Cosmography and Geography in Early Indian Literature c6.s5.1

c6.s5.1

As regards the Indians' knowledge about the countries outside the Indian sub-continent, we have to note that Afghanistan and its neighbourhood were a part of India according to the Puranic and some other early 'ndian writers. The ruins of a large number of Buddhist establishments have been discovered in Chinese Turkestan where numerous epigraphs and manuscripts in Indian languages and scripts have also been found, though our early geographical literature gives only meagre information about the area. We have already referred to the location of the Uttara-Kuru people beyond the Himalayas in the later Vedic literature and to the mention of the Central Asian deserts in the Mahābhārata and elsewhere. The Rāmāyaṇa (IV. 43) mentions Mount Somagiri (between the Uttara-Kuru and the Northern Ocean) which lightens the sunless country about it. This is sometimes taken to be a reference to the Aurora Borealis of the arctic regions.⁹⁷ Mention may also be made, in this connection, of the Bāveru Jātaka (No. 339) speaking of the visit of Indian maritime traders to the kingdom of Bāveru (Babylon), which may refer to the Seleucid empire established in 312 B. C. with its capital at the city of Babylon or less probably to the much earlier Babylonian empire. Kālidāsa's Raghuvamśa (4th or 5th century A.D.) mentions the Pārasika or Pāścātya (i.e. the Persian) people as well as the Hūṇas inhabiting the valley of the Oxus.