Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 19

THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA
.15
FEBRUARY, 1919 ]
should take the word vinita of the Asokan Edict as equivalent to vinaya as used in the second passage in the Arthasástra quoted above, and should wrongly suppose that it means military exercise," which is never the meaning of the term vinaya. I doubt very much if any authority can be cited to prove that vinaya ever means "military exercise," as supposed by Mr. Jayaswal simply on its occurrence in a passage of which the subjectmatter only is "military exercise or training," viz., hasty=asva-ratha-praharaṇa-vidya, Hence, the meaning of the passage in the Aśokan Edict (Rock Edict VI) cannot mean that the communicators (pativêdakas) should communicate people's business to the king even when he may be in a vinita, i.e., even when he attends to " military exercise." But it is undoubtedly very hard to conjecture aright the meaning of the term vinita. Sanskrit lexicographers, however, help us in ascertaining, to some extent, the meaning of the term. Amara has "vinitaḥ sadhuva hinah"-Book II, 8, 44, i.e., well-trained horses; so has Mêdinî "vinitaḥ suvahdivé syât," when used in genders other than the neuter. We have also another word vainitaka in Amara (=vinitaka of other lexicons) which means a mediate vehicle, e.g., a porter carrying a litter or a horse dragging a carriage (cf. Amara Book II, 8, 58" paramparâ-vâhanam yat tad=rainitakam =astriyam). So it seems plausible that the king. might have meant such a thing as a horse or a vehicle by the term vinita in his edict. But yet we cannot be very certain about its meaning.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA.
BY SURENDRANATH MAJUMDAR, SASTRI, M.A.; CALCUTTA.
(1) Present state of our knowledge and the pioneers in this field of research.
1. Mr. Francis Wilford, Engineer." A learned and laborious, but injudicious writer" (Wilson's Hindu Theatre, I. 9). His essays on Egypt and the Nile from the Ancient Books of the Hindus; the Sacred Islands in the West; etc. (Asiatic Researches, III, IX, XIV); the Comparative Geography of India (published posthumously in 1851). His great merit was to point out the existence of Sanskrit sources of geography. His account of the Nile from Sanskrit sources enabled Lieut. J. H. Speke to discover its source. (Speke's Discovery of the Source of the Nile, chaps. I, V, X).
2. H. H. Wilson.-In 1824 he contributed to the Oriental Magazine (Vol. II, p. 180; an article in which he described a Skr. MS. professing to be a section of the Bhabisya Purana which elucidates the local geography of Bengal. In his translation of the Vishnu Purana he commented on the Purânic geography. His Notes on the Indica of Clesias was published in 1836. (Oxford). The geographical portion of his Ariana Antiqua (London, 1841)--an account of the coins and antiquities discovered by Mr. Masson during his travels in Afghanistan-is full and valuable.
3. Christian Lassen.-(a) His Pentapotamia Indica (1827) gives an account of the Punjab from the "classical" sources and from the Mahabharata, the Kosas and other Skr. sources. (b) In the geographical section of his Indische Alterthumskunde (Bonn, 1843)-the very learned and exhaustive work on the antiquities of India-be described the physical features of India and gave (especially in the footnotes) whatever information he could collect from classical and Skr. sources. Though "his system of identification is based on a wrong principle" (M'Crindle's Ptolemy, Preface, p. vii) and hence many of his identifications are wrong (Pargiter in .JASB., 1895, p. 250), these works of erudition are precious mines of materials' utilised by later scholars.