Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature c5.s2.29

c5.s2.29

The conception of the Cakravarti-kṣetra, i.e. the sphere of influence of an Indian Cakravartin or emperor, fully developed in the post-Vedic age apparently after the growth of the first historical empire of India under the Bimbisarians, the Śaiśunāgas, the Nandas and the Mauryas.⁷¹ This sphere was regarded as co-extensive with the whole land bounded by the Himalayan region in the north and the seas on the other three sides and was often mentioned as ‘the whole earth.’⁷² The germ of the conception can, however, be traced in the later Vedic literature since the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁷³ quotes a gāthā to the effect that king Bharata, who was the son of Duṣyanta and is represented in the Mahābhārata⁷⁴ as a Cakravartin and Sārvabhauma (universal monarch), celebrated more than a thousand Aśvamedha sacrifices ‘after having conquered the whole earth’. The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa⁷⁵ has a similar statement in respect of Janamejaya, son of Parikṣit. In the inscriptions of Aśoka, the Maurya king of the third century B. C. sometimes refers to his empire as pṛthivī (the earth) or as Jambu-dvīpa which later came to be a name of India or the earth.⁷⁶ The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa speaking of Samrāṭs in the eastern country, apparently referring to monarchs enjoying a higher political status than the Rājan and also overlordship over the Rājans,⁷⁷ probably gave rise to the epico-Puranic story of king Jarāsandha of Magadha represented as the emperor of Eastern India.⁷⁸ But the Aitareya also refers to the possibility for a king to attain supremacy over all kings, to possess the entire earth bounded by the ocean—from one end to the other, and to become the Ekarāṭ (sole monarch), and there may be an echo, in the passage, of the expansion of the kingdom of Magadha in Eastern India, under king Śiśunāga (c. 414-396 B.C.) for the first time, over the whole land between the Bay of Bengal in the east and the Arabian Sea in the west.⁷⁹