Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature c5.s4.33

c5.s4.33

Besides the above, an ancient hero named Ikṣvāku is known from the *Ṛgveda* and *Atharvaveda*,⁹⁶ while the *Ṛgveda*, *Yajurveda* and *Atharvaveda* also speak of a king named Vitahavya, the last work probably representing the Vitahavya as the Sṛñjaya.⁹⁷ A passage in the *Ṛgveda* (ix. 65. 2) uses the word Kṛtvan in the plural along with the Ārjika (living on the Ārjikīyā) and the five peoples. Sāyaṇa takes the word to be the name of a country while Pischel regards it to be a people who may then have been connected with the Kuru and Krivi. But Hillebrandt preferred to take the same word in the sense of ‘magicians’ and as an adjective of the Ārjika. He thinks that his view is supported by a statement of the Chinese pilgrim Hiuên-tsang regarding a barbarian people of the Kashmir region known as Ki-li-to or Kṛtya. But Ki-li-to of the Chinese pilgrim really stands for Kṛta or ‘purchased’ (Chinese Mai-te) and seems essentially to have been a foreign name probably Sanskritised both as Kṛta and Kṛta.⁹⁸