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Parpola a 2019 the Lands of Sindhu & Sauvīra and Their King Jayadratha To be published in: Ancient Sindh vol. 15 (December 2019). Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan. Asko Parpola: The lands of Sindhu and Sauvīra and their king Jayadratha in the Mahābhārata When the editor, Professor Qasid Mallah of the Shah Abdul Latif University of Khairpur, Sindh, invited me to contribute to the forthcoming issue of Ancient Sindh, I decided to find out and write about what the great Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata can tell about Sindh. The gradual development of this epic to its present extent of around 100.000 verses took many centuries, approximately between 400 BCE to 400 CE. (On this question and in general on the Mahābhārata, see Brockington 1998.) The various epic and purāṇic texts have long lists of peoples residing in different parts of South Asia (bhāratavarṣa). The names of the peoples called Sindhu and Sauvīra are often joined together as a compound, sindhusauvīrāḥ, apparently because they were two very closely related peoples, or even because they formed one and the same people with slightly different areas of residence. In a list of northern peoples common to the Mahābhārata (6,10,52) and the Padma-Purāṇa (3,6), the Sindhu and Sauvīra peoples are placed between the Kashmiris (kāśmīrāḥ) and the people of Gandhāra (gāndhārāḥ) (Kirfel 1920: 78). This is in agreement with the following verse of peoples residing in the north, found in six purāṇa texts (Brahmāṇḍa-P., Brahma-P., Mārkaṇḍeya-P., Matsya-P., Vāmana-P., Vāyu-P., some with corrupted variants): gāndhārā yavanāś caiva sindhusauvīramadrakāḥ (Kirfel 1920: 72; Sircar 1971: 33). Here the sindhusauvīrāḥ are placed between the people of Gandhāra (around Swat and Peshawar in Pakistan) and the Yavanas, i.e. the Indo-Greeks (residing chiefly in Bactria and Kandahar in Afghanistan) on the one hand, and the people of the Madra country (around Sialkot) on the other. According to Al-Bīrūṇī, the Sauvīra country included Mūltān and Jahrāvār (about 75 km south of the junction of the Jhelam and the Chenab (Sachau 1888:I, 259-260, 300; Sircar 1971: 33 n. 2). In the Mārkaṇḍeya-Purāṇa (58) and in Varāhamihira’s Bṛhatsaṃhitā (14), the sindhusauvīrāḥ are placed between kāmbojāḥ and vaḍavāmukha. Aśoka’s Rock Edict V mentions together the Yonas, Kambojas and Gandhāras (yonakaṃbojagaṃdhārānāṃ), and the Kāmbojas have usually been assumed to have dwelt in different parts of eastern Afghanistan (Sircar 1971: 195-200). Vaḍavāmukha literally means ‘mare’s mouth’ and refers to the submarine fire that drinks up water of the southern ocean; this very probably refers to the strong ebb of tide in the Indus delta (Parpola & Janhunen 2011: 84-85). The name Sindhu naturally comes from the river name Sindhu, i.e. the Indus River. Traditionally it has denoted modern Sindh, the area around the lower Indus south of the “land of the five rivers”. Sircar (1971: 33 n. 2) thought that in epic-purāṇic sources Sindhu refers to the area west of the lower Indus, and Sauvīra to the area east of it. Another suggestion is that “Sindhu is the modern Sindh and Sauvīra may have been part of Upper Sindh … The identification of Sauvīra by Alberuni with Multan and Jahrawar seems to be correct” (Dey 1927: 183). The latter conclusion agrees with the fact that among the four Sauvīra kings vanquished by Arjuna in the extra verses (39-45) added in some manuscripts after Mahābhārata 1,128,18 (and omitted in the critical edition), one is an Indo-Greek (yavanādhipaḥ), and another called Dattamitra or Dattāmitra alias Sumitra. Dattāmitra has, since Christian Lassen (1867: I, 804-5), almost unanimously been interpreted to denote the Indo-Greek king Demetrius, but Manfred Mayrhofer (1991) recently proposed that it is rather an Iranian name, Dātā-mithra, parallelled by Mithridatēs (as this Iranian name appears in Greek sources). (Karttunen 2015: 21-22; 348) Sindhu and its derivative Saindhava ‘belonging to, or coming from Sindhu’ and Suvīra (‘possessing mighty heroes’) and its derivative Sauvīra as names of people or country occur hundreds of times in the Mahābhārata. Saindhava ‘coming from Sindhu’ is in some 15 cases used of horses (vājinaḥ, aśvāḥ, hayāḥ, vāhāḥ, turaṃgamāḥ), or ‘good/best horses’ (sadaśvāḥ, sādhuvāhinaḥ, hayottamāḥ) (Sörensen 1925: 607-608). “As Indians painfully realized the importance of good and large cavalry forces through their encounters with Greeks, Kushans, Huns, etc., procurement of adequate horses became a major issue. The Indian climate, the unavailability of proper fodder together with improper handling in general made frequent imports of fresh horses from the north and northwest necessary; already Vinaya-Piṭaka III 5 refers to horse-dealers from northern India” (Scharfe 1989: 194-195). Indeed, the swift Saindhava, Yavana and Kāmboja horses are praised in the Mahābhārata, and are mentioned as the best breeds for war even in the much later Manasollāsa (2,3,573). The Arthaśāstra ascribed to Kauṭilya (2,30,29) mentions Kāmboja, Sindhu, Āraṭṭa and Vanāyu as the countries from which the best horses could be imported (Karttunen 1997: 178; 2015: 350). Āraṭṭa was in Bactria in northern Afghanistan (Parpola 2015: 216), while Vanāyu has been thought to refer to Iran (Olivelle 2013: 466). Apart from the horses, the Mahābhārata (3,87,12) mentions also the Forest of the Sindhu (saindhavāraṇyaṃ puṇyam) among the holy places in the west. In most cases, however, the words sindhu/saindhava and suvīra/sauvīra are part of the various appellations or attributes of Jayadratha, King of Sindhu or the Sindhu people, King of Suvīra or Sauvīra, Ruler of Sindhu and Sauvīra: rājā sindhūnam, sindhurāj, sindhurājaḥ, sindhurājā, sindhupatiḥ, saindhavaḥ, saindhavako rājā, saindhavako nṛpaḥ, suvīraḥ, suvīrarāṣṭrapaḥ, sauvīraḥ, sauvīrakaḥ, sauvīrarājaḥ, sindhusauvīrabhartā, patiḥ sauvīrasindhūnām, sauvīrasindhūnām īśvaraḥ (Sörensen 1925: 357-363; 607-608; 635). Jayadratha is a notable character in the epic, and the text portions dealing with him should not belong to the very youngest parts of the great epic. What the epic tells about Jayadratha is in fact practically all we learn about Sindhu in the Mahābhārata in addition to its fame of good horses and its holy forest. Jayadratha’s name means ‘possessing a victorious chariot’; his patronym is Vārddhakṣatri. When Jayadratha after a long waiting time was finally born to the Sindhu king Vṛddhakṣatra (‘one whose ruling power has grown’), an incorporeal and unseen voice announced that the boy would become one of the foremost warriors, but another eminent kṣatriya would cut off his head in battle. Then his father summoned all his relatives to witness his curse: whoever would cause Jayadratha’s head to fall on earth, the head of that man would split into a hundred pieces (dharaṇyāṃ mama putrasya pātayiṣyati yaḥ śiraḥ / tasyāpi śatadhā mūrdhā phaliṣyati na saṃśayaḥ, Mahābhārata 7,121,22). Comment: The verbal debators of the early Upaniṣads (now datable to the early 5th century BCE, see Parpola 2019) threatened their adversaries that in case of ignorance their head would fall off (e.g. Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad 3,9,26 taṃ cen me na vivakṣyasi mūrdhā te vipatiṣyatīti); but the motif of the head splitting into a hundred pieces in such curses is found only in post-Vedic texts (e.g. Somadeva’s Kathāsaritsāgara 12,17,63 jānan yadi na vadiṣyasi vidaliṣyati te śiraḥ śatadhā). A penetrating study of this theme in Vedic literature is Witzel 1987; he deals also with Buddhist texts, where the head is cursed to split into seven pieces. The blind old Kaurava king Dhṛtarāṣṭra had a hundred heroic sons but only one daughter, Duḥśalā, whose mother was Gāndhārī (Mahābhārata 1,107,37; 1,108,1-17). Dhṛtarāṣṭra gave her in marriage to Jayadratha, King of Sindhu (Mahābhārata 1,108,17-18). Jayadratha was one of the royal suitors who had come to Draupadī’s svayaṃvara (Mahābhārata 1,177,19), i.e. a wedding where the bride could herself choose her husband. In this case, Draupadī chose all the five Pāṇḍava brothers as her husbands, the main heroes of the epic Mahābhārata (Yudhiṣṭhira, Arjuna, Bhīma, Nakula and Sahadeva); this polyandrous marriage was felt scandalous, never heard of, by all present. Jayadratha attended as a guest also Yudhiṣṭhira’s royal consecration (Mahābhārata 2,31,8; 2,32,7), and also the subsequent dicing game between the Pāṇḍavas and Kauravas (Mahābhārata 2,52,25). In this game Śakuni playing for the Kauravas repeatedly tricked, and the losing Pāṇḍavas had to go for an exile, twelve year in the forests, and one year in the open incognito. The next episode in which Jayadratha figures in the Mahābhārata, called “the Abduction of DraupadI” (Mahābhārata 3,248-283), he is the principal character, and from this episode we learn much about him, especially about the the kings subservient to or allied with him. The Pāṇḍavas left Draupadī at the hermitage of Tṛṇabindu with Tṛṇabindu’s house priest Dhaumya, and left for hunting into different directions in the game-rich Kāmyaka forest. “Meanwhile the famed king of the Sindhus, the son of Vṛddhakṣatra, was proceeding to the land of the Śālvas, being in a marrying mood. Surrounded by a large retinue as befitting a king and accompanied by many princes, he arrived at Kāmyaka. There he saw the glorious Draupadī, beloved wife of the Pāṇḍavas, standing at the hermitage gate in the empty forest, radiating superb beauty … The king of the Sindhus Jayadratha Vārddhakṣatri was astounded and happy of heart at the sight of her flawless limbs. Love-smitten, he said to Prince Koṭikāśya, ‘Whose is this woman of flawless limbs, if she is human at all? There is no point for me to marry now that I have seen this superbly beautiful lady! … Go and find out who her protector is, Koṭika!” (Mahābhārata 3,248,6-17, translated by van Buitenen 1975: 707).
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