Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c15.81

c15.81

Patañjali (commenting on Pāṇini, II. 2, 18 and III. 3, 136) mentions the formations, *Nish-Kauśāmbīḥ* and *Nir-Vārāṇasiḥ* in respect of travellers who have passed beyond Kauśāmbī and Vārāṇasī, thereby indicating the Grand Trunk Road of those days connecting the two cities of Kauśāmbī and Vārāṇasī. In connection with Pāṇini's rule, III. 3, 136, Patañjali instances the cities of Sāketā and Pāṭaliputra as lying on the same road so as to enable us to construct the length of a Grand Trunk Road that connected the two cities of Sāketa and Kauśāmbī, Vārāṇasī and Pāṭaliputrā. Curiously, the *Kāśikā* mentions Kauśāmbī as the starting-point of a journey instead of Sāketa mentioned by Patañjali, though both retain Pāṭaliputra as the other end of the journey. "There may be a personal and psychological reason involved in this difference between the two grammarians. Each was perhaps thinking of his own native city forming the centre of his geographical horizon" [My Note in *Indian Culture*, II, 2].