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Tribes in Ancient India c26: Chapter XXII. The Muruṇḍas

Tribes in Ancient India c26

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Chapter XXII. The Muruṇḍas

c26.2

The Muruṇḍas were probably a foreign tribe. They are mentioned for the first time by Ptolemy (second century A.D.), under the name Moroundai. Ptolemy’s description would place them on the western border of the ‘Gangaridai’. They seem to have occupied an extensive territory, probably the whole of N. Bihar on the east of the Ganges, as far as the head of the delta. They had six important cities, all to the east of the Ganges: Boraita, Koryagaza, Kondota, Kelydna, Aganagora and Talarga. These places are difficult to identify, but to Saint-Martin Kelydna appeared to have some relation with the Kālinadī or Kālindī river, and Aganagora with Aghadīp (Agradvīpa) on the eastern bank of the Ganges, a little below Kātwā (Ptolemy’s *Ancient India* by McCrindle, pp. 215-6). According to Cunningham, the name of the Marundai is still preserved in the country of the Muṇḍās, a hill-tribe scattered over Chota-Nagpur and Central India. He says: ‘The name of Muṇḍa is found in the *Viṣṇupurāṇa* as the appellation of a dynasty of eleven princes who succeeded the Tushāras or Tokhari. In the *Vāyupurāṇa*, however, the name is omitted, and we have only Maruṇḍa’ ¹ (= Muruṇḍa, the Sanskrit name for Ptolemy’s Marundai). Cunningham also suggests that the Moroundai of Ptolemy are identical with the Moredes of Pliny who are mentioned in conjunction with the Surari or Śavaras. It may, however, be mentioned that the Maruṇḍas are referred to in the *Vāyupurāṇa* as one of the Mleccha tribes.

c26.3

¹ Cunningham, *Ancient Geography of India*, Mazumdar’s Ed., pp. 581-2.

c26.4

Ptolemy also speaks of a city called Morounda as an inland town of the Aioi. The country of the Aioi was probably some region south of the Kerala country, but the city Morounda has not been identified. It is probable, however, that it was a city of the Maroundai = Muruṇḍas; and in that case the Moroundai had another settlement in the farthest south.

c26.5

The *Abhidhānacintāmaṇi* of Hemacandra (IV, 26) ² identifies the Muruṇḍas with the Lampākas, the Lambatai of Ptolemy. The latter were located near the source of the modern Kabul river in the region around Laghmān, and it, therefore, follows that the Muruṇḍas had a settlement in this region as well.

c26.6

² *Lampākāstu Maruṇḍāḥ syuḥ*.

c26.7

Among the foreign potentates who came of their own accord to offer allegiance to Samudragupta (fourth century A.D.) were the ‘Śaka-Muruṇḍas’¹; while a ‘Muruṇḍa-Svāminī’ is mentioned in a Central Indian inscription of the sixth century A.D.

c26.8

¹ According to Dr. Sten Konow, ‘muruṇḍa’ is the later form of a Śaka word meaning ‘lord’ or ‘master’. The term ‘Śaka-Muruṇḍas’ possibly stands, therefore, for those Śaka lords or chieftains who were ruling in the regions of Surāṣṭra and Ujjain at the time of Samudragupta. (Cf. Allahabad Pillar Inscription of Samudragupta.)

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