Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 27

FEDRUARY, 1919)
THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA
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pair of bullocks could draw a fully laden cart. This yojana was taken by the Chinese pilgrims as equal to 100 li"s. [JRAS., 1906, p. 1011.)
In making the above calculations Fleet took a hasta – } yard. But Major Vost has shewn from Medieval and Ancient Chinese and other sources that the hasta was formerly taken to be a little larger than is done now. [JRAS., 1903, p. 65.] Hence taking his calculations the three yojanas will be-I. 5.288 miles or 5'3 miles very nearly; II. 10.6 miles very nearly; III. 142 miles very nearly.
Thus 100 "li"'s or a yojana denoted the distance occupied in making a day's journey. The said day's journey averaged very closely about fourteen miles. But being actually determined in each case by such considerations as the nature of the country traversed and the distance between the villages, sarais and other convenient haltips places, it might easily be anything from twelve to sixteen miles and in exceptional cases might have even a wider range in either direction.
II. (6) Again, as Fa-Hian gives distances in yojanas only and not in fractions of it, his one yojana may be any distance more than 3 yojana and less than 11 yojanas. Yuan Chwang also uses round numbers, such as 500 "li's, 600 "lills, etc. Hence we may allow a certain margin and take his 500 "li''s as any distance above 450 and below 550 "li's. Thus the distances of both the Chinese pilgrims can be taken only as approximations,
II. (c) Yüan Chwang's dimensions of various countries are generally taken to be exaggerations. It became a common practice of Cunningham to take his thousands as hundreds. But as Yuan Chwang has not stated these details in the decimal system of notation, he is not justified to do so. Vor can we condemn his detans of this kind in general terms without considering how they can be applied. For as he usually stated these details in thousands of "li"'s any one of them may be 50 miles too great or too little. Again re-entering angles may increase a perimeter very considerably, while reducing the area inside it. Conventional ideas as to the size of a country may also have caused some errors in his details. [JRAS., 1907-p. 641 ff.).
III. As the names of a country and its capital are sometimes identical (and even when not identical Yüan Chwang has not mentioned them both ) and as Yuan Chwang has not always precisely stated whether by a certain place-name he means & capital or a country, the distances and directions given by him cannot precisely be traced on the map, though the best way would be to take them as from each capital to the next one.
IV, The peculiarity of Chinese phonetics caused Yuan Chwang to insert vowels between Skr, conjuncts and to use "k" for Skr. k, kh, g, gh; ch for Skr, ch, chh, j jh ; # for th, dh, ks, fr; t ford, t, th, d, dh; p for'p, ph, 6, bh; 1 for r, 2; f for b and v. Hence the difficulty in finding out the true Skr. form.
V. Again cases of discrepancy between the “Records" and the “Life and some apparent mutual contradictions and a few various readings show that the writings of Yuan Chwang have not been correctly transmitted to us.
We thus see that even the very hoat of the foreign sources are not fully satisfactory and though the results arrived at from them are of great value, they cannot be taken as anything more than mere approximations.
The Chinese source also includes Various notes on India--in the Chinese histories and specially in the Chowese translations of Indian works--translated by M. Sylvain Lévi and other scholars.
(To be continued.)