Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c23: XIX. Udabhāṇḍa
Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c23
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XIX. Udabhāṇḍa
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In the *Vaijayantī*,¹ composed by Yādavaprakāśa in the 11th century A.D., there is a passage which runs : *Gandhārās = tu Dihaṇḍās = syuḥ*, ‘the Gandhāras are also known as the Dihaṇḍas’. The name Gandhāra signifying a people and their territory lying in Uttarāpatha, *i.e.* the North-Western Division of India, is well known to all students of Indian history. According to some late lexicons,² Gandhāra has to be identified with Kāndhāhāra, *i.e.* Kandahār in Southern Afghanistan. But this is a mistake due to the similar sounds of the two names. Although it may be tempting to conjecture that modern Kandahār owes its name to the Gandhāra occupation of Southern Afghanistan in the early period of Indian history, it is certainly more probable that the name is a corruption of that of the city of Alexandria founded by Alexander the Great (Persian *Iskandar* or *Sikandar*) in the land of the Arachosians near the site of modern Kandahār. There is definite evidence as regards the location of the Gandhāra *janapada* about the present Rawalpindi District of the Punjab and the Peshawar District of the North-Western Frontier in Pakistan.³
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¹ Paryāya-bhāga, III. 1. 24.
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² Cf. *Śabdakalpadruma*, s. v.
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³ Cf. Raychaudhuri, *Pol. Hist. Anc. Ind.*, 1938, pp. 50-52, 124-25.
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According to epic and Puranic traditions, the Gandhāra *viṣaya*, which lay on both sides of the Indus, contained two great cities called Takṣaśilā and Puṣkalāvatī. The remains of Takṣaśilā lie immediately to the east and north-east of the Saraikala Railway Junction, 20 miles north-west of Rawalpindi, in the valley of the river Haro. There are remains of three distinct cities, of which the southernmost and oldest occupied the site of an elevated plateau now known as the Bhir Mound. The ancient city of Puṣkalāvatī or Puṣkarāvatī, ‘the city of lotuses’, was situated on the Swat in the modern Prang-Charsadda-Mir Ziyarat region, about 17 miles north-east of Peshawar.
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It is however really curious that Dihaṇḍa, as the name of the famous Gandhāra people, is known from no other source excepting the *Vaijayantī*. This name seems therefore to have been actually based on a wrong reading of the manuscripts of Yādavaprakāśa’s work, whose geographical section is full of mistakes.¹ A people is known not only after the land occupied by them, but very often also after their capital city, and we have to see if the form Dihaṇḍa may be associated with the name of the early medieval capital of the Gandhāra country.
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¹ Thus *Yavanās=tu Huruṣkarāḥ* (sic. *Turuṣkakāḥ*); *Śākhayo* (sic. *Śāhayo*); *Sūyārak-ādayaḥ* (sic. *Sūrpārak°*); *Traipurās=tu Hahālā°* (sic. *Ḍabhālā°*); etc.
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Al-Bīrūnī, who was a contemporary of Yādavaprakāśa and wrote his celebrated work on India about 1030 A.D., refers to the ‘capital of Al-Kandahār (Gandhāra), *i.e.* Vaihand’.² Elsewhere he speaks of ‘Waihind, the capital of Kandhāra (Gandhāra), west of the river Sindh’,³ which is said to have been situated 14 *farsakh* (about 52 miles) to the south-east of Purshāwar (Peshawar). Both here and in another context,⁴ Al-Bīrūnī locates Vaihand (Waihind) between Peshawar and the river Jhelam. There is no doubt that Vaihand has to be identified with modern Und near Attock on the Indus. As Raychaudhuri points out,⁵ an Arabic work called *Hudud-ul ’Alam* (982-83 A.D.) speaks of Waihind as a big city, with some Muslim population, under king Jayapāla who was a feudatory of the Rāya of Kanauj, probably Pratihāra Vijayapāla. The Sanskrit form of the name is Udabhāṇḍapura (or Udakabhāṇḍapura) which was the capital of the great Śāhi king Lalliya (*c.* 875-90 A.D.) and his successors according to the *Rājatarangiṇī* of Kalhaṇa. According to Firishta, the dominions of the Śāhi king Jayapāla (*c.* 965-1001 A.D.), son of Ishtpāl (probably the same as Aṣaṭapāladeva known from his coins), extended in length from Sirhind to Lamghan and in breadth from the kingdom of Kashmir to Mūltān. This ruler is further said to have resided in a fort, the correct reading of whose name is apparently Vaihand, although some writers wrongly take it to be Bhatinda in the Patiala State. Firishta frequently refers to Jayapāla as the Rājā of Lahore and, as the king resided in the Vaihand fort ‘for the convenience of taking steps for opposing the Muhammadans’, it is hardly possible that the historian could have referred to a locality in the Eastern Punjab. It seems that, when the Śāhi possessions lying West of the Indus were threatened by the Turkish Musalmans of Ghaznī, Jayapāla transferred his capital from ancient Udabhāṇḍapura to Lahore. But even then he himself resided at the old capital which now became the advance base of his operations against the Muhamadans. It is thus possible that the passage *Gandhārās=tu Dihāṇḍās=syuḥ* is actually a mistake for *Gandhārās=tu Udabhāṇḍās=syuḥ*, ‘the Gandhāras are also known as the Udabhāṇḍas’. But Udahāṇḍa was probably another form of the name.
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² Sachau, *Alb. Ind.*, Vol. I, p. 259.
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³ *Ibid.*, p. 206.
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⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 317.
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⁵ *Proc. I.H.C.*, 1939, p 670.
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According to traditions, the Kuṣāṇa emperor Kaniṣka, who ruled over extensive regions in India and Central Asia, had his capital at the city of Puruṣapura (modern Peshawar) in the Gandhāra country. Al-Bīrūnī¹ says that Kanik (*i.e.* Kaniṣka) belonged to a dynasty of Hindu kings called Śāhis who were Turks of Tibetan origin and at first began to reign in Kabul. The last king of this house was Laga Tūrmān (*i.e.* Toramāṇa) who was overthrown by his Brāhmaṇa minister Kallar, a predecessor of Jayapāla. Scholars have suggested the identification of Al-Bīrūnī’s Kallar with the great Lalliya Śāhi mentioned in the *Rājatarangiṇī*. It is, however, interesting to note that Kalhaṇa represents the Śāhis as Kṣatriyas. It has also to be remembered that the Kashmiri author does not make any distinction between the early Śāhis and the Brāhmaṇa Śāhis who, according to Al-Bīrūnī, succeeded them. We are told² that, even before the
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¹ Sachau, *op. cit.*, Vol. II, pp. 10-14.
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² Cf. *Rājatar.*, IV, 140-43:
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प्रीतः पञ्चमहाशब्दभाजनं तं व्यधत्त सः ।
यशोवर्मनृपं तं तु समूलमुदपाटयत् ॥
अष्टादशानामुपरि प्राक्सिद्धानां तदुद्भवैः ।
कर्मस्थानैः स्थितिः प्राप्ता ततः प्रभृति पञ्चभिः ॥
महाप्रतीहारपीडा स महासन्धिविग्रहः ।
महावशालापि महाभाण्डागारश्च पञ्चमः ॥
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reign of king Lalitāditya (c. 730-66 A.D), the Śāhi-mukhyas, or chiefs belonging to the Śāhi family, were employed in the Kashmir administration as *Mahāpratihāra*, *Mahāsāndhivigrahika*, *Mahāsvaśālika*, *Mahābhāṇḍāgārika* and *Mahāsādhanika*, the *pañca-mahāśabda* later conferred by king Lalitāditya on a single official named Mitraśarman whom he seems to have made his viceroy at Kanauj after having subdued king Yaśovarman. Of the Later Śāhis, described as Brāhmaṇa by Al-Bīrūnī, Kalhaṇa mentions Lalliya's successor and his son Kamaluka Toramāṇa (no doubt the same as Kamlū of Al-Bīrūnī, and Kamlū Rāy of Hindustan mentioned by other Arab writers), a contemporary of 'Amr ibn Layth who ruled in the Khorasan-Kabul region about the last two decades of the ninth century A.D. Kamaluka is said to have been raised to the throne about 902-04 A.D. by a Kashmirian general. Kalhaṇa also speaks of the Śāhi kings Bhīma and Thakkana. The former, who was the maternal grandfather of Diddā, queen of the Kashmirian king Kṣemagupta (950-58 A.D.), built a temple of Viṣṇu in Kashmir during Kṣemagupta's rule. A general of the Kashmirian king Abhimanyu (958-72 A.D.) is said to have defeated the Śāhi king Thakkana who may have been the grandfather of Jayapāla. The latest Śāhi king mentioned by Kalhaṇa is Trilocanapāla (1013-21 A.D.) whose struggle with the Hammira, *i.e.* Sulṭān Mahmūd of Ghaznī, is also described. Then, after having referred to the final collapse of Śāhi rule in another context, the Kashmirian author says that even in his days, *i.e.* in the middle of the 12th century A.D., ‘the appellation Śāhi throws its lustre on a numberless host of Kṣatriyas abroad, who trace their origin to that royal family’,¹
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¹ *Ibid.*, VIII, 3230.
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It will be seen that the Kashmirians, who knew the Śāhis from before the middle of the eighth century down at least to the twelfth, regarded them as Kṣatriyas, although Al-Bīrūnī refers to the Hindu Śāhis of Turko-Tibetan origin and their successors of Brāhmaṇa origin. That the early Śāhis were regarded, in
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महासाधनभाण्ड्येत्येता यैरमिधाः श्रिताः ।
शाहिमृत्या येप्यभवन्नध्यक्षाः पृथिवीभुजः ॥
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spite of their foreign origin, as Kṣatriyas in India is also indicated by another evidence. In the second quarter of the 7th century A.D., when the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-tsang was passing through Uttarāpatha, Udakahāṇḍa¹ or Udabhāṇḍapura was the place of residence of a secondary capital of the emperor of Kāpiśa which then dominated over ten neighbouring States and comprised Lampāka (Laghman), Nagara or Nagarahāra (Jalalabad), Gandhāra and Varṇa (Bannu) and probably also Jāguḍa (Southern Afghanistan with Ghaznī as the chief city). About Gandhāra, the pilgrim says that its capital was Puruṣapura; ‘the royal family was extinct and the country was subject to Kāpiśa; the towns and villages were desolate and the inhabitants were very few’.³ It seems that, under pressure of the Turks from the north and the Arabs from the south and west, the kings of Kāpiśa left their western possessions in the hands of viceroys,⁴ and made Udabhāṇḍa their principal seat of residence. The reason why Udabhāṇḍapura was selected in preference to the older capital Peshawar is at present unknown. But it is possible that the new city was built by the Kāpiśa kings for strategic reasons.
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¹ This seems to be the Indian form that was at the root of the Chinese Wu-to-kia-han-cha. Cf. Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India, Vol. I, p. 221.
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³ Watters, op. cit., p. 199.
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⁴ These viceroys appear to have been mentioned as the Satraps of Zaranj, capital of Seistan, and as Rantbil or Rutbil (probably Sanskrit Prāntapāla) or Zumbil (probably Sanskrit Janapāla) ruling over Southern Afghanistan. Whether the Kabul-Shāh was a viceroy or ‘the Śāhi of Kabul’ indicating the paramount ruler cannot be determined. Cf. Ray, op. cit., pp. 165 ff.
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The facts that Kalhaṇa speaks of the Śāhis with reference to the period earlier than that of Lalitāditya (c. 730-66 A.D.) and of Udabhāṇḍa as the capital of the Śāhis at least from the time of Lalliya (c. 875-90 A.D.) and that Chinese evidence refers to the city as the residence of the emperor of Kāpiśa about 645 A.D. would suggest that Hiuen-tsang’s king of Kāpiśa was a Śāhi ruler. It is interesting to note that this king has been described by Hiuentsang as a Kṣatriya.⁵
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² Cf. Ray, Dynastic History of Northern India, Vol I, pp. 60-61.
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⁵ Watters, op. cit., p. 123.
Linked texts (2)
- Rājataraṅgiṇī — Kalhaṇa, Sanskrit
- Vaijayantī — Yādavaprakāśa, Sanskrit