Ancient Aryavarta: The land of Aryan kings in old age India

Aryavarta refers to the ancient Indian territory, ruled by several Indo-Aryan clans. The ‘land of the Aryans’ roughly points to the north Indian region, where the late Vedic kingdoms had expanded and settled. Seveal ancient Indian Hindu texts have defined the territory of Aryavarta, but in slightly different manner. One reason of it obviuosly the time period and the expansion of the Indo-Aryan communities. In short, the history of Aryavarta has a deep association with several ancient Indo-Aryan kings, found in different ancient Hindu texts.

The earliest mention of Aryavarta is found in later Vedic age texts between 8-6th century BCE. The Dharmashastras and Baudhayana Sutras are the oldest texts that states the ancient history of Aryavarta. Later, many Hindu texts have defined about the region of Aryavarta. Manava Dharmashastra or Manusmriti, the most renowened text between 2nd century BC up to 3rd century, also has detailed descriptions about Aryavarta.

Geographical stretch of Aryavarta

Dharmashastras and Baudhayana Sutras have sufficient description of the boundaries of Aryavarta. It then stretched from the desert of Rajasthan at the west to the Kalakavana at the east. Northern boundary of Aryavarta had stretched up to the Himalayas and up to the Vindhya ranges towards south. But the later the Mauryan dominance had stretched the boundary of Aryavarta to further east towards Bengal. Manusmriti, the contemporary text, clearly mentions about the sea to sea (Bay of Bengal to the Arabian sea) expansion of Aryavarta.

Famous kingdoms of ancient Aryavarta

Ancient Aryavarta was divided into several tribal groups, known as Janapadas. Literally the word means the ‘foothole of people’. However, these groups later expanded further to form Mahajanapadas. Some historians believe that the Janapadas referred to the smaller kingdoms, whereas Mahajanapadas referred to the larger ones. Several texts and discovered coinages somehow clarifies the history of Aryavarta and its rulers. Anyways, around 1700 BCE, the Mahajanapas expanded pretty quickly across the north Indian subcontinents. Anguttara Nikaya, the famous Buddhist script, mentions about ‘Solasa’ (sixteen) Mahajanapadas, namely: