Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c20.7

c20.7

Whatever be the explanation, the equivalence *Gonarda* = *Gonaddha* is certain. The name of Gonarda is indissolubly connected with the memory of Patañjali, ‘the Gonardian’, Gonardīya. A constant tradition attested by Kaiyaṭa, by the author of the Trikāṇḍaśeṣa, and by Hemacandra, identifies the personage designated by the name of Gonardīya in the Mahābhāṣya with the author of the Mahābhāṣya. Kielhorn, it is true, vigourously contested the value of that tradition¹ and maintained that the Gonardīya was the author of the Kārikā in verse, utilised and cited by Patañjali. The authority of Kielhorn in questions concerning the Mahābhāṣya surely deserves the highest consideration. But his interpretation is not in requisite contradiction of the Indian tradition. Patañjali might refer in the Mahābhāṣya to an anterior work which he had composed, designating himself with an appellation of impersonal character, derived from his place of birth. The geographical situation of Gonardaa lways agrees marvellously with the rare indications, which may be deduced from the Mahābhāṣya, for fixing the date of Patañjali. The two essential facts are : (1) the mention of Puṣyamitra, of his court (sabhā), and of his sacrifice (iha Puṣyamitraṃ yājayāmaḥ ); (2) the mention of the Greek conquests in India (aruṇad=Yavanaḥ Sāketam, aruṇad=Yavano Madhyamikām). Now, Gonarda is the nearest step to Vidiśā. Vidiśā, according to the evidence of the accounts followed by Kālidāsa in the Mālavikāgnimitra, was the capital where the son of Puṣyamitra resided in the capacity of a viceroy. And Vidiśā was also in close connections with Greek politics. The column of Besnagar, on the site of the ancient Vidiśā, preserves the memory of a Greek ambassador (Yona-dūta), Heliodorus, sent by the Greek king Antialkidas, to the Indian king Kāśīputra Bhāgabhadra. Moreover, the geographical horizon of the Mahābhāṣya sets itself harmoniously around the Gonarda-Vidiśā region as the centre. Excepting some general designations of territories, e.g. Vidarbha, Videha, Cola, Kerala, etc., which do not implicate any direct and personal knowledge, the names of localities, cities or towns form themselves in a sort of triangle, of which the base goes from Pāṭaliputra to the Punjab, and of which the apex reaches the lower Narmadā about Māhiṣmatī. Māhiṣmatī figures in the itinerary of the Pārāyaṇa as an intermediate step which the disciples of Bāvari, who started from Pratiṣṭhāna, reached on their way to Ujjayinī. Likewise the Mahābhāṣya has :