India As Described In Early Texts Of Buddhism and Jainism

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

Page 21

GEOGRAPHY
connected with the Lessor range comprise Siddhāyatana, Kşudrahimayadgiri, Kumāradeva, etc. The list of nine peaks associated with the Vaitādhya range begins with Siddhāyatana and ends in Tamisrāguhā. The names are too ingeniously Jaina to be considered genuine and identifiable.
True that in it, precisely as in the Mahābhārata, and the Mārkandeya Purāņa, Bhāratavarşa is described as a peninsula with seas on its three sides, cast, south and west. But is it not somewhat far-fetched to represent the topographical outline of the Deccan figuratively by the shape of a half-moon (addhacamdasamthāņasamthie)? To the Buddhists, as we saw, Jambudvípa is shaped like a bullock-cart with its face towards the south. In the Great Epic the shape is poetically conceived as one resembling, from south and north, a bended bow of which the string being pulled by the hand forms an apex at Dhanuşkoti, Rāmasebu or Rāmesyaram. In the Mārkandeya Purāna the shape of India, according to one description, is like that of a tortoise (kūrma) which lies outspread, with its face towards the east, and,
1 Jambudtua-pampatti, iv, 35. % Ibid., i, 12. 8 Ibid., i, 10. 4 Mahābhārata, Bhişmaperva, 6.88. 5 Mārkandeya Purana, Ohaps, 57-58,