________________
Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
220
OLD BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS
territorial names of two post-Asokan Buddhist schools, the former being derived from Himavanta, and the latter from Uttarapatha. We have reasons to say that the Himavanta region consisted of a number of Himalayan states to the north of the Southern High Road in its extension from Vesali to Savatthi and beyond the northern boundary of the Middle Country as defined in Buddhist literature. Thus Uttarapatha may be accurately defined as a tract of land, which lay to the west of the Himavanta region, extending westward from Thaneswar, and which lay to the north-west of the Buddhist Middle Country and to the north of the Dakṣinapatha, extending north-west from Mathura, the capital of Surasena. Whatever be its later territorial extension, it is certain that Kharavela's Uttarapatha signified nothing but the region specified above, the region including Mathura in its south-eastern extension. Anyhow, from the record of Kharavela's twelfth regnal year, it is clear that Uttarapatha lay towards the west or north-west beyond Anga and Magadha. And should our reading be correct, from the use of the plural expression Uttarapadha-rajano, "the rulers of Uttarapatha," it may be inferred that when King Kharavela carried his campaign into Uttarapatha, it was parcelled, precisely as it was when Alexander invaded the plains of India, into a number of small independent principalities, although the Hathi-Gumpha inscription does not mention the names of their rulers.
According to the Mahabharata account of the journey of the Pandavas from Hastinapura to Kalinga, Kalinga proper could be reached by the travellers journeying along the sea-coast from the mouth of the Ganges, and it was the country through which the river Vaitarauf flowed.1 On the strength of this Epic description, Mr. Mono Mohan Ganguly assigns the following boundaries to Kalinga proper : "On the North, the Vaitarani; on the South, the Godavari; on the East, the Bay of Bengal ; on the West, the Tributary States of Orissa."2 The reader can judge for himself whether and how far the geographical extension of Kalinga proper,
1. Mahabharata, Vanaparva, Canto I:
Tataḥ samudra-tirena jagama rasudhadhipah | Bhrātṛbhiḥ sahito vīraḥ Kalingan prati Bhārata || Lomasa uvaca :
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
Ete Kalingah Kaunteya yatra Vaitarani nadi | Yatrayajata dharmopi devaccharanametya vai || 2. Orissa and Her Remains, p. 9.
For Private And Personal Use Only
