Historical Geography of Ancient India c5.s3.11.3

c5.s3.11.3

The Brahmanical definition of Āryāvarta excludes the greater portion of the land of the Ṛgvedic Aryans, which, however, is included in the Uttarāpatha. The entire Indus Valley, which was the cradle of the Ṛgvedic culture and civilization, is included in the Uttarāpatha according to the Kāvyamīmāṃsā. The Dharmasūtras of Vasiṣṭha and Baudhāyana and the Dharmaśāstra of Manu point out that the Uttarāpatha lies to the west of the place where the river Sarasvatī disappears. The Buddhist northern division is also to be located to the west of the Brāhmaṇa district of Thūna or Thāneśwar. The Uttarāpatha mentioned in the Hāthigumphā Inscription of Khāravela probably signifies the region including Mathurā in its south-eastern extension up to Magadha. The Uttarāpatha may be supposed to have been originally a great trade-route—the northern high road, so to say, which extended from Sāvatthī to Takkasilā in Gandhāra. It is not at all improbable that the Uttarāpatha in Pali literature might have also signified the entire northern India from Aṅga in the east to Gandhāra in the north-west and from the Himalaya in the north to the Vindhyas in the south. Bāṇabhaṭṭa, the author of the Harṣacarita, seems to include within Uttarāpatha the western part of the Uttara Pradeśa, the Punjab and the North-Western Frontier Provinces of India and Pakistan.