Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c30.40

c30.40

The Saudyumnas had been almost overwhelmed by the Ānavas and Pauravas, and were restricted to the Utkalas and other clans which occupied the hilly tracts from Gayā to Orissa. All North and East Bengal was held by the Prāgjyotiṣa kingdom, which is nowhere connected with any of these races and would seem to have been founded by an invasion of Mongolians from the north-east, though tradition is silent about this outlying development. The configuration of the five Ānava kingdoms in the east, the Aṅgas, Vaṅgas, Puṇḍras, Suhmas and Kaliṅgas, which held all the sea-coast from Ganjam to the Ganges delta, and formed a long compact curved wedge with its base on the sea-coast and its point above Bhāgalpur, suggests that there had also been an invasion from the sea, that penetrated up the Ganges valley, leaving the hilly tracts on its west and east alone;¹ and this conjecture, if reasonable, would mean that the invaders had driven the Saudyumna stock into those hilly tracts, and that that had taken place before those five kingdoms were formed. But there is no trace in tradition of any such invasion of this distant region.