The Geographical Dictionary of Ancient and Mediaeval India c5.s5.17

c5.s5.17

Ganga—It is the name of the country of Radha as well as of its capital Saptagrama which is called Gange by Ptolemy and the “Port of the Ganges” in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the province of Bengal. Gange is mentioned in Ptolemy as the capital of the Gangarides who were evidently the people of Radha which was situated on the western side of the Ganges (see McCrindle’s Ptolemy and his Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraean Sea, p. 146). Ganga as a country is mentioned in the Karhad Plate Inscription of Krishna III (see Epigraphia Indica, vol. IV, p. 278) and also in the Harihara and Belur inscriptions (Rice’s Mysore Inscriptions, pp. 70, 222). In the first mentioned inscription, Ganga is placed between Kaliuga and Magadha. Mr. Schoff in his notes on the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, p. 255, says “the name (Ganges) is applied in the same paragraph to district, river, and town” and according to him, by the district is meant Bengal. But considering the situation of the town Ganga, the district must mean Radha, as Saptagrama (the town Ganga), in the first and second centuries of the Christian era was the chief town of Radha and not of the whole Bengal (JASB., 1910, p. 599). See Radha. Perhaps Ganga was the Gangayani of the later Vedic period, of which the king was Chitra (Kaushitaki Upanishad, I, 1). The Ganga dynasty ruled over the south of Mysore (see Talakada) and Coorg, with Salem, Coimbatore, the Nilgiri and parts of Malabar from the second to the ninth century A. D.: Coimbatore and Salem were called the Kongu country (Rice’s Mysore Inscriptions, Nos. 151—157 and pp. 70, 222, 262). A branch of the family ruled over Orissa (Ibid., Intro., XLVII) who evidently conquered Radha or the present districts of Hugli, Midnapore, &c., and from them, i. e., the Ganga dynasty, as well as from its situation on the western bank of the Ganges, it was called Ganga. Choraganga killed the Mandara king on the bank of the Ganges after his conquest of Utkala, and Mandara has been identified by some with Suhma or Radha (JASB., 1895, p. 139, note; 1896, p. 241). Hence there can be no doubt that Radha was ruled over by the Ganga kings of Orissa in the 12th century. Ganga was perhaps the country of Ganga or Gangya of the Kaushitaki Upanishad (I, 1), of which the king waf Chitra, who was called Gangayani being the son of Gangya (variant Ganga), i.e., king os Gangya or Ganga.