History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c16.s4.52

c16.s4.52

is indicated by the situation of Tāmraparṇī, one of the eight Hindu dvīpas. All these dvīpas were to the east, that is, they constituted what we call to-day Further India. Indradvīpa, the first dvīpa in the list, has been satisfactorily identified with Burma.¹ The Malay Peninsula was well known to Indians at that time, a fact evidenced by an inscription of the fourth century A.D. inscribed on a pillar [in the present district of Wellesley] by a Hindu sea-captain (Mahānāvika) Budhagupta of Eastern India,² and it is very probable that the Kaseru or Kaserumat dvīpa which is mentioned next to Indradvīpa, meant the Straits Settlements. The next class begins with Tāmraparṇī (the older name of Ceylon): Tāmraparṇa, Gabhastimān, Nāgadvīpa, Saumya, Gāndharva, and Vāruna dvīpas. Nāgadvīpa is Nicobar.³ We know from Cambodian inscriptions that Cambodia (Indo-China) was held by the Nāgas who were superseded by the orthodox Hindu dynasty of Kauṇḍinya from India.⁴ We may take ‘Nāga’ to be the ethnic designation of the pre-Hindu inhabitants of these colonies. Gabhastimān [‘Island of the Sun’], Saumya, Gāndharva and Vāruna represent the Archipelago (Sumatra, Borneo, etc.), out of which Sumatra-Java had certainly settlements of Indians before the fourth century A.D. It is certain that the Purāṇas in the third and fourth centuries are conscious of the Hindu colonies in Further India, and treat them as parts of Bhāratavarsha.⁵ Their Bhāratavarsha, which was primarily India, was at this point of time interpreted as India-cum-Greater India, which latter taking Ceylon, consisted of eight units or divisions, called dvīpas.