Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 349

August, 1931 ]
HISTORICAL
[H 62-63
52. I nevertheless believe that NWIAV., whether of common origin with Dardic or not, are much more closely related to Hoernle's Mågadhi tongue than even he supposed. In other respecte also his contention seems to me to be entirely justified, and, so far back as we can trace the linguistic history of Northern India, we find a 'Māgadhi Prakrit tongue' occupying the North-West, South and East, with a wedge of Saurasēni in the Midland, which it embraces on three sides. Now, the Aryan invasion of India was a process extending over several centuries. The Vöda itself shows this. There are, for instance, hymns that treat of Divódása of Arachosia as a contemporary, and there are others that tell of his descendant, Sudās, who dwelt in the Panjāb, and in whose days the martial exploits of his ancestor had already become legendary. This invasion may have been gradual, or, as Risley (op. cit.) suggests, there may have been two different Aryan invasions at widely separated periods. For our present purposes, it is immaterial which was the fact. If it was gradual, then the first comers differed from the latest as widely as if there had been separate invasions instead of a continuous one. Sudās's hymn-writers tell us how he conquered the Purus, another Aryan tribe far to the East, on the Jamunā, whom they called mydhravac, of barbarous speech. Again, we have a valuable reference to the struggle between the Aryans of the Western and those of the Eastern Panjab, in the oontest between the Western Brāhmana Vasiştha and the Eastern Ksatriya Viśvāmitra.. Similarly, the war of the Mahābhārata between the Kurus and the Pāñcālas gives us hints as to the state of affairs at a later stage of history. Since Lassen's time it has been recognized that the latter were older settlers than the former, and it is an interesting fact that, broadly speaking, their allies belonged to the South Midland and Pascala, or East Midland, while the Kurus had allies from the North-West, the South, and the East. This would illustrate & later stage of the struggle. The Pāñcālas of the East Midland would be the representatives of the Magadhi Prakrit tongue,' opposed to the Kurus coming of the West Midland and Eastern Panjāb. The fact that the Kurus are described as having allies in the extreme East can hardly affect the question. We can accept the original authors of the old Bhārata lay (ciro. 400 B.C.) as authorities for the centre and west of Northern India, but references to settled kingdoms in the Far East must be ascribed to later writers. Political considerations affected the conduct of the nations immediately to the East of Pañoäla, viz., Eastern and Western Kösala, Vatsa, Käsi, Vidēha, and East. ern and Western Magadha. Some of these sided with one party and the others with the other. Making these subtractions, we find that the war was one between the Brahmanical Kurus of the West Midland and the anti-Brahmanical Pafcälas to their East.
This point is discussed in detail in an Appendix to this chapter.
Hillebrandt, 104 ff., 109. J Hillebraad', 14.
• Hillebrandt, 110, also maintains that there was a second invasion of Aryana from the West. It is worth noting that Visvamitra oallod Vasitha a Yātudhana, or Rakyasa, a form of abuse that the latter strongly resented (Rv. vii, 104, 15).
6 The kingdom of Magadha was, as a whole, hostile to the Midland. See Jacobi, Das Rāmāyaṇa, 104. • Pargiter, JRAS., 1908, 334 ff., and map; Grierson, ib., 602 ff.
63. It is to be noted that the Rāma legend belonged to Eastern India, while the MBh. (originally with Kurus, not Pāñcālas, for its heroes) belonged to the Midland. Nevertheless, the connexion of the East with the extreme North-West was close. The progenitors of Rāma, the Ikawākuides, whose home was in Kösala, east of the Midland, belonged originally to the
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