Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c28.5

c28.5

B. C. Bhattacharya suggested its indentification with the city of Kiṣkindhā celebrated in the story of the *Rāmāyaṇa*.³ But the equation of Kākandī and Kiṣkindhā appears to be philologically unsound. Moreover, Kiṣkindhā in the neighbourhood of Pampā (modern Hampi in the Bellary District of Mysore State) is far away from the sphere of activities of the early Buddhists and Jains. B. C. Law, who has ignored Bhattacharya’s suggestion, regards the place as unidentifiable in the present state of our knowledge.⁴ But there is epigraphical evidence to prove that Kākandī, the traditional birth place of Suvidhinātha, was regarded in the medieval period as identical with a place now called Kākan which lies within the jurisdiction of the Sekandra Police Station in the Jamui Sub-Division of the Monghyr District of Bihar.