Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c12.s3.18

c12.s3.18

It seems reasonable that, in the comparatively short distance transversed, only two rivers were crossed, and that the Pāli version has apparently confused the names, wrongly applying the name Kakutthā to the river elsewhere called Hiraññavatī. The Sanskrit version and the Tibetan and Chinese versions based thereon seem to be more authentic in this respect than the Pāli version, which calls the same river by two different names at two different places in the same context.³ In fact the dirty river was called Kakutthā (in the Pāli version) or Kukustā (in the Sanskrit and other versions), and the pure, cool river on the other bank of which lay the Sāla grove of the Kosinārakā-Mallas, was the river Hiraññavatī, the Hiraṇyavatī of the Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese texts. Thus, these sources have preserved the historical fact that the river Hiraṇyavatī demarcated the boundaries between the Mallas of Pāvā and those of Kusinārā.