Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c5.s1.39

c5.s1.39

We have seen above that the *kṣetra* (sphere of influence) of a *cakravartin* (an imperial ruler of India), often mentioned as ‘the whole earth’, was regarded as bounded by the Himālaya or Bindusaras (in the Himālayas) in the north and by the Indian Ocean, Cape Comorin or Rāma’s bridge in the south. It has also been shown that sometimes it was described as bounded by four seas on all the four sides. The conception of the *catuḥ-samudra* is no doubt conventional, as Bhāratavarṣa is bounded only on the east, south and west by seas (viz. the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea respectively). There is no sea in the north of this land. Prof. Raychaudhuri suggests that any lake or lakes to the north of India in Central Asia may have been wrongly conceived as a sea and this fact may have been responsible for the conception of India having four seas in four directions. The northern sea, however, may have actually been the deserts of Central Asia often represented in literature as ‘the sea of sand’.² The conception of the *catuḥ-samudra* is also found in the Vedic literature where the expression is usually explained by the word *antarikṣa*, i.e. sky in the four directions. According to the Purāṇas,³ the world consists of seven concentric *dvīpas* or islands each of which is encircled by a sea, the central island called Jambudvīpa being surrounded by the salt sea.¹ Bhāratavarṣa was the southernmost part of this Jambudvīpa, although, as we have seen, sometimes the two names are used almost synonymously. The mythical conception of the seven seas may have owed its origin to the Vedic *sapta-sindhu*, i.e. the seven rivers of north-western Bhāratavarṣa. Whatever that may be, the Purāṇic conception of the earth being encircled by the sea coupled with the Vedic idea of the *catuḥ-samudra* may have been responsible for the later conception of the *cakravarti-kṣetra* (called ‘the whole earth’) bounded by the seas on all the four directions. In the literary and epigraphic records, often definite localities (which are mythical in some cases) are mentioned in the north, east, south and west of ‘the whole earth’ or *cakravarti-kṣetra* and, as expected, they practically correspond to the boundaries of ancient Bhāratavarṣa.