Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c9.s2.5

c9.s2.5

The late medieval work entitled Ṣaṭpañcāśaddeśavibhāga which is incorporated in the Śaktisaṅgama Tantra describes the Gauḍa country as lying between the country of Vaṅga and Bhuvaneśa, i.e. Bhubaneswar in the Puri District of Orissa.¹ The same work describes Vaṅga as the land extending from the sea to the Brahmaputra.² The sea is apparently the Bay of Bengal in the south of Vaṅga, while Brahmaputra placed on the northern boundary of Vaṅga seems to indicate that portion of the river which bifurcates from the Jumna. Thus the eastern half of Bengal has been called Vaṅga and its western half together with parts of Orissa has been designated Gauḍa in the work in question. This broad division of the Bengali-speaking area into two halves, viz. Eastern Bengal called Vaṅga and Western Bengal called Gauḍa, is echoed by some Muslim historians who spoke of the country as Gaur-Bangāl, i.e. Gauḍa-Vaṅga. Vaṅgāla (Bangāl) was originally the name of the Buckergunje region of the Vaṅga country; but later the name came to be applied to the whole of Vaṅga or East Bengal and still later to the whole of the Bengali-speaking area. At present, Gauḍa, Vaṅga and Vaṅgāla are indiscriminately used to indicate the wide area of East India where the Bengali language is spoken. The major part of the country lies in West Bengal in the Indian Union and East Bengal in Pakistan; but parts of it belong to the other neighbouring states like Bihar.