India As Described In Early Texts Of Buddhism and Jainism

Author(s): Bimla Charn Law
Publisher: Bimlacharan Law

Page 15

GEOGRAPHY
Milinda-pañha mentions one Rakkhitatala or protected table-land in the Himalayan region.
The Buddhists derive the name of the continent of Jambudvīpa from a Jambu tree, which stands as its kalpavřkşa, with its trunk fifteen yojanas in girth, outspreading branches fifty yojanas in length, shade one hundred yojanas in extent and height of one hundred yojanas, 2-all too symmetrical and imaginary to be believed as correct. It is on account of this tree that the continent is also called Jambuvana 3 and Jambusaņda. The tree stands on a bank of the river Jambo (Jambu). The continent extends over a distance of ten thousand leagues, of which four thousand are covered by the seas, three thousand by the Himalayas, and three thousand only are innabited by mon. It contained as many as 34,000 towns, large or small. As Malalasekera points out, this number is sometimes reduced to sixty thousand, forty thousand, or even twenty thousand, but never too less'.? A description in the Anguttara-nikāya would have us believe that trifling in number were the parks, groves,
1 Milinda, p. 6.
2 Vinayn, i, p. 30 m Samantapdaddikā, i, p. 119; Paramatthajotilā, II, p. 443; Visuddhimagga, i, p. 206.
8 Law, Geography, p. xvi. 4 Sutta-nypäta, verse 552; Paramatthajotikā, II, p. 121. 6 Paramatthajotikā, II, p. 437. • Ibid., II, p. 59. Cf. Jätaka, iv, p. 84. 7 Malalasekora, op. cit., i, p. 941.