Indian Antiquary Vol 44

SR No.: 032536
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 424
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

Page 253

OCTOBER, 1918)
THE N.-W. GROUP OF INDO-ARYAN VERNACULARS
227
Hindi, and Eastern Hindi, is not discussed here. Of them, the only forms of speech that can show any close relationship to the languages of the North-Western Group, are the three Pahari languages. These, as explained in the artiole on the subject in Vol. XLIII, pp. 142 and 159, have, like Sindhi, a basis connected with the Pisa cha languages.
The country in which the North-Western languages are spoken is described in the Ancient History.
Mahabharata as rude and barbarous, and as almost outside the pale
of Aryan civilization. The Lahndâ area at that time included the two kingdoms of Gandhára (i. e., the country round the modern Peshawar) and Kekaya (lower down the Indus, on its left bank), while the Sindhi area was inhabited by the Sindhus and Sauviras. In spite of the evil character given to the inhabitants of the country in the Mahabharata, it is certain that the capital of Gandhara, Takshasilê, was, as long ago as six centuries before Christ, the site of the greatest university in India. Its ruins still exist in the Rawalpindi District. It was at Salâtura, close to this university that Pâņini, the greatest of Sanskrit Grammarians was born in the 5th or 4th century A. D. In those early times the land of Kêkaya also was famous for its learning. We are told in the Chhândôgya Upanishad (V, xi) how five great theologians came to a Brâhman with hard questions, which he could not answer for them. So he sent them to Aśvapati, the Kshatriya king of Kêkaya, who, like a second Solomon, solved all their difficulties.
Two persons famous in Indian legend came from the Lahndâ area. Front Gandhara came Gândhârî, the wife of Dhritarashtra, and mother of Duryôdhana and his 99 brothers, the Kuru protagonists in the great war of the Mahabharata. From Kêkaya, came Kaikêyî, the wife of Dasaratha and step-mother of Râma-chandra. It was through her intrigues that Rama-chandra was sent into banishment, as recorded in the other great Indian epic, the Ramayana.
The Western Pañjab has always been peculiarly exposed to conquerors from the North and from the West. It was through it Chat the Aryans entered India. The next recorded invasion was that of Darius I of Persia (B. c. 521-485) shortly after the time of the Buddha. According to Herodotus he conquered it and divided it between two satrapies, one of which included Gandhâra (Herodotus, iii. 91), while the Indians,' i, e., the inhabitants of the Indus Valley, formed by themselves the 20th satrapy (iii, 94). Beyond this, the authority of Darius did not extend (iii, 101). Herodotus adds (iii, 94) that these Indians are more numerous than any other nation with which we are acquainted, and paid a tribute exceeding that of any other people, to wit, 360 talents of gold dust.' Darius had such complete authority over this part of India, or rather over what was to him and to Herodotus 'India,' that he sent a fleet under Skylax down the Indus to the sea, whence they sailed homewards towards the West (iv, 44). The huge army that his successor Xerxes led (B. C. 480) against Greece contained men from Gandhåra and from the Western Pañjab. The latter, according to Herodotus (vii, 65, 66), wore cotton dresses, and carried bows of cane and arrows also of cane, with iron tips.
The invasion of Alexander the Great (B. U. 327-325) was also confined to the Western Pañjab and Sindh. One point of interest that has hitherto escaped notice is that many of the Indian names recorded by the Greek historians of this invasion, who necessarily gave them as pronounced by the people of the Western Puñjâb, show that the local form of speech at that time must have been some form of Paisachi Prakrit, a language which, according to the present writer, was the main origin of the modern languages of the Western Pañjâ b
1 Although the general opinion of scholars is quite different, I am personally inclined to believe that PAli, the language of the Southern Buddhist scriptures, is & literary form of the ancient language spokon 4t Takshasila. This accounts for the striking points of resemblance between it and Paisacht
Prakrit.
? See also Rawlinson's note in his translation of Herodotus iii, 98.