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NOVEMBER, 1881.]
PTOLEMY'S GEOG. BK. VII, CH. 1, S$ 25, 26.
337
25. The Oroudian Mountains, which ex. tend from 1389 to 133', and whose eastern limit is in 189 lat. and its western 16o.
Mount Bettigo:-As the rivers which have their sources in this range-the Pseudostomos, the Baris, and the Sõlên or Támraparni, all belong to South Malabar, there can be no doubt that Bêttigo denotes the southern portion of the Western Ghats extending from the Koimbatur gap to Cape Comorin-called Malaya in the Pauranik list already quoted. One of the sum. mits of this range, famous in Indian mythology as the abode of the Rishi Agastya, bears the name in Tamil of Podigei, or as it is pronounced Pothigei. It is visible from the month of the Tamraparni, which has its sources in it, and from Kolkhoi, and the Greeks who visited those parts, and had the mountain pointed out to them would no doubt apply the name by which they heard it called to the whole range connected with it. (See Caldwell's Dravid. Gram. Introd. p. 101).
Ad eis athron-If we take Ptolemy's figures as our guide here, we must identify this range with the chain of hills which Lassen describes in the following passage :-“Of the mountain system of the Dekhan Ptolemy had formed an erroneous conception, since he represented the chain of the Western Ghats as protruded into the interior of the country, instead of lying near to the western coast with which it runs parallel, and he was misled thereby into shortening the courses of the rivers which rise in the Western Ghats. The chain, which he calls Adeisathron begins in the neighbourhood of Nagpur and stretches southward to the east of therivers Wain + Ganga and Pranita, separates the Godavari from the Krishna, and comes to an end at the sources of the Kåvêri. This view of his meaning is confirmed by the fact that he locates the two cities Baithana or Pratishthana which lies to the east of the West- ern Ghếte, on the Godavari, and Tagara both to the west of Adeisathron. He was led into this misrepresentation partly through the incompleteness and insufficiency of the accounts which he used, and partly through the circumstance that the Eastern Ghat does not consist of a single chain, bat of several parallel chains, and that to the south of the sources of the Kavêrf the Eastern Ghat is connected with the Western Ghat through the Nilgiri Mountains. The name Adeixathron, one sees, can only refer to the West Ghật in which the Kavêrf rises." (Ind. Alt. vol. III, pp. 162-3). Yule explains the source of Ptolemy's error thus : “No doubt hit Indian liste showed him KAveri rising in Sahyadri (as does Wilford's list from the Brahmanda Parana, As. Res. vol. VIII, p. 335f.).
He had no real clue to the locality of the Sahyadri, but found what he took for the same name (Adi. Bathra) applied to a city in the heart of India, and there he located the range." Adeisathron must therefore be taken to denote properly that section of the Western Ghats which is immediately to the north of the Koimbatur Gap, as it is there the Kaveri rises. The origin of the name Adeisathron will be afterwards pointed ont.
Ouxento'n designates the Eastern continuation of the Vindhyas. All the authorities are at one in referring it to the mountainous regions south of the Sôn, included in Chhutia Nagpur, Ramgarh, Sirgujâ, &c. Ptolemy places its western extremity at the distance of one degree from the eastern extremity of the Vindhyay. The rivers which have their sources in the range are the Tyndis, the Dôsaròn, the Adamag and an unnamed tributary of the Ganges. The name itself represents the Sanskrit Rikshavant, which however did not designate the Eastern Vindhyas, but a large district of the central. This difference in the application of the names need not invalidate the supposition of their identity. The authors whom Ptolemy consulted may have misled him by some inaccuracy in their statements, or the Hindas themselves may have intended the name of Rikshavant to include localities further eastward than those which it primarily denoted. Riksha means 'a bear, and is no doubt connected with the Greek word of the same meaning, arktos.
The Oroudian Mountains:-"This we take," says Yule, "to be the Vaidurya just mentioned, as the northern section of the Western Ghâţs, though Ptolemy has entirely misconceived its position. We conceive that he found in the Indian lists that the great rivers of the eastern or Maesolian Coast rose in the Vaidarya, and having no other clue he places the Orádia (which seems to be a mere metathesis of Odarya for Vaiddrya) near and parallel to that coast. Hence Lassen and others (all, as far is known) identify thesę Oroudian Mountains with those that actually exist above Kalinga. This corresponds better, no doubt, with the position which Ptolemy has assigned. But it is not our business to map Ptole. my's errors; he has done that for himself; we have to show the real meaning and application of the names which he used, whatever false views he may have had about them."
26. The rivers which flow from Mount Imaös into the Indus are arranged as follows :Sources of River Koa .........120° 37° Sources of the River Souastos., 122° 30 360 Sources of the River Indas ..1259 37°
