Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c23.1

c23.1

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