the Nila and Niṣadha ranges.’¹

c76.9

¹ *Viṣṇupurāṇa*, 2, II, Wilson's Ed., p. 123.

c76.10

The list of the seven *Kulācalas* seems to have been known in some form or other to Ptolemy as early as the first half of the second century A.D.; for he also specifies seven ranges of hills, although his list does not correspond with the Puranic list, with the exception of the Ouindion, identical with the Vindhyas, and the Ouxenton, identical with the Ṛkṣa (Vant).² Wilson thought that Adeisathron might be identified with the Pāriyātra³; but this has been found to be untenable, and modern research tends to connect the range with the Western Ghāṭs, or, more properly, ‘that section of the Western Ghāṭs which is immediately to the north of the Coimbatore gap, as it is there the Kāverī rises’.⁴

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² *Ptolemy's Ancient India*, by McCrindle, S. N. Majumdar's Ed., pp. 75-81.

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³ *Viṣṇu Purāṇa*, Wilson's Ed., 2, III, p. 128.

c76.13

⁴ McCrindle, *Ptolemy's Ancient India*, p. 80.

c76.14

According to Rājaśekhara, all seven *Kulaparvatas* were comprised within the Kumārī-dvīpa whose southernmost limit, according to the *Skandapurāṇa* was the Pāriyātra.⁵ In the period of the Brahmanical and Buddhist *Sūtras* too, Pāriyātra was the southernmost limit of contemporary Āryāvarta, while the eastern and western boundaries were formed by Kālakavana (probably near Allahabad) and Adarśana and Thūna (on the Sarasvatī) respectively.⁶

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⁵ *Skandapurāṇa*, Kumārika-khaṇḍa, Chap. 39, 113: ‘Pāriyātrasya caivārvāk khaṇḍam Kaumārikam smṛtam’.

c76.16

⁶ *Dharma-sūtra* of Bodhāyana,-I, I, 25. ‘*Prāgadarśanāt pratyak Kālakavanād dakṣiṇena Himavantam udak Pāriyātram etad Āryāvartam*’.

c76.17

The Purāṇas refer to a number of rivers issuing from the Pāriyātra, e.g. the Mahī, the Varṇāśā or Parṇāśā, the Śiprā, the Carmaṇvatī, the Sindhu and the Vetravatī. The Mahī is well known; Varṇāśā or Parṇāśā has been identified by Pargiter with the modern Banās, a tributary of the Carmaṇvatī (Chambal). Sindhu is Kālī Sindhu, a tributary of the Carmaṇvatī, and Vetravatī is modern Betwa. Śiprā is the famous river immortalised in Sanskrit classical poetry. The *Viṣṇupurāṇa* mentions yet another river issuing from the Pāripātra mountains, namely, the Vedasmṛti⁷ (or Vedasmṛta according to the *Mahābhārata*).⁸

c76.18

⁷ Wilson's Ed., p. 130 (2, III).

c76.19

⁸ *Bhīṣmaparvan*.

c76.20

The Vāyupurāṇa mentions the Kārūṣas and the Mālavas as dwelling along the Pāripātra mountains.¹ The Nasik Praśasti of Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi seems to associate the Kukuras also with the Pāriyātra.² This is probably the earliest epigraphic mention of the mountains. A more elaborate mention is made in the Mandasor Inscription of Yaśodharman and Viṣṇuvardhana,³ where a large tract of land is described as ‘containing many countries, which lie between the Vindhya (mountains), from the slopes of the summits of which there flows the pale mass of the water of (the river) Revā, and the mountain Pāriyātra, on which trees are bent down in (their) frolicsome leaps by the long-tailed monkeys (and which stretches) up to the ocean’.

c76.21

¹ Wilson’s Ed., p. 133 (2, III). Mālukas and Mārukas are variant readings for Kārūṣas. See also Kūrma P., Pūrva Chap. 7, which seems to include the countries of Aparānta, Saurāṣṭra, Śūdra, Malapa (Mālava), Mālaka and others within the Pāriyātra area.

c76.22

² Bṛhatsaṃhitā, XIV, 4.

c76.23

³ C.I.I., Vol. III, p. 154.

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