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KINGS AND PEOPLES
, 107
The Jambudīva-pannatti, as noted before, connects the Vidyādharas with the Vaitādhya or Vindhya rango and speaks of their eighteen settlements. When the Jatakas speak of sixteen Bhojaputtas, one may understand that they were the ruling chiefs of sixteen Vidyādhara tracts along the Vindhyas. From these references, both in literature and in inscriptions, , it may be inferred that the Vidyādharas were not mythical beings but some aboriginal tribes that settled along the Vindhyas.
The Assakas (Sk. Asvakas, Asmakas) find mention as a distinct people of India in early Pali texts, in Pāņini's grammar, and in the Mahābhārata, Brhatsamhità, and Purāņas. The Greek writers knew them as Assakenus whose territory was situated in the Swat Valley. In the Mārkandeya Purāna, they are placed in Uttarāpatha. Päņini's reference, too, must have been to a people in Uttarāpatha. But the early Pali texts are concerned only with those Agsakas who founded a territory in the Dakkhi. ņāpatha which lay contiguous to the kingdom of the Avantis 2 and on the south bank of the Godāvari. The capital of this southern kingdom was Potana? (Sk. Paudanya) or Potali."
2 Jataka, v, p. 317.
1 Law, Geography, p. 21. 3 Sutta-nipäta, verse 977. 4 Digha, ii, p. 295. 5 Jätaka, i1, p. 165.
