Indian Antiquary Vol 58

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 304

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
APRIL, 1929
local tradition ascribes the conquest of "King Gira's fortress" to Mahmûd of Ghazna, whose foroos, after a long siege, took it from the last infidel king of Swât under the leadership of the saint now buried at the Ziarat below.
It has appeared to me desirable to record these observations about the remarkable hill stronghold above Udogram in some detail; for the indications already discussed as to the direction of Alexander's operations beyond Bazira, in conjunction with what I shall presently Bhow about the name of the place, suggest the question whether we ought not to look there for the probable location of Ora. Unfortunately, Arrian's further brief mention of Ôra supplies no topographical or other local hint. It is confined to the bare statement that "Alexander did not find the siege of Ôra difficult, for he took the town on the first assault against its walls and secured the elephants left behind there." Nor does Curtius' account help us. He mentions indeed a place Nora, to which Alexander dispatched a force under Polysperchon after the capture of Mazaga, and this has been generally assumed to be the same as Arrian's Ora. But all we are told about it is that Polysperchon "defeated the undisciplined multitude which he en. countered and pursuing them within their fortifications compelled them to surrender the place."94
As regards the name Udegrám, it should be explained in the first place that it is certainly compound of which the second part is the word gram, "village” (Sanskrit grama), wellknown to Dardio languages and very common in local names of Swât, as a reference to the map shows. The first part Ude- (also heard as Udi.) is pronounced with that distinctly cerebral media d which to European ears always sounds like a cerebral , and often undergoes that change to r also in Modern Indo-Aryan as well as in Dardic languages.36 The temptation is great to recognize in Arrian's Apz the Greek rendering of an earlier form of this name Ude, and to derive the latter itself from that ancient name.of Swât which in its varying Sanskrit forms of Uddiyāna, Oddiyana, has been recovered by M. Sylvain Lévi's critical scholarship from a number of Buddhist texts.26 The simplification of the double consonant dd, the complementary lengthening of the preceding vowel & (6), which would explain the long initial vowel in, spa, and the subsequent shortening of this vowel in modern Ude (when becoming the antepenultimate in the compound Udegrâm), all these phonetic changes assumed in the history of the name can be fully accounted for by well-known rules affecting the transition of Sanskrit words into Prakrit and thence into modern Indo-Aryan forms.27 Nevertheless, it will be well to bear in mind that the nexus of names here indicated must remain conjectural until epigraphical or other evidence helps to establish it.
Arrian after recording the fall of Ora and the abandonment of other towns by their "bar. barian " inhabitants, has nothing to tell us of further operations in the country of the Assakênoi. He gives a brief description of that mighty mass of rock called Aornos to which they all had fled, and relates how the fame of its impregnability fired Alexander with an ardent desire to capture it,28 This account of Aornos may be left for discussion further on. We are next told that he turned Ora and Massaga into strong places for guarding the country and fortified Bazira. Then the narrative takes us suddenly south to that division of his army
14 Cf. Curtius, VIII. xi.
15 CY. Grierson, loc. cit., Z.D.M.G., 1896, p. 5; Pisaca Languages,' p. 104. For an example of d being rendered by Greek, of. Ptolemy's name Larike for Gujarat, reproducing a Prakrit derivative Ladika of the Sanskrit name Laga , also Weber, "Greek pronunciation of Hindu words," Indian Antiquary, 2, p. 150.
36 See S. Lovi, "Lo catalogue géographique des Yaksa dans la Mah&mky Ori," Journal Asiatique, 1915, tanv. févr.. pp. 105 . There, too, it has been convincingly shown that the form Udydna ("the Garden "), commonly accepted by European scholars as the Sanskrit name of Swat, is but an idolum libri, based upon
"Jorped popular etymology " which a glose on the Chinese notice of Swat in Heüan-toang's Hri-yachi first records.
37 C. Grierson', loc. cit., Z.D.M.G., 1895, p. 414; 1896, pp. 219. Closely corresponding rules can be shown to have affected also the phonetic development of Dardio languager, especially of that Sanskritized Dardio tongue which, from the ovidence of the present TorwAlf and Maiya in the Bwat and Indus Kohistan, must be assumed to have been spoken in Swat before the Path n conquest.
31 See Arrian, IV, xxviii, 2.