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CHAPTER LXXIV
THE PĀRIYĀTRAS
It is doubtful whether Pāriyātras, or Pāripātras as they were also called, can ethnologically be classed as a tribe or people, to be distinguished from the Vindhyas with whom they lived contiguously, or from other peoples who had their habitat in and around the same locality. The Purāņas, however, always enumerate them as a distinct people, associated with the Pāripātra mountains, from which they evidently took their name.
As already noticed, there are two variant forms of the mountainous region inhabited by this people, as given in the Purāņas: Pāriyātra and Pāripātra; Pāripātra seems to be the more usual reading, though Pāriyātra occurs not infrequently. · In the topographical list of the Purāņas, the Pāriyātra or Pāripātra hills are mentioned as one of the seven hill ranges together forming the Kulācalas or Kulaparvatas, family mountains', i.e. mountain ranges or systems. These are the Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya, Suktimat, Rkşa, Vindhya and Päripātra. The Bhāgavata, Vāyu, Mārkandeya and Padma Purānas and the Bhīşmaparvan of the Mahābhārata add a list of inferior mountains to these seven.3 The seven principal hill ranges are similarly enumerated by all the Puranic authorities, and their situation is easily determined by the rivers which are listed as flowing from them.
Pāripātra in particular is always associated with the Vindhyas. Vindhya, as is well known, is the general name of the chain of hills that stretches across Central India, dividing India into its welldefined and natural north and south divisions; but it is evident from the Puranic list and the situations of the hills mentioned in it that in the Purāņas the name Vindhya is generally restricted to the eastern division of the long range of hills. According to the Vāyupurāna, however, it is the part south of the river Narmadā, or the Sātpurā range of hills. Pāripātra constitutes the northern and
1 Mārkandeya Purāna, 58, 8.
2 E.g., Vişnupurāna, Wilson's Ed., Bk. II, Chap. III, pp. 127-8; also Mārkandeya Purāna, 57, IO; Mahābhārata, VI, 9, II.
āgavata burāna. V. 10. 16ff: Mārkandeva P. LVII. 12ff.: Moh. Bhīşmaparvan, śl. 317-378. As subordinate portions of them are thousands of mountains; some unheard of, though lofty, extensive and abrupt; and others, better known, though of lesser elevation, and inhabited by people of low stature.
