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啶�啷佮ぐ啶距ぃ啶�啷� -- [pur膩峁嘺m -- ] PURANA
[Vol. VI., No. 1
of Tambyzoi. L茅vi identified it with Kamboja on the ground
that Tambyzoi is only a Greek transliteration of the Austro-
Asiatic 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 Kalid膩sa, he says that all the area from the
Sindhu to the Oxus, including Balkh (Bahlika, Bactria), was
under the Guptas. First, even if K膩lid膩sa did imply such sway
by the king who was his contemporary, we could not confide-
ntly 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 Bahl墨kas 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' correct-
ly 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 B盲hl墨kas 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 Vahl墨kas beyond
the seven mouths of the Indus are apparently the Bactrioi
occupying the country near Arachosia in the time of the geogra-
pher ptolemy."
2 Another statement of Agrawala's, which is impossible to
accept, is that the Yavanas of A艣oka'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 Brahma峁囜笉a-Pur膩na (Uttaradh膩ga, Upodgh膩ta-P膩da, Ch.
16. 18) and that therefore A艣oka's Kamdojas can very well
be in the P膩m墨r region. It is plain history. as Sircar urges,
that Bahlika (Bactria) in A艣oka'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 indep-
endent. It could never have been under Asoka at any time. So
the Bahl墨ka-Yavanas could not have had A艣oka's Kambojas as
their neighbours. What is more, A艣oka's Yona-Kamboja, as
Sircar reminds us, is closely associated in Rock Edict V with
Gandh膩ra, whose two chief cities, Tak峁�asil膩 and Pu峁�kar膩vati, 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 Raychaudhuri鹿 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 A艣oka
must be for the Kambojas whom A艣oka (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 inscrip-
tions of A艣oka exist-at Taksa艣ila and Lamp盲ka (Laghm盲n).
Sircar's strong point is A艣oka'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.
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