Āryāvarta is a name for Northern India in classical Sanskrit literature

Sanskrit literature

Literature in Sanskrit begins with the Vedas, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India; the golden age of Classical Sanskrit literature dates to late Antiquity . Literary production saw a late bloom in the 11th century before declining after 1100 AD...

. The Manu Smriti

Manu Smriti

' , also known as Mānava-Dharmaśāstra , is the most important and earliest metrical work of the Dharmaśāstra textual tradition of Hinduism...

 (2.22) gives the name to "the tract between the Himalaya and the Vindhya ranges, from the eastern

Bay of Bengal

The Bay of Bengal , the largest bay in the world, forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. It resembles a triangle in shape, and is bordered mostly by the Eastern Coast of India, southern coast of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to the west and Burma and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the...

 to the Western Sea

Arabian Sea

The Arabian Sea is a region of the Indian Ocean bounded on the east by India, on the north by Pakistan and Iran, on the west by the Arabian Peninsula, on the south, approximately, by a line between Cape Guardafui in northeastern Somalia and Kanyakumari in India...

".

The Vasistha Dharma Sutra I.8-9 and 12-13 locates Āryāvarta to the east of the disappearance of the Sarasvati in the desert, to the west of Kalakavana, to the north of the mountains of Pariyatra

Pariyatra Mountains

Pariyatra Mountains is a range of mountains mentioned in the epic Mahabharata. It is identified to the north western part of what is now called as Vindhya mountain ranges...

 and Vindhya and to the south of the Himalaya.
Baudhayana

Baudhayana

Baudhāyana, was an Indian mathematician, whowas most likely also a priest. He is noted as the author of the earliest Sulba Sūtra—appendices to the Vedas giving rules for the construction of altars—called the , which contained several important mathematical results. He is older than the other...

 Dharmasutra (BDS) 1.1.2.10 gives similar definitions and declares that Āryāvarta is the land that lies west of Kalakavana, east of Adarsana, south of the Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

 and north of the Vindhyas, but in BDS 1.1.2.11 Āryāvarta is confined to the Ganges

Ganges River

The Ganges or Ganga, , is a trans-boundary river of India and Bangladesh. The river rises in the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and flows south and east through the Gangetic Plain of North India into Bangladesh, where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. By discharge it...

 - Yamuna

Yamuna

The Yamuna is the largest tributary river of the Ganges in northern India...

 doab, and BDS 1.1.2.13-15. Patañjali

Patañjali

Patañjali is the compiler of the Yoga Sūtras, an important collection of aphorisms on Yoga practice. According to tradition, the same Patañjali was also the author of the Mahābhāṣya, a commentary on Kātyāyana's vārttikas on Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī as well as an unspecified work of medicine .In...

's defines Āryāvarta like the Vasistha Dharma Sutra.

Some sutras recommend expiatory acts for those who have crossed the boundaries of Āryāvarta. Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra

Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra

The Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra is a Late Vedic text dealing with the solemn rituals of the Taittiriya school of the Black Yajurveda that was composed in eastern Uttar Pradesh during the late Brahmana period. It was first published in 1904-23 by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, as edited by Willem...

 recommends this for those who have crossed the boundaries of Āryāvarta and ventured into far away places.

The Gurjar Pratihar king in the tenth century was entitled as Maharajadhiraja of Aryavarta.