Where the Black Antelope Roams Free

From western ocean to the eastern ocean (from Surashtra to Vanga), and from Himavat (Himalaya) mountain to the Vindhya mountain’; they called it Āryavarta; that was the widest of their domain. But all of it was not equally pure – fit for the performance of sacrifices. Within it was the Madhyadeśa, ‘the middle country’, which was purer than what lay outside it. Within Madhyadeśa was the Brāmhaṛṣideśa, which included the territories of the Kuru, Matsya, Pañcāla and Śūrasenaka. Here inhabited the ultimate experts of religion and spiritual knowledge, often considered by Purāṇa to be at par with the dēva in power and piety; Bhrigu, Angiras, Atri, Vishwamitra, Kashyapa, Vasiṣṭha and Shandilya were the seven brāmhaṛṣi. Here is where ‘the black antelope naturally roamed’. ‘Wherever the black antelope roams freely there is spiritual pre-eminence’, say the ancient texts Vasiṣṭha Dharma Sūtra (1. 14-15) and Baudhāyana Dharma Sūtra. (I.1. 29-30), (both 600 BCE - 300 BCE (Kane, 1941 : 14) At the core of Brāmhaṛṣideśa was Bramhāvarta. Scholars are divided over the exact meaning of the word Bramhāvarta and its location and limits. It could mean the ‘land of the brahma’, some sort of the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies of the Vedic culture. Some feel it was the same as Brāmhaṛṣideśa; others feel it was a region within it. The delimitation in Mānava-Dharmaśāstra places it outside and to the south-west of Brāmhaṛṣideśa : ‘between the two divine rivers Sarasvatī and Drishadvatī’. That happens to be the original home of the ārya.