Yādavaprakāśa on the Ancient Geography of India

Summary

This article surveys Yādavaprakāśa’s extensive comments on the ancient geography of India and collates them with evidence from other authors and inscriptions. Yādavaprakāśa, a commentator on the Amarakośa, often identifies ancient tribal and regional names with well‑known countries in north‑western India. The paper lists more than forty paired place‑names and discusses each in turn: for instance, Āparīta is equated with modern Pehowa in the Karnal district; Saṃkāśya and Kekaya are located in the north‑west near the Sarasvatī; Gandhāra is identified with the Kabul region and Lampāka with modern Lamghan in Afghanistan. The author compares Yādavaprakāśa’s statements with those of other medieval scholars such as Hemacandra and Rājaśekhara as well as with epigraphical evidence from early Gupta and Paramāra inscriptions. Where the commentators disagree, the paper notes the divergent views and attempts to reconcile them through modern geography. The article also discusses Yādavaprakāśa’s confusion between Madhya‑deśa and Pūrva‑deśa and his occasional misidentification of tribes like the Turuṣka and the Khāsa. By correlating literary, inscriptional and archaeological data the author reconstructs a coherent picture of the political and ethnic geography of early India stretching from Afghanistan and the Punjab through the Ganga–Yamuna doab to Bengal. The survey demonstrates that many toponyms recorded in ancient texts correspond to historical regions and that medieval commentators preserved a substantial body of geographical lore. It concludes by emphasising the importance of critical comparison between textual sources when using traditional commentaries for historical geography.