Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c26.37.2

c26.37.2

But the passage in question does not occur in the corresponding text of the *Vāyu* and *Brahma Purāṇas* and the *Mahābhārata*.⁶ In early literature the people of the Śrāvasti region are always referred to as the Kosalas. Vātsyāyana, the author of the *Kāmasūtra*, writing probably in the third or fourth century of the Christian era, refers to Gauḍa and Kosala as names of distinct countries.¹ Gauḍa in the *Matsya-Kūrma-Liṅga* MSS. may have been inserted as a Sanskritised form of Goṇḍa in the same way as the term Madra-maṇḍala is employed to denote the Madras Presidency, by some modern *paṇḍits* of the Southern Presidency, as well as other scholars and journalists who are unacquainted with the topography of Ancient India.² In the Central Provinces the name "Gond" is very often Sanskritised into Gauḍa.³ Varāhamihira, writing in the sixth century A.D., places Gauḍaka in the Eastern division of India. He does not include Gauḍa in the list of countries situated in the *Madhyadeśa*. Mention is no doubt made of a place called Guḍa. But, if Alberuni⁴ is to be believed, Guḍa is Thanesar and not Oudh. The use of the term *Pañcha Gauḍa* as the designation of a territory embracing Northern India as far as Kanauj and the river Sarasvatī, is distinctly late and dates only from the twelfth century A.D. The term is possibly reminiscent of the Gauḍa empire of Dharmapāla and Devapāla, and cannot be equated with the ancient realm of the Gauḍas in the early centuries of the Christian era.