Grihya Sutras

SR No.: 007685
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1886
Total Pages: 2642
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1116

NOTES. I, 19, 7.
59
C
the Mânavas is called Brahmâvarta. In the Sûtras which supplied the material to the authors of the metrical lawbooks, the Vinasana is mentioned for the first time in the Baudhayana Sutras, I, 2, 9, ' Âryâvarta lies to the east of the region where (the Sarasvati) disappears, to the west of the Black-forest, to the north of the Pâripâtra (mountains), to the south of the Himalaya.' The name of the Sarasvati is not mentioned, but no other river can be understood. What is curious, however, is, that in the Vasishtha Sûtras where the same frontiers of Âryâvarta are given (I, 8), the MSS. read originally prâg âdarsât, i. c. east of the Âdarsa mountains, which was afterwards changed into prâg adarsanât, and interpreted 'east of the invisibility, or of the disappearance of the Sarasvati.' Vasishtha quotes another authority, a Gâtha of the Bhallavins, which says: 'In the west the boundary river,' i. e. sindhur vidhâranî. This sindhur vidharani is another name of the old Sarasvatî, and in Baudhåyana I, 2, 12, the same verse is quoted, though the reading of vidhâranî varies with vikaranî and visarani. See Bühler, 1. c. Madhyadesa is mentioned in one of the Parisishtas (MS. 510, Wilson) as a kind of model country, but it is there described as lying east of Dasârna, west of Kâmpilya", north of Pâriyâtra, and south of the Himavat, or again, in a more general way, as the Duâb of the Gangâ and Yamunâ d.
It is very curious that while in the later Sanskrit lite
a See Wilson's Vishnu-purâna, ed. Hall, pp. 154, 155, 159, 160. b See Wilson's Vishnu-purâna, ed. Hall, p. 161.
c L. c., pp. 123, 127. Instead of Pâriyâtra, other MSS. read Pâripâtra; see Bühler, Vasishtha I, 8.
d Prâg dasârnât pratyak kâmpilyâd udak pâriyâtrâd, dakshinena himavatah. Gangâyamunayor antaram eke madhyadesam ity âkakshate. Medhâtithi says that Madhyadesa, the middle country, was not called so because it was in the middle of the earth, but because it was neither too high nor too low. Albiruny, too, remarks that Madhyadesa was between the sea and the northern mountains, between the hot and the cold countries, equally distant from the eastern and western frontiers. See Reinaud, Mémoire sur l'Inde, P. 46.
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