Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c20.25

c20.25

There had been a time, when the name Śarāvatī, ‘[the river] with reeds,’ was applied to a course of water, which separated the whole of Aryan India into two parts. Pāṇini expressly teaches the formation of the name.³ The memory of a frontier indicated by the river Śarāvatī is curiously preservd in a celebrated episode of the Buddhist tradition. When Koṭi-karṇa goes to consult the Buddha on the limits of the country of strict observance, the Lord fixes the southern limit at Śarāvatī: "In the South there is a city named Śarāvatī, and beyond that is a river named Śarāvatī. There is the boundary (दक्षिणेन शरावती नाम नगरी, तस्याः परेण शरावती नाम नदी, सोऽन्तः)." Such is at least the tradition of the Mūlasarvāstivādin school in the original text gathered by the compilers of the *Divyāvadāna*.¹ The editors of the text, Cowell and Neil, cite two variants of the name, furnished by some manuscripts of inferior value: *Sarvāvatī* (Ms. A) and *Savārāvatī* (Ms. B). It is this last reading which has been followed by Yi-tsing, the author (responsible, if not actual) of the Mūlasarvāstivādin *Vinaya*. He has rendered the name of the city and the river as *Che-pa(or fo)-lo-fa-ti* which supposes an original *Śavaravatī*.² Yi-tsing reproduces the same form of the name in another treatise of the same *Vinaya*, viz. the *Mūlasarvāstivāda Ekaśatakarman*,³ wherein the same episode is repeated in an abridged from. The reading *Śavaravatī* is undoubtedly due to an attempt at correction to substitute for the unknown Śarāvatī a name which evoked the idea of the savage tribes of the Śavaras who inhabited the central plateau on the southern border of the basin of the Ganges. The corresponding passage of the *Vinaya* of the Sarvāstivādins is known to us only from the Chinese version due to Puṇyatara, which appears, owing to the fault of the translator or of the original, in a state of inextricable confusion. After having given Mount Uśīra (Yeou-chi-lo) as the northern limit, it adds: 'beyond that mountain, and not far off, there is the tree So-lo by the source with rushes'.⁴ The 'source with rushes' seems to be the equivalent of Śarāvatī, '[the water] which has some reeds,' and the tree So-lo=Sārā or Sālā seems to go back to the same original. Through and through, this *Vinaya* gives 'the river of the Bamboos', as the limit in the North-East which too evokes the Śarāvatī. Such as it is, the passage is not then utilisable. The Pali *Vinaya* of the Sthavira school substitutes *Salalavatī* (with the variants *Sallavatī* and *Salilavatī*, though the evidence of *Jātaka*, I, 49, and the *Sumaṅgalavilāsinī*, I, 173, confirms the reading *Salala°*) for *Śrāvatī*. It makes that river the boundary in the south-east : *puratthima-dakkhiṇāya disāya Salalavatī nāma nadī*.¹ The direction of the south-east in the Pali work partly agrees with the direction of the south in the *Vinaya* of the Mūlasarvāstivādins. It is in absolute contradiction of the Brāhmaṇical conception of the *Śrāvatī* which, separating the North and the East, must flow to the north-west of the country of the Middle, *i.e.* Madhya-deśa, which is the land of strict observance.