Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c11.49

c11.49

About 1360 A.D., during the reign of the Gaṅga king Bhānu III (circa 1352-78 A.D.), Sulṭān Fīrūz Shāh of the Tughluk dynasty of Delhi led an expedition against the Gaṅga capital. An account of this expedition is found in the *Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī* by Shams-i-Sirāj ‘Afif. In this work, the kingdom of the Gaṅga monarch has been called Jājnagar but his capital has been mentioned as Vārāṇasī, i.e. Vārāṇasī-kaṭaka which is the present Barabati area of Cuttack.¹ It seems that, if the earlier name of Cuttack was Yayātinagara and if that was the reason for the early Muslim writers applying the name Jājnagar to the Gaṅga kingdom, Shams-i-Sirāj would not have used two different names to indicate the capital and kingdom of the Gaṅga king without any comment. Indeed it becomes rather difficult in that case to understand why he uses the new name for the city but its old name to indicate the kingdom of which it was the capital. The description of the Gaṅga capital and kingdom in the *Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī* seems to suggest that Jājnagar as the name of the Gaṅga kingdom had nothing to do with Vārāṇasī or Cuttack which was then its capital.