Tribes in Ancient India c57.17

c57.17

About the second century B.C., then, the Puṇḍras had their chief city at Puṇḍranagara. Not long after, they had spread over a wider area, which came to be known as Puṇavadhana (= Puṇḍravardhana), for the name Puṇavadhana occurs in at least two inscriptions (Nos. 102 and 217, *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. II, pp. 108 and 380) of the Sāñchi stūpa. Its inhabitants, Dhamatā (Dharmadattā) and Isinadana (Ṛṣinandana), made gifts of architectural pieces that went to the building up of the Sāñchi stūpa and its walls and *toraṇas*. The Mahāsthān fragmentary inscription proves that the district of Bogra was certainly included in what later came to be known as Puṇḍravardhana. That it also included the district of Rajshahi, or at least portions of it, is proved by the recently discovered Pāhārpur copperplate (478-9 A.D.) which purports to have been issued from Puṇḍravardhana city itself.³ But contemporaneously the term appears as the name of a *bhukti* or provincial division. Thus, in the Damodarpur (a village in the Dinajpur district) Copperplate Inscriptions (*Ep. Ind.*, XV, pp. 113ff.) of Kumāragupta I (443 and 448 A.D.) and of Budhagupta, the Puṇḍravardhanabhukti is referred to as being governed successively by Cirātadatta, Brahmadatta and Yayadatta, all provincial governors. In all these records, Koṭivarṣaviṣaya is recorded as a subdivision of the Puṇḍravardhanabhukti. But naturally enough it is in the epigraphic records of the Pālas and Senas of Bengal that the name most frequently occurs. Puṇḍravardhana continued as in the days of the Guptas to be a provincial division of Bengal. Among the Pāla records, it is referred to in the Khalimpur grant of Dharmapāla, the Nālandā grant of Devapāla, the Bāngarh grant of Mahīpāla I, the Amgachi grant of Vigrahapāla III and the Manhali grant of Madanapāla.¹ Among the Sena grants it is referred to in the Barrackpur grant of Vijayasena, the Anulia, the Tarpanadighi, the Madhainagar and the Sunderban copper-plates, all of Lakṣmaṇasena, the Edilpur copperplate of Keśavasena, the Madanapāḍā and the Sāhitya Pariṣad copperplates of Viśvarūpasena (for Sena records, see *Inscriptions of Bengal*, Vol. III, Varendra Research Society).