India As Described In Early Texts Of Buddhism and Jainism

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

Page 35

GEOGRAPHY
other side of the Gaya river are vaguely referred to but nowhere mentioned by name.
In the Barabar Hill-Cave inscriptions of Asoka and Patanjali's Mahābhāṣya1 we have mention of a set of hills under the name of Khalatika. The same finds mention in the Mahabharata, the Hathigumpha and two other inscriptions as Gorathagiri or Goradhagiri from which one could have a view of Rajagaha or Giribbaja, the earlier capital of Magadha. This group of hills. came to be designated in some of the mediaval inscriptions as Pravaragiri which has given rise to the modern name Barabar.
1 Mahabhāṣya, i, 2.2.
* Mahabharata, Sabhaparva, Ch. xx, v, 30.
1
The Pali Isigili Sutta names the five hills surrounding the city of Rajagaha, taking them in the very order in which they stood to each other and beginning with Isigili: Isigili, Vebhāra, Pandava, Vepulla and Gijjhakūta. In the Theragāthā, verse 41, the Vebhara and Pandava are mentioned as two hills that stood side by side. The canonical order of the five names was changed in the commentaries, one of them enumerating them as Pandava, Gijjhakūta, Vebhāra, Isigili and Vepulla, and another as Isigili, Vepulla, Vebhāra, Paṇḍava and Gijjhakūṭa. The Mahābhārata contains two lists, one
5
3 Majjhima, iii, p. 68f.
5 Vimanavatthu-atthakatha, p. 82.
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4 Paramatthajotika, II, p. 382.
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