Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c15.23

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.