Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature c5.s2.8

c5.s2.8

are mentioned as inhabiting the said tract. This Middle Land seems to have been regarded as bounded in the east by the countries of the Kośalas and the Videhas and in the west by the desert, i. e. the Maru or Marwar region or the present Rajputana desert. Among the later Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas which are believed by scholars to have been composed in the said region, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁵⁴ alludes to the Aryanisation of the Kośala-Videha territory from the Kuru-Pañcāla country, while both the Śatapatha⁵⁵ and the Aitareya⁵⁶ mention the tribes of the western region with disapproval. The Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra⁵⁷ mentions the same Middle Region as Āryāvarta (the land primarily inhabited by the Aryans and dominated by Aryan culture) and defines it as the territory lying to the east of Adarśana (Vinaśana where the Sarasvatī lost herself in the sands near Kurukṣetra),⁵⁸ to the west of Kālaka-vana (probably near Allahabad), to the south of the Himavat (Himālaya) and to the north of the Pāriyātra or Pāripātra (the western Vindhyas with the Aravali range). According to a different view quoted in the same work,⁵⁹ Āryāvarta lay between the Gaṅgā and the Yamunā while, in the same context, the Bhāllavins are said to have regarded the holy land lying between the region of the sunrise and the Sindhu as well as the Visaraṇi (or Vidhāvanī, etc.) as Brahmavarcasa.⁶⁰ It is interesting to note that Āryāvarta of the Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra later became famous as Madhyadeśa, ‘the Middle Country’, the Manusmṛti⁶¹ defining it as the land betwen the Himavat in the north and the Vindhya in the south and between Vinaśana in the west and Prayāga (Allahabad) in the east. In their eagerness to include the land of the Buddha’s birth and activities in the holy territory of the Madhyadeśa, some Buddhist writers give its boundaries as Kajaṅgala (near modern Rajmahal) in the east, the river Śarāvatī in the south-east, the town of Śvetakarṇika in the south, the town and district of Sthūṇa in the west and Mount Uśīradhvaja in the north,⁶² while others would make them Puṇḍravardhana (modern Mahasthan in the Bogra District) in the east, the river Śarāvatī in the south, the Brāhmaṇa villages Sthūṇa and Upasthūṇa in the west and the Uśīragiri in the north.⁶³ But medieval works like Rājaśekhara’s Kāvyamīmāṃsā state that the countries of the East (Pūrva-deśa), South (Dakṣiṇāpatha), West (Paścād-deśa), and North (Uttarāpatha) lay respectively beyond Vārāṇasī, Māhiṣamatī (on the Narmadā), Devasabhā (modern Dewas) and Pṛthūdaka (modern Pehoa), all lying on the borders of Madhyadeśa.⁶⁴