Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c15: XI. Gaṅgā

Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c15

Language
English

XI. Gaṅgā

c15.2

Classical writers represent the Nanda and Maurya kings of Magadha primarily as rulers of the peoples known to them as the Gangaridae and the Prasii. The second of the two names is rightly taken to be the Greek plural form of the Indian word *Prācya* meaning the inhabitants of the Eastern Division of India.¹ It is well known that Bhāratavarṣa (India) was traditionally divided into five countries, *viz.* Prācya or Eastern India, Pāścātya or Western India, Uttarāpatha or North-Western India and the adjoining region of Central Asia, Madhyadeśa or the central part of Northern India, and Dākṣiṇātya or the peninsula of the Deccan.² The Prācya country or the land of the Prācya people comprised Bihar and Bengal together with the eastern part of the U. P. and the eastern fringe of Orissa. The western limit of this land was the Kālaka-vana (probably near Allahabad) according to the authors of the Sūtra works,³ Prayāga or Allahabad according to the *Manusmṛti*¹ and Vārāṇasi or Banāras according to the *Kāvyamīmāṃsā*² composed by Rājaśekhara about the beginning of the tenth century A.D. Prāgjyotiṣa or Assam, often regarded by ancient writers as a Himalayan country, formed no part of the dominions of the Nandas and Mauryas of Magadha. In the seventh century A.D., the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-tsang noticed *Stūpas* attributed to the Maurya king Aśoka (who is said to have built 84000 *Stūpas* throughout his empire) in all parts of Bengal but not a single one of them anywhere in the dominions of Bhāskaravarman, king of Assam. The country of Kaliṅga comprising wide areas of Orissa was usually regarded in early times as a land belonging to Dākṣiṇātya or the Southern Division of India.³

c15.3

¹ See above, p. 29, note 2.

c15.4

² *Ibid.*, pp. 21 ff. The Himalayan and Vindhyan regions were sometimes added to these. See above, pp. 33-37 (Sections VI-VII.) Dākṣiṇātya was also called Dakṣiṇāpatha and Pāścātya also Aparānta.

c15.5

³ Cf. *Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra*, II, 2, 16 : प्राग्दर्शनात्प्रत्यक्कालकवनाद्दक्षिणेन हिमवन्तमुदक् पारियात्रमेतदार्यावर्त्तम् । तस्मिन् य आचारः स प्रमाणम् । गंगायमुनयोरंतरमित्येके । अथात्र भाल्लविनो गाथामुदाहरन्ति— पश्चात्ति्सन्धुविसरणी सूर्यस्योदयनं पुरः । यावत्कृष्णो विधावति तावद्वि ब्रह्मवर्वसम् ।। But according to Śaṅkhalikhita : प्राक् सिन्धुसौवीराद्दक्षिणेन हिमवतः पश्चा-त्कांपिल्यात्पारियात्रादनवच्चं ब्रह्मवर्चसम् and according to Paiṭhinasi : आ हिमवत आ च कुमार्याः सिन्धुर्वैतरणी नदी सूर्यस्योदयनं पुरः । यावदा कृष्णमृगो विचरति तत्र धर्मश्चतुष्पादो भवति । See Rangaswami Aiyangar, *Rājadharma* p. 60. It should be noticed that what was originally called Āryāvarta was later named Madhyadeśa while in later times Āryāvarta included the whole of Northern India. This is related to the gradual spread of Aryanism.

c15.6

¹ See II, 22-23: आ समुद्रात्तु वै पूर्वादासमुद्रात्तु पश्चिमात् । तयोरेवान्तरं गिर्योरार्यावर्त्तं विदुर्बुधाः ॥ हिमवद्विन्ध्ययोर्मध्यं यत्प्राग्विनशनादपि । प्रत्यगेव प्रयागाच्च मध्यदेशः प्रकीर्त्तितः ॥

c15.7

² G. C. S. ed., pp. 93-94 : तत्र वाराणसीतः परतः पूर्वदेशः...माहिष्मत्याः परतो दक्षिणपथः...देवसभायाः परतः पश्चाद्देशः...पृथूदकात्परत उत्तरापथः ।

c15.8

³ See above, p. 28, note 2.

c15.9

The people called Gangaridae is usually located in Bengal. They therefore represented one of the various tribal elements constituting the so-called Prācya people. The separate mention of the Gangaridae and the Prasii (who apparently included the Gangaridae) indicates the importance of the former among different elements of the Prācya people under the Nandas and Mauryas (who may have belongs to that tribe) in the fourth and third centuries B. C. The name Gangaridae is sometimes taken as a Greek corruption of Sanskrit *Gaṅgā-rāṣṭra*, *Gaṅgā-rāḍha* or *Gaṅgā-hṛdaya*. The unsoundness of these suggestions is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the word Gangaridae in the plural is derived from the base *Gange* or *Ganges*⁴ as Achaemenidae (the Achaemenians) from Achaemenes and Sasanidae (the Sasanians) from *Sasan*.⁵ The name of the people is therefore actually Gange or Ganges and not Gangaridae which simply means the Ganges or Gangian people. That the correct form of the name of this people was Ganges is certain since, as will be shown below, it is found in the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea* as the name of its habitat. The particular area of Bengal that was inhabited by the Gangaridae (Ganges people or Gangians) is indicated not only by the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea* (circa 80 A.D.) but very definitely also by the *Geography* of Ptolemy (circa 140 A. D.).

c15.10

⁴ The letter *r* in the plural form is an augment.

c15.11

⁵ See above, pp. 138 ff.

c15.12

Ptolemy¹ refers to the five estuaries of the river Ganges as (1) the westernmost mouth called Kambyson (144° 30′, 18° 15′), (2) the second mouth called Mega(145° 45′, 18° 30′), (3) the third mouth called Kamberikon (146° 20′, 18°40′), (4) the fourth mouth called Pseudostomon (147° 40′, 18° 30′), and (5) the fifth mouth called Antebole (148° 30′, 18° 15′). Although owing to the changes in their courses, the identification of these mouths of the Ganges with her present estuaries may not be beyond doubt, Ptolemy’s estimate of the distance between the easternmost and westernmost of them to be four degrees of latitude seems to suggest that the area washed by the estuaries of the Ganges in the second century A.D. was practically the same as it is today, that is to say, the land between the Bhāgīrathī or Hooghly river in the west and the Padmā-Meghnā estuary in the east. Elsewhere in his work,² the Greek geographer says, “All the region about the mouths of the Ganges is occupied by the Gangaridae with the following city—Gange, the royal city (i.e. capital of the country)—146°, 19° 15′.” It is clear from the above account that the people called Gangian or Ganges received their name from Gange, the chief city of their country, just as the people of Attika were known as Athenian from the capital city of Athens. In India, names of cities like Puṇḍravardhana, Karṇasuvarṇa or Tāmralipta usually also indicated the districts round them and, moreover, the names of country and its people were almost always the same. Thus, according to Ptolemy, the Ganges people or Gangians inhabited the delta of Southern Bengal watered by the lower spurs of the river Ganges. In the second century A.D., they appear to have been an autonomous people with their capital at the city of Gange which, as its name indicates, was situated on the river Ganges. The latitude and longitude of the city as given by the geographer, although they can hardly be relied on, would suggest its location not far from the confluence of the Ganges and the sea. It is not improbable that the Maroundae of Ptolemy¹ whose country abutted on that of the Gangaridae and lay to the east of the Ganges, were the Puṇḍras who had their headquarters at the city of Puṇḍravardhana, modern Mahāsthān in the Bogra District.

c15.13

¹ Geog., VII, i, 18.

c15.14

² VII, i, 81.

c15.15

¹ VII, ii, 14.

c15.16

It is very interesting to note that the *Periplus*² applies the name Ganges not only to a river but also to a country and its capital both located about the principal mouth of the river. The author, who was a Greek navigator and merchant, says that while sailing towards the east in the Bay of Bengal 'with the ocean to the right and the shore remaining beyond to the left' the country called Ganges comes into view: "there is a river near it called the Ganges... On its bank is a market-town which has the same name as the river, Ganges. Through this place are brought malabathrum and Gangetic spikenard and pearls, and muslins of the finest sort which are called Gangetic. It is said that there are gold mines near these places and there is a gold coin which is called *kaltis*." The reference to the Gangetic muslin no doubt reminds us of the worldwide celebrity of the muslin manufactured at Dacca in the medieval period and also of the *dukūla*, *kauśika*, *patrorṇa* and *pravara*, mentioned in the Sabhāparvan of the *Mahābhārata* as presents made to Yudhiṣṭhira by the Vaṅgas, Kaliṅgas, Tāmraliptas and Puṇḍras of Eastern India.³ It is also interesting that the city of Ganges, situated on the river of that name (apparently indicating the principal mouth of the Ganges) has been called a market-town; but the fact that the town bore the same name as the country round it shows that, although it was a market-town in the eyes of a foreign merchant, the city of Ganges was the metropolis of the country called Ganges. It is probable that, soon after the dissolution of the Maurya empire, the Gangian people of Lower Bengal formed a powerful state with their headquarters at the city of Gange or Ganges. As, however, the name of the people was apparently derived from their chief city, the Gangian city seems to have existed as early as the days of the Nandas and Mauryas of Magadha.

c15.17

² Para. 63.

c15.18

³ Cf. Motichandra, *Geog. Econ. Stud.*, pp. 112 ff. See also above, pp. 139 ff.

c15.19

But a people called Gaṅgā, Gāṅga or Gāṅgeya inhabiting Lower Bengal and having their capital at a city called Gaṅgā (Greek Gange or Ganges) is not known from ancient Indian literature. This powerful people, known to the foreign writers from the fourth century B.C. down at least to the second century A.D., was apparently known to the Indians by a different name. Curiously enough Kālidāsa, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., locates, in connection with the mythological dig-vijaya of Raghu, the celebrated Vaṅga people, known from ancient Indian literature, exactly in the same region where the Gangaridae or Gangians are placed by the Classical writers. In Canto IV of Kālidāsa’s Raghuvamśa, Raghu is said to have reached the shores of the Bay of Bengal (verse 34) and to have accepted the submission of the Suhmas (verse 35) and subdued the Vaṅgas (verses 36-37). The Suhma country, later called Rāḍha, lay on both banks of the Ajay river in the modern Burdwan region in South-West Bengal. The Raghuvamśa further says that, after having conquered the Vaṅgas, the Ikṣvāku hero crossed the Kapiśā (the modern Kaśāi river in the Midnapur District, identified by Raychaudhuri with Ptolemy’s Kambyson, the westermost mouth of the Ganges) and, through the country of the Utkalas (inhabiting parts of the Midnapur and Balasore Districts), reached Kaliṅga in the Cuttack-Puri-Ganjam region (verse 38). It seems that the Kaśāi river in the Midnapur District was once regarded as the demarcating line between the Vaṅga and Utkala countries and that the Vaṅgas occupied the delta of Lower Bengal as far as the Kaśāi in the west.

c15.20

This is possibly supported by Ptolemy's *Geography* (if Raychaudhuri's indentification of Kambyson is accepted) and certainly by the Jain *Prajñāpanā* which speaks of Tāmralipti or Tāmralipta (modern Tamluk in the Midnapur District) as a locality belonging to the land of the Vaṅgas.¹ But far more important in determining the home of the Vaṅga people is verse 36 of Kālidāsa's text describing Raghu's victory over the Vaṅgas :

c15.21

¹ See Raychaudhuri, *Stud. Ind. Ant.*, p. 186.

c15.22

वंगानुत्खाय तरसा नेता नौसाधनोद्यतान् ।
निजखान जयस्तम्भान् गंगास्रोतोन्तरेषु सः ॥

c15.23

The mouths of the Ganges, referred to as *Gaṅgā-srotas*, were near about the Bay of Bengal mentioned earlier in verse 34. The passage *Gaṅgā-sroto-ntareṣu* reminds us of *stan-āntare* (i.e. in the space between the breasts) in the passage *na mṛṇāla-sūtraṃ racitaṃ stan-āntare*. Millinātha rightly explains *Gaṅgā-sroto-ntareṣu* as *Gaṅgāyāḥ srotasāṃ pravāhānām=antareṣu dvīpeṣu*.² The verse therefore means to say that, after having totally routed the Vaṅga people who were fighting from their boats, Raghu established columns of victory in the land intersected by the mouths of the Ganges, which was apparently the country inhabited by that people. This shows beyond doubt that, in the age of Kālidāsa (i.e. the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.), the Vaṅgas inhabited the deltaic region of Southern Bengal and that they were no other than the Gangaridae or Gangians who, according to the Classical writers of the first and second centuries A.D., lived in the region about the mouths of the Ganges and had their chief city near about the confluence of the Ganges and the sea.

c15.24

² These points have also been discussed above, pp. 139-40.

c15.25

The location of the city of Gaṅgā, capital of the Gangians or Vaṅgas, in the vicinity of the confluence of the Gaṅgā and the Sāgara (sea) suggests that it was no other than the celebrated holy city of Gaṅgāsāgara or Gaṅgāsāgarasaṅgama mentioned in Indian literature. As a personal name like Satyabhāmā is known to have been abbreviated into both Satyā and Bhāmā, a locality like Puruṣottamapurī could be and has actually been celebrated both as Puruṣottama and as Purī. The city of Gaṅgāsāgara likewise seems to have been known both as Gaṅgā (at least to foreigners of the early period) and as Sāgara (still preserved in the name of the Sāgar or Gaṅgāsāgar Island).

c15.26

The ancient city of Gaṅgāsāgara at the eastern extremity of the Cakravarti-kṣetra and of Bhāratavarṣa, Kumārīdvīpa and Āryāvarta became one of the famous all-India *tirthas* at least before the rise of the Guptas in the fourth century A.D., if not in much earlier times.¹ The popularity of pilgrimage to holy places is noticed in the records of Aśoka (circa 269-232 B.C.) who visited several Buddhist *tirthas* including Sambodhi (Mahābodhi or Bodhigayā, modern Bodhgayā)² and of the Hinduised Śaka king Ṛṣabhadatta (119-23 A.D.) who visited Puṣkara in Rājputānā and made arrangements in various *tirthas* in Western India for the benefit of the pilgrims.³ The *Baudhāyana Dharma-sūtra*³ (circa 5th century B.C.) discouraged travels in the lands of the Āraṭṭas, Kāraskaras, Puṇḍras, Sauvīras, Vaṅgas, Kaliṅgas and Prāṇūnas, as it prescribed purification of the travellers by the performance of the Punastoma or the Sarvapr̥ṣṭhā.⁴ But later authorities allowed travels in the Aṅga, Vaṅga, Kaliṅga, Surāṣṭra and Magadha countries if they were undertaken for the purpose of pilgrimage.⁵ The Tīrthayātrā section of the Vanaparvan of the *Mahābhārata*, composed earlier than the Gupta

c15.27

¹ Since pilgrimage to holy places is a non-Aryan institution later adopted by the Aryans, the antiquity of Gaṅgāsāgara may be pre-Aryan.

c15.28

² See *Select Inscriptions*, pp. 28, 70-71.

c15.29

³ *Ibid*, pp. 161-62.

c15.30

⁴ II, 2, 16:

c15.31

⁵ Bagchi, *Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India*, p. 74:

c15.32

अवन्तयोऽङ्गमगधाः सुराष्ट्रा दक्षिणपथाः ।
उपावृत्सिधुसौवीरा एते संकीर्णयोनयः ।।
आरट्टास्करान्पुण्ड्रान् सौवीरान् वङ्गाङ्कलिङ्गान्प्राणूननिति च गत्वा पुनस्तोमेन
यजेत सर्वपृष्ठया वा । अथाप्युदाहरन्ति—
पद्भ्यां स कुरुते पापं यः कलिङ्गान्प्रपद्यते ।
ऋषयो निष्कृतिं तस्य प्राहुर्वैश्वानरं हविः ।।

c15.33

अङ्गवङ्गकलिङ्गेषु सौराष्ट्रमगधेषु च ।
तीर्थयात्रां विना गच्छन् पुनःसंस्कारमर्हति ।।

c15.34

The verse is ascribed to the *Ādi Purāṇa* in the *Vīramitrodaya*, *Sainskāra-prakāśa*, Chowkhamba, p. 546. Cf. *Mahābhārata*, VIII, 45, 14-15.

c15.35

age, refers to Gaṅgāsāgara as a very great *tīrtha*.¹ The *Śabdakalpadruma* quotes the following verses from the *Kūrma Purāṇa*, one of the older Purāṇas known to Al-Birūnī :

c15.36

¹ III, 85, 4-5 :

c15.37

गंगायां ज्ञानतो मृत्वा मुक्तिमाप्नोति मानवः ।
अज्ञानाद् ब्रह्मलोकं च याति नास्त्यत्र संशयः ॥
गंगायां च जले मोक्षो वाराणस्यां जले स्थले ।
अन्तरिक्षे च गंगायां गंगासागरसंगमे ॥

c15.38

It is said that a person dying in the waters of any part of the Ganges gets salvation; at Banāras salvation reaches him even if he dies on the banks of the river; but at Gaṅgāsāgara salvation is guaranteed whether one dies in the waters or on the land or in the air. The *Viṣṇusamhitā*, a post-Gupta work in its present form, recognises the importance of this *tīrtha* in regard to the performance of funerary rites.² That Gaṅgāsāgara was well known in North-Western India in the eleventh century A.D. is suggested by the reference in Al-Birūnī’s work on India (*circa* 1030 A.D.) to this city ‘where the Ganges flows into the sea’.³

c15.39

² Chapter 85, 28 :

c15.40

³ Sachau, *Alberuni's India*, Vol. I, pp. 201, 261.

c15.41

Due to several factors, the chief amongst them being the change of the main course of the Gaṅgā through the Padmā as well as the impotence of the descendants of the valiant Vaṅgas of old as guardians of the sacred place, the all-India importance of the Gaṅgāsāgara *tīrtha* gradually waned and its enviable position as the greatest *tīrtha* in Eastern India was untimately usurped by the medieval Purī *tīrtha* in Orissa. As a local *tīrtha*, however, it preserved its popularity in Eastern India throughout the medieval period in spite of the depredations of

c15.42

गंगायास्तत्र राजेन्द्र सागरस्य च संगमे ।
अश्वमेधं दशगुणं प्रवदन्ति मनीषिणः ॥
गंगायास्त्वपरं पारं प्राप्य यः स्नाति मानवः ।
त्रिरात्रमुषितो राजन् सर्वपापैः प्रमुच्यते ॥

c15.43

गंगाद्वारे प्रयागे च गंगासागरसंगमे ।
सततं नैमिषारण्ये वाराणस्यां विशेषतः ॥

c15.44

Magh and Portuguese pirates in Lower Bengal. The practice of dedicating children to the goddess Gaṅgā in the waters of the confluence at Gaṅgāsāgara prevalent in that age in South-West Bengal and the neighbourhood is well known to all students of Indian history. Medieval Bengali literature refers to the belief that a person offering to die in the waters of Gaṅgāsāgara with a solemn desire is sure to get it fulfilled in his next life. Caṇḍīdāsa’s *Śrīkṛṣṇakīrtana* (14th or 15th century) has the passage:

c15.45

सागरसंगम गिया गायेर मास काटिया
आपना मगर भोज दिया ।
सागरसंगमजल त्यजिब मो कलेवरे

c15.46

In the sixteenth century Jayānanda, a poet of the Burdwan region, wrote in his *Caitanyamaṅgala* :

c15.47

आर रमणी बले गंगासागरे मरिब

c15.48

In the same century, *Kavikaṅkaṇa* Mukundarāma put the following words in the mouth of Śrīmanta, one of the heroes of his *Caṇḍīmaṅgala* :

c15.49

खण्डिया विधिर याम्य सागरे करिब काम्य
पूजा करि सङ्केतमाधव ।
भुञ्जिया संसारसुख देखिब बापेर मुख
पुनरपि हइया मानव ॥

c15.50

Śrīmanta is also represented as saying :

c15.51

यदि वा पितार सङ्गे नहे दरशन ।
कामना करिया मोर सागरे मरण ॥

c15.52

Elsewhere in the same work, one of the jealous ladies, who were comparing their own husbands unfavourably with Gauri’s bridegroom (Śiva), is found saying :

c15.53

आर युवती वले आमि मन्दार याब ।
कामना करिया गिया सागरे मरिब ॥¹

c15.54

¹ Vide C. C. Banerji, *Caṇḍīmaṅgalabodhini*, pp. 822, 857 *Sāgara* has been used to mean *Gaṅgāsāgara*.

c15.55

A number of medieval Sanskrit works such as the *Gaṅgāvākyāvalī*, attributed to the Maithila writer Vidyāpati (circa 1375-1450), and the *Tirthacintāmaṇi* of Maithila Vācaspati-miśra (*circa* 1425-80), which is divided into five Prakāśas, *viz.* Prayāga, Puruṣottama (Purī), Gaṅgā, Gayā and Vārāṇasī and deals with topics like the purpose of pilgrimage, its preliminaries, rites to be performed at the *tīrthas*, subsidiary holy places at the principal *tīrthas*, etc., make prominent mention of the Gaṅgāsāgara *tīrtha*. The most valuable information about the religious and monastic establishment at Gaṅgāsāgara, one of the greatest and oldest Indian *tīrtha*, is however found in the *Tirthasāra* composed by the Bengali writer Bhavadeva Nyāyālaṅkāra in Śaka 1651 (1729 A.D.). This work shows that, as late as the first half of the eighteenth century, considerable parts of the old city existed and that people flocked to the *tīrtha* with a desire to touch the feet of Pitāmaha (Brahman), to have a bath in the waters of the Mandākinī (Gaṅgā on her way to Pātāla) and to worship the images of Mādhava (Viṣṇu) named after an ancient local king of that name, Amaraśaṅkara (Śiva), Kapila (founder of the Sāṅkhya system of Indian philosophy, mythologically represented as a sage indirectly responsible for the digging up of the beds of the oceans by the sons of Sagara as well as for the descent of the Gaṅgā on the earth and regarded as an *Avatāra* of Viṣṇu), Skanda-Kārttikeya and Hari (Viṣṇu).¹

c15.56

¹ Cf. *I.H.Q.*, Vol. XXII, p. 128 : माधवनामा नृप आसीत्तस्य देशस्य । तेन स्थापितो माधवनामा विष्णुस्तत्प्रतिमा । तदधिष्ठानचिह्नेन तीर्थस्य परिचयः कृतः । ....तत्र कपिलनाममुनिप्रतिमास्ति । .... तत्र मन्दाकिनी पातालगा गंगा तिष्ठति । .... कार्तिकेयप्रतिमा तत्रास्ति । .... हरिप्रतिमा तिष्ठति ।.... शंकरः कपिलश्चैव श्वेतद्वीपपतिस्तथा । द्वीपे साधारणः स्कन्दः पंचमश्च महोदधिः ।। इति स्कान्दे । शंकरः अमरशंकरः । श्वेतद्वीपपतिर्माधवः । कपिलस्य मुखं दृष्ट्वा स्पृष्ट्वा पैतामहं पदम् । तरंगोदकं पीत्वा पुनर्जन्म न विद्यते ।।

c15.57

The city of Gaṅgāsāgara seems to have been often encroached upon by the sea and affected by the occasional changes in the surface of the land caused by the silting up of one or other of the mouths of the Ganges and by the creation of new mouths. The same reason seems to have been at the root of the rise, in different ages in the neighbourhood, of such market-towns as the ancient Tāmralipta, the medieval Saptagrāma and Hooghly and the modern Calcutta. But some of the old temples and images at Gaṅgāsāgara survived as late as 1842 A.D. when the remaining part of the ancient city was finally and completely washed away by the waves of the sea.¹ Just a year before the remnants of the last temple were swallowed up, a very interesting account of the ‘Mela at Ganga Saugor’ appeared in the *Friend of India*, Vol. VII, 1841, p. 70 : “...a mere sandbank, about a mile in length and about a quarter mile broad, of a crescent form with the wide sea opening in front and the back covered by a dense jungle. At one corner stands the solitary temple of the celebrated Sanyasi Cupil Mani (Kapilamuni)....The temple is the last remnant of what has evidently been a large monastic institution for devotees, the ruins of which may be walked over at low water. These ruins show that the buildings must have been very extensive as well as massy...” The Kapila temple is said to have been ‘built of Concha stone brought from Orissa’ and was in a precarious condition ‘soon to moulder away’. It was inhabited by a number of mendicants, some of whom owed allegiance to a pontiff of distant Jaipur in Rajasthan. There were two stone images in the temple, one of Kapilamuni and the other of ‘Mahdeb’ (either Mādhava, i.e. Viṣṇu, or probably Mahādeva, i.e. Śiva). The correspondent of the *Friend of India* noticed an inscription in the temple, about the letters of which he remarks, “...yet are they like neither to things in heaven above or in the earth beneath, nor could the Sanyasis themselves decipher the hieroglyphics.” The epigraph was supposed to contain a date which was believed to correspond to 430 or 437 A.D.² The above shows clearly that the sea washed away the most important sacred place in Eastern India, associated with the names of an ancient Vaṅga king called Mādhava and the sage Kapila, just as Dvārakā, a West Indian *tīrtha* of all-India reputation, had been swallowed up by the waves of the Arabian Sea. But whereas an entirely new city, founded in the neighbourhood, was endowed by the people of the Pāścātya division of India with the name and sanctity of ancient Dvārakā, the inhabitants of the Bengal delta did practically nothing to preserve the sacred memory of Gaṅgāsāgara. The real purpose of pilgrimage to holy places in all the four extremities of India was to travel over the length and breadth of the whole land in order to know her properly and to feel the fundamental unity of the various elements in the Indian population. With the absence of Gaṅgāsāgara, there is no ancient *tīrtha* of all-India recognition in the eastern border of the country to attract pilgrims from other parts of India. This seems to be detrimental to the cause of the unity of the Indian people. The East Indians should think of rebuilding the great *tīrtha* at the junction of the Gaṅgā and the Sāgara in all its ancient glory.

c15.58

¹ J.A.S.B., 1850, p. 538; I.H.Q., *loc. cit.*

c15.59

² J.A.S.B., *loc. cit.*; I.H.Q. *op. cit.*, p. 129. Yule and Burnell, in the *Hobson-Jobson*, s.v. *Saugor, Saugor Island*, observe, “It is said once to have been populous, but in 1688 (the date is clearly wrong) to have been swept by a cyclone-wave. It is now a dense jungle haunted by tigers.” Amongst the quotations in this work from earlier European authors, Hedges speaks of his visit in 1683 to the ‘Pagodas at Sagor’. He further says, “James Price assured

c15.60

me that about 40 years since, when the Island called Gonga Sagur was inhabited, the Raja of the Island gathered yearly rent out of it to the amount of 2 lacks of rupees." In 1705, Luillier spoke of the temple at 'Sagore' and of two famous ascetics residing there, while in 1727 Hamilton says, ".....among the Pagans, the Island Sagor is accounted holy, and great number of Jougies (asectics) go yearly thither in the months of November and December to worship and wash in salt water, though many of them fall sacrifices to the hungry tigers." The account o' Hedges suggests that the Island was once severe'y hit by a cyclone about the middle of the seventeenth century.

Linked texts (16)