Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c20.5

c20.5

The catalogue of the Yakṣas in the *Mahāmāyūrī*³ follows an exactly identical order : “at Avanti the Yakṣa is Priyadarśana ; at Gonardana Śikhaṇḍin ; at Vaidiśa Añjalipriya.” Avanti is another name of Ujjayinī; *Vaidisa* is the Sanskrit form of Pali *Vedisa*. The name of the intermediate locality is fluctuating in the tradition of the manuscripts. I have reproduced the reading of the Mss O and H in the text; but D reads *Gonardane*. Of the three Chinese versions, S transcribes *Kiu-kia-t’o-na*, which supposes an original *Gogardana*; Y translates *You-hi*, ‘Bull-joy’, which restores *Gonandana*; A translates *You-ts’oei*, ‘Bull-compress’, that is, *Gomardana*. The Tibetan translator has followed the same text (*Ba-laṅ ’joms*, ‘Bull-compress’). The evidence of the *Suttanipāta* comes to confirm the reading *Gonardana*, because it is evident that, in both cases, the question is of the same locality. The Pali *Gonaddha* may be restored, without difficulty, to Sanskrit *Gonarda*. The aspiration, introduced subsidiarily in the Pali form, is a phenomenon which is nothing exceptional. In that very introduction to the *Pārāyaṇa*, we have already also met with the Sanskrit name of the *Godāvarī*, modified by aspiration of the dental in the interior of the word *Godhāvarī*. A list of analogous cases will be found, *e.g.*, in the Pali by Geiger, § 40 and § 62, and, for the Prakrits in general, in the *Grammatik der Prakrit Schprachen* by Pischel, § 207-209. In proper names, the phenomenon seems due generally to an erroneous interpretation; *e.g.*, *Khanda*, ‘the god Skanda’, owes its aspiration to a confusion with *skandha*, ‘the shoulder’; *Erāpatha* = *Airāvata*, ‘the divine elephant’, has suffered the contamination of *patha*, ‘way’ (as, in Sanskrit also, it has later suffered the contamination of *patra*, ‘leaf’, in becoming *Elāpatra*). One would have believed to recognise the word *godhā*, ‘big lizard’, in the first syllables of the name of the *Godāvarī*. Sanskrit *go-narda* (or *go-naṅdana* by developed suffixation) clearly signifies ‘the lowing of the cow’. Passed to Prakrit under the form *gonadda* (or *go-naṅdana*), the word becomes unintelligible. The root *nard* seems to have submitted in Prakrit to the root *nad* from which it hardly differentiates itself. Moreover, the word *go* quite naturally suggested the word *naddha*, ‘attached, bound’.