Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c7.36

c7.36

As regards JAMBUDĪPA, the fourth of our great continents, we have plenty of references in the Brāhmaṇic as well as in the Buddhist and Jaina literature. It is mentioned quite frequently in the Jātakas.¹¹ But they, we mean the Jātakas, nowhere give any clear idea of the size or extent of this country. The Mahā-ummagga Jātaka,¹² indeed, knows that Jambudīpa was encompassed (paribbata) by the ocean (sāgara), but this, in no way, clears up the matter. However, it seems quite certain that the traditional conception of Jambudīpa was much wider than that of India proper as we understand it now. And if Mr. Jayaswal’s interpretation of Jambudīpa of the Purāṇas as comprising the whole of the Continent of Asia be accepted, and if the Aśokan Inscriptions, as pointed out by him, have a similar wider denotation, we should not then hesitate to ascribe the same denotation to our Jambudīpa.¹ At any rate, we shall not be far wide of the mark, we hope, if we say that by Jambudīpa the Jātakas, for all practical purposes, meant India-cum-Afghanistan.²