Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c5.s1.33

c5.s1.33

The conception of a mighty king or his generals performing dig-vijaya, that is to say, conquering ‘the whole earth’, permeates the entire body of the epic and Purāṇic literature. Epic heroes like Karṇa and the brothers of Yudhiṣṭhira are described as conquering the quarters or the whole earth. Karṇa completed his dig-vijaya by conquering all the countries in the north, east, south and west and is described as returned to Nāgasāhvaya (Hastināpura, capital of his patron Duryodhana) ‘after having subdued the whole earth’.⁵ It is, however, interesting to note that the lists of countries lying in the four different directions and conquered by the epic dig-vijayins are practically the same as the lists of countries and peoples of Bhāratavarṣa as found in the geographical sections of the epics, Purāṇas and other works. Stories of the epic dig-vijayins were no doubt very popular in the age of the Gupta emperors. This is proved not only by the references to epic heroes in records dating from the second century A.D. but also by epigraphic and literary records of the Gupta period. Epigraphic references to the Gupta monarchs either as rulers or as conquerors of ‘the whole earth’ have already been indicated above. Raghu’s conquest of all the quarters in the Raghuvamśa (Canto IV) of Kālidāsa who lived in the fourth-fifth century A.D. is obviously modelled on the epic description of the *dig-vijayas* of Karṇa, the Pāṇḍava brothers and others. Mallinātha in his commentary on the *Raghuvamśa*, IV, 85, rightly explains the conquest of quarters as indicating *eka-cchatratva* or universal sovereignty. Raghu began his conquest in the eastern countries on the eastern sea or the Bay of Bengal. Thence he marched towards the south and conquered the Pāṇḍya king. He moved then towards the west and subdued the Pārasīkas or Persians. Then he reached the north where he conquered the Hūṇas on the Vaṅkshu or Oxus and the lord of Prāgjyotiṣa or Kāmarūpa (modern Assam, in the Himālayas). The description of Raghu’s *dig-vijaya* in the *Raghuvamśa* was imitated by a *Praśastikāra* at the Paramāra court, who describes the Paramāra king Lakṣmadeva as having defeated Aṅga and Kalinga in the east, Cola and Pāṇḍya as far as the Tāmraparṇī river in the south, and the Turuṣkas on the banks of the Vaṅkṣu in the north.¹ The substitution of the Hūṇas by the Turuṣkas is interesting to note. The ‘whole earth’ in such cases, it may be pointed out again, does not mean the entire land between the North Pole and the South Pole. It simply refers to Bhāratavarṣa regarded as the sphere of influence of an imperial monarch. But even that is also in a conventional sense.