Tribes in Ancient India c54.2

c54.2

It is not difficult for the philologist to recognise the present Bengal in the tribal name ‘Vaṅga’. But Vaṅga in ancient days denoted only a portion of present-day Bengal; it is distinguished in ancient literature and epigraphic records not only from Rāḍha which included Suhma¹ or was conterminous with it² and Gauḍa which at one time included Karṇasuvarṇa³ and a portion of Rāḍha,⁴ all making up what is now roughly known as Western Bengal,—but also from Puṇḍra or Puṇḍravardhana which included Varendra or Varendri,⁵ making up what is roughly identical with present Northern Bengal. Vaṅga thus stood for what is now known as Eastern Bengal comprising the modern Dacca and Chittagong divisions. Among the important divisions of Vaṅga in ancient days were included Samaṭaṭa (mod. Faridpur), according to Watters, and for some time even ‘Tāmralipta or ‘Tāmalitti (mod. Tamluk).⁶ Hemacandra in his *Abhidhānacintāmaṇi* (IV, 23), however, identifies the country of the Vaṅga with that of a tribe called the Harikelas.⁷ In the eleventh century Cola Inscription (Tirumalai Rock Ins. of Rājendra Cola) as well as in the Goharwa Plate of Karṇadeva, king of Cedi (*c.* 1040-1070 A.D.), the Vaṅga country is referred to as Baṅgāla-deśam, which, in the thirteenth century, came to be called Baṅgāla (Wright’s Marco Polo) and in Mohamedan times Bāṅglā. The Tirumalai Inscription distinguishes Vaṅga from South Rāḍha (Takkana Lāḍham) and North Rāḍha (Uttila Lāḍham). Thus Vaṅga which at one time denoted Eastern Bengal has now given its name to the entire province of modern Bengal, the English rendering of the name being derived from Baṅgāla or Bāṅglā.⁸