History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c18.38.4

v2.c18.38.4

‘Āryāvarta is to the east of the disappearance (of Sarasvatī in the desert), to the west of Kālakavana, to the north of the mountains Pāriyātra and Vindhya and to the south of the Himālaya’. It then refers to two more views held by other authors viz., ‘Āryāvarta is in the region between the Ganges and the Jumna’ and ‘where the black antelope roams about there is spiritual pre-eminence’. The Baud. D. S. (I. 1.27) gives the same limits of Āryāvarta as Vasiṣṭha, substituting the word 'vinaśana' for 'ādarśa'.³⁵ Patañjali in his Mahābhāṣya defines Āryāvarta several times in the same terms as Vasiṣṭha does.³⁶ The Dharmasūtra of Śaṅkha-Likhita gives somewhat similar limits by remarking 'spotless spiritual pre-eminence is to be found (in the country) to the east of the countries of Sindhu and Sauvīra, to the west of the city of Kāmpilī, to the south of Himālaya and to the north of Pāriyātra'.³⁷ The extant Manusmṛti (II. 22) makes Āryāvarta coterminos with the whole of India north of the Vindhya by saying that the territory between the Himālaya and the Vindhya and extending up to the eastern and western oceans is known by the wise as Āryāvarta. The second view (viz. Āryāvarta is the region between the Ganges and the Jumna) occurs in Baud. Dh. S. (I. 1.28). In the Tai. Ār. II. 20 special honour is shown to those who dwell between the Gaṅgā and the Yamunā. The third view (viz. Āryāvarta is the country where the black antelope roams about naturally) is the one given in most smṛtis.