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The Location of Kamboja [kamboja-janapadasya sthananirnayah] / By Sri K. D. Sethna; Pondicherry / 207-214

When doctors disagree, the patient often dies. Dr. D. C. Sircar and Dr. V. S. Agrawala are at variance over the location of Kamboja¹ and as a result the historical truth about this ancient Mahajanapada appears to fade out. The irony of the situation is that both the doctors are right-and both are wrong . Agrawala puts Kamboja in the region of the Pamirs. He has the clear support of Kalidasa (Raghuvansa, IV. 60 ff) as well as of Kalhana (Rajatarangini, IV. 165-66 ). Some passages of the Mahabharata, which we shall specify later , are also on his side. Then there is the fact that, as Jayachandra Vidyalankara showed on the basis of Grierson's Linguistic Survey, the root sava, which Yaska had long ago noted as used only in the Kamboja dialect among the dialects of the Aryans, is still current in the Ghalcha-speaking parts of the Pamirs, This fact, of course , is not quite determinative of the Kambojas' location, because gava, with its Iranian affinity is likely to have been used wherever the Iranian influence on a dialect was strong. Its currency today in the Paamirs cannot decide where the Kambojas, as members of a national or racial group which Yaska had in mind, were located in his ancient age. However, the fact creates a fair presumption that the Kamboja country may have once been in the modern Ghalcha-speakers' territory. And what finally clinches Agrawala's point is the testimony of the geographer Ptolemy (c. 140 A. D.), which is completely omitted by both Agrawala and Sircar. It was Sylvain Levi who drew attention to the place which Ptolemy locates to the south of the Oxus under the name 1. Purana, July 1963, pp. 251-257, 355-56. 2. Indian Antiquary, 1923, p. 54.

208 puranam -- PURANA [Vol. VI., No. 1 of Tambyzoi. Levi identified it with Kamboja on the ground that Tambyzoi is only a Greek transliteration of the AustroAsiatic spelling of Kamboja. Yes, Agrawala is not off the mark at all. But several statements he makes in support of his thesis seem unacceptable. Thus, apropos of Kalidasa, he says that all the area from the Sindhu to the Oxus, including Balkh (Bahlika, Bactria), was under the Guptas. First, even if Kalidasa did imply such sway by the king who was his contemporary, we could not confidently apply it to the Guptas: We are not yet certain that any Gupta was his contemporary. Secondly, the Meherauli pillar inscription of King Chandra, who was either Chandragupta I or Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, unmistakably mentions that the Bahlikas were conquered after a crossing of the mouths of the Indus by King Chandra. Agrawala makes no comment on this specific detail, even when he refers to it. As Allan' correctly remarked many years back, the inscription cannot mean that "Chandra's arms penetrated to Balkh, the route to which would not be across the mouths of the Indus." Neither can the inscription be looked upon as merely marking by the Indus-delta and the Bahlikas two terms of a conventional fourfold definition of a chakravartin's achievement: we cannot ignore the close-knit grammar of the inscription's sentence, by which the conquest directly and intimately depends upon the crossing. Apart from Allan's own suggestion that the term "Bahlika" in the time of King Chandra may have been employed in a general sense to indicate foreingners, the only plausible idea offered so far is Raychaudhuri's, pointing to a tribe not very distant from the Indus-delta: "The Vahlikas beyond the seven mouths of the Indus are apparently the Bactrioi occupying the country near Arachosia in the time of the geographer ptolemy." 2 Another statement of Agrawala's, which is impossible to accept, is that the Yavanas of Asoka's inscriptions, who are 1. Catalogue of Coins, the Gupta Dynasty, etc.. Introduction, p. xxxvi. 2. The Politicat History of Ancient India (3rd Ed.), p. 364, fn. 2. THE LOCATION OF KAMBOJA 209 Jan., 1964] mentioned along with the Kambojas, are the Bahlika-Yavanas of the Brahmanda-Purana (Uttaradhaga, Upodghata-Pada, Ch. 16. 18) and that therefore Asoka's Kamdojas can very well be in the Pamir region. It is plain history. as Sircar urges, that Bahlika (Bactria) in Asoka's day was part of the Seleucid empire until c. 250 B. C. (or c. 256 B. C., according to Newell) when its governor Diodotus revolted and made the province independent. It could never have been under Asoka at any time. So the Bahlika-Yavanas could not have had Asoka's Kambojas as their neighbours. What is more, Asoka's Yona-Kamboja, as Sircar reminds us, is closely associated in Rock Edict V with Gandhara, whose two chief cities, Taksasila and Puskaravati, are about the Indus and not near the Oxus. Sircar's two points go to prove that there was a Kamboja country in the vicinity of the Indus, most probably somewhere in Afghanistan and perhaps wide enough to take in Rajapura which is mentioned by the Mahabharata (VII. 4, 5) as the scene of Karna's victory over the Kambojas and which Raychaudhuri¹ considered, with the help of Hiuen Tsang's Ho-lo-she-pu-lo (Rajapura, modern Rajauri), as the central clue to the location of Kamboja. Sincar's further argument that the Aramaic version below the Greek in the recently discovered Kandahar edict of Asoka must be for the Kambojas whom Asoka (R. E. XIII) groups with the Yavanas is not at all negligible. But Agrawala is right in observing that we cannot connect Aramaic with the Kambojas exclusively or, merely on the strength of it at Kandahar, locate them in Southern Afghanistan. For, two other Aramaic inscriptions of Asoka exist-at Taksasila and Lampaka (Laghman). Sircar's strong point is Asoka's yonakambojesu. If the Greek text was meant for the Yavanas, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the Aramaic here was for the Kambojas. Sircar, however, writes about the latter: "They appear to have lived side by side with the Yavanas." Does this mean the two peoples formed a single province ? If that is the implication read 1. Op. cit., 1938, pp. 125 ff. 27

210 puranam-- PURANA [Vol. VI., No. 1 in Kandahar's bilingual text, it goes against Asoka's other edicts. In those edicts, not only are the Yonas put with the Kambojas but both are put with the Gandharas and once (R. E. XIII) the Yonas are mentioned by themselves. The clear suggestion is that each people formed a province on its own and that the three peoples formed contiguous provinces. Sircar himself at one place speaks of their living in contiguous areas of Uttarapatha in the age of the Mauryas. In view of this, I suppose we should take his "side by side" to mean nothing more than contiguity. In that case the Kandahar epigraph cannot be said to stand in the Yavana country but only at the common boundary between the Yavana and the Kamboja countries. Attending to the Asokan sequence Yona-Kamboja-Gandhara, we should say that Yona stood south of Kandahar and Kamboja north of it, extending right up to the point where Gandhara started and perhaps marching with its borders further north. Now we may sum up. Sircar is right about his Kamboja on this side of the Hindu Kush. Agrawala is right about his Kamboja on the other side of that mountain. Both are wrong in ruling out each other's Kamboja. The historical truth is that there were two Kambojas. We have explicit evidence of it in the Mahabharata. The epic does not direct us only to a Kamboja in the Rajauri region. It has an earlier reference (II. 27. 23-26) describing not the conquests of Karna but those of Arjuna, and bere we have the Paramakambojas as distinguished from the Kambojas. The latter are grouped with the Daradas who are to be put on the right bank of the Upper Indus, whereas the Paramakambojas are said to have allied their forces with the Lohas and "the Rishikas of the north". In fact, it is the Paramakambojas whom Vidyalankara identifies with the Ghalchaspeaking peoples while identifying "the Rishikas of the north" with the Yuch-chis (Kushanas). These Parama kambojas are the same as the Kambojas whom Vidyalankara finds often associated in the epic with the Vahlikas. But this association, which fully supports Agrawala, must not lead us to overlook the THE LOCATION OF KAMBOJA 211 Jan., 1964] association with the Daradas nor the third associative formula, first emphasised by Raychaudhuri, which the Mahabharata (XII. 207, 43) gives-Yauna-Kamboja-Gandhara-in the closest possible agreement with the one in Asoka's R. E. V., which fully supports Sircar. There is no need for the two eminent doctors to disagree. B. M. Barua' no less a doctor-could have reconciled them with the double diagnosis he made quite a time ago. And a further truth which Barua brought forward may interest Sircar and Agrawala, especially the latter. Just as the Mahabharata speaks of Kamboja and Parama kamboja, the Mahaniddesa (pp. 155, 415) speaks of Yona and Paramayona. Where shall we locate Paramayona? Only two possibilities present themselves. Bahlika, from where the Bahlika-Yavanas of Aagrawala came, may have been known by an alternative name, Yavana. Ferghana (Sogdiana) was named Ta-Yuan by the Chinese and, as Rene Grousset³ suggested, the component "Yuan" may be the same as the Iranian "Yauna" and the Indian "Yona" or "Yavana". As both Bahlika and Ferghana can be considered contiguous to the Pamir-region, Agrawala no less than Sircar can legitimately have a Yona-Kamboja, but the heavy odds against its being Asokan must be admitted. We may add that Kalidasa, on whom Agrawala leans a great deal, does not permit any combination of the Yavanas with the Kambojas. No alternative yonakambojesu to Asoka's can be based on him. For, while his Kambojas are in the Oxus-area , his Yavanas are pretty far from it. The Raghuvansa (IV . 61 ) clearly suggests that in moving towards Persia from Western India (Aparanta, Northern Konkan) Raghu had to cross the land of the Yavanas. Kalidasa's Yavanas are not Bahlika-Yavanas. They are not northern enough to be anywhere near Bahlika, much less near a Pamirian Kamboja. 1. Asoka and His Inscriptions (Calcutta, 1946), I, pp. 92-96. 2. Ibid., pp. 94, 96. 3. L'Empire des Steppes, n. 57. fn.

212 puranam - PURANA [Vol. VI., No. 1 Here a final question must be posed and answered. Which of the two Kambojas was counted in ancient times as one of the Mahajanapadas of India? All depends on what limits we assign to Bharatavarsa. Sircar speaks of Kalidasa as describing Raghu's subjugation of "the countries in the northern areas of Bharatavarsa" and as mentioning in this region "the Hunas on the banks of the Vamksu (Oxus), i. e. in the Bahlika country or Bactria," and "the Kambojas" and "the Himalayas". If Bharatavarsa can be thought of in such wide terms, there is no objection to making the Pamirian Kamboja a Mahajanapada of India. But, as none of the old list of Indian Mahajanapadas includes Bahlika, it may not be proper to go beyond the Kamboja which neighboured Gandhara. Now we may make a few remarks on certain declarations by both Agrawala and Sircar, which strike us as insufficient. Not in his present article but in his admirable India as Known to Panini, Agrawala repeats what many others have stated before him: "The Kambojas are known as Kambujiya in the Old Persian inscriptions". May we ask where in these inscriptions Kamboja is mentioned as a tribe or a country? The term "Kambujiya" occurs only as the name of the Persian king whom the Greeks called Cambyses. And even this term E. Benveniste², disagreeing with J. Charpentier, refuses to affine in any way with the Indian designation "Kamboja". Benveniste plainly says: "The name of the Kambojas does not yet appear in any Iranian source". This fact should make us pause before asserting too categorically that the Kambojas were of Iranian extraction. The root sava itself, we may remember, is commented on by Yaska because it occurs in the Nighantu (II. 14) which is a colletion of Vedic words. Sava must have been part of Vedic usage, even if we have lost the passages where it occurred, and it does not by itself prove Iranian extraction in the speakers. It only proves Iranian influence, either linguistic or racial. As Pusalker³ writes: "The earliest mention of Kamboja occurs in the Vamsa 1. Pp. 48-49. 2. Journal Asiatique, Vol. CCXLVI, I, p. 48 with fn. 3. In The Vedic Age (London, 1952), pp, 259-260. 213 Jan., 1964] THE LOCATION OF KAMBOJA Brahmana of the Samaveda where a teacher Kamboja Aupamanyava is referred to. The sage Upamanyu mentioned in the Rigveda (I. 102. 9) is in all probability the father of the Kamboja teacher .. The speech of the Kambojas is referred to by Yaska as differing from that of other Aryans and Grierson sees in this reference the Iranian affinities of the Kambojas, but the fact that Kamboja teachers were reputed for their Vedic learning shows them to have been Vedic Aryans, so that Kamboja was an Aryan settlement. Later on Kambojas settled to the north-west of the Indus..." In regard to their historical status as compared with that of the Yavanas, it is hardly right to say, as Sircar does, that they and not the Yavanas were important in the age of Buddha. No doubt, the Anguttaranikaya (VII. 5. 3 and 5), which Sircar quotes, enumerates among the Mahajanapadas the Kambojas as well as the Gandharas and omits the Yavanas. But the Mujjhimanikaya (43. 1. 3), which too he quotes and which is as old as the anguttaranikaya, makes Buddha himself mention the Yavanas together with the Kambojas in exactly the same form as Asoka: Yonakambojesu. So the Yavanas were prominent as the Kambojas or the Gandharas in Buddha's age. Besides, as B. C. Law¹ tells us, the Chullaniddesa (which is included in the Buddhist canon and is therefore one of the oldest Pali commentaries) omits Gandhara and mentions Yona no less than Kamboja in its list of the Mahajanapadas which flourished before the time of Buddha. Yona and Kamboja are absolutely on a par in the period of which Sircar speaks. as Here a problem arises. What are we to make of the references to a Yona state having existed in India's north-west in such antiquity? Must we revive that old favourite of Bhandarkar and Jayaswal a pre-Alexandrine Greek colony in India? Or shall we accept the ancient Indian tradition which regards the Yavanas no less than the Kambojas as degraded Ksatriyas ? Then we shall have to say that in ancient India, 1. In The Age of Imperial Unity (Bombay, 1951), p. 1.

214 puranam - PURANA [Vol. VI., No. 1 before the Greeks came to be called Yavanas, there were nonGreek Yavanas - just as in medieval India, though in a different way, the label "Yavana" was not confined to the Greeks. This is a theme well worth discussing at some length, and the more we explore it the more surprises we are likely to encounter, prompting changes in several aspects of ancient Indian history. One of the surprises Sircar himself has touched on in passing the Puranic description of both the Yavanas and the Kambojas as having "shaven heads". And what renders this description all the more a challenge to the exclusive GreekYavana equation is that it merely reiterates what the Ganapatha on Panini's rule II. 1. 72 says of these two tribes: kambojamundah yavanamundah. If this is authentic Paninian material, what happens to the usual interpretation of that grammarian's yavanani as an allusion to the Greek script? Here are deep waters indeed and we cannot launch on them at the moment. It is an enterprise to which we may well invite Sircar and Agrawala-particularly Agrawala who has not mentioned this part of the Ganapatha in his famous book.