Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c5.s2.1

c5.s2.1

We have seen above that the Paramāra king Bhoja (c. 1010-55 A.D.) is sometimes represented as the lord of the land bounded by the Kailāsa, the Malaya and the mythical Sun-set and Sun-rise mountains. There is another tradition which says that the same Paramāra king ruled for a little over fiftyfive years over ‘Dakṣiṇāpatha together with Gauḍa’.⁵ There is no doubt that Dakṣiṇāpatha has been mentioned here in the sense of the whole of South India, often conceived as a separate *cakravarti-kṣetra*. That the claim is merely conventional is shown by the fact that Bhoja’s dominions did not include any considerable part of South India. But scholars have so long failed to grasp the correct significance of the word *Gauḍa* mentioned in relation to Dakṣiṇāpatha in the above context.