Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c9.s3: 3. Gauḍa as the Collective Name of the Eastern Countries of India
Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c9.s3
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3. Gauḍa as the Collective Name of the Eastern Countries of India
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About a century after the establishment of the powerful kingdom of Gauḍa, its name began to be used in a general sense to indicate the countries of Eastern India. In Daṇḍin’s *Kāvyādarśa* (seventh century) one of the two principal styles of Sanskrit composition is described as Gauḍa or *prācya*, *i.e.* eastern.
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Daṇḍin draws a distinction between the Gauḍa or eastern and the Vaidarbha or southern styles. Among the characteristics of the former is the love of long compounds not only in prose, in which they were also used by the southerners, but also in poetry. The easterners also favoured alliteration and harsh sound effects, recondite etymologizing phraseology and strength often resulting in bombast and affectation. Jacobi believed that Sanskrit poetry in the east had developed the evil effects of old age before the art became current in the western and southern parts of India. But it should be noticed that in Bharata’s *Nāṭyaśāstra*, which is a few centuries earlier than the *Kāvyādarśa*, the qualities which Daṇḍin ascribes to the Vaidarbha style is assigned to the Kāvya style in general. Keith is no doubt right when he says, “This is a strong suggestion that at the time of the *Nāṭyaśāstra* there had not developed the characteristics of the Gauḍa style and that they emerged gradually with the development of poetry at the courts of princes of Bengal.”¹ These ‘princes of Bengal’ appear to have been no other than the kings of Gauḍa who flourished in the sixth century and the earlier part of the seventh, to whom reference has been made above. But the fact that the Gauḍa style came to be ascribed to the whole of Eastern India may suggest that poets at other East Indian courts were imitating those at the Gauḍa court. This led ultimately to the application of the name Gauḍa to East India generally.
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¹ *A History of Sanskrit Literature*, p. 60.
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Like the literary style of Eastern India named after Gauḍa, the East Indian alphabet was named after the same country. Bühler says, "Towards the end of the 11th century, the Nāgarī inscriptions of Eastern India shew such distinct traces of changes leading up to the modern Bengali writing and these changes become so numerous in the 12th century that it is possible to class their alphabets as Proto-Bengali. Only a few among the Proto-Bengali letters are new local formations. The great majority occur already in other older scripts, be it in exactly the same or in similar shape."¹ Bendall and Bühler also noticed the influence of this script on the alphabet used in the Nepalese manuscripts of the period between the 12th and 15th centuries.² Now, in coining the name Proto-Bengali for the script in question, Bühler seems to have ignored several factors. In the first place, 'the eastern variety of the Nāgarī alphabet' found in 'the Nāgarī inscriptions of Eastern India', out of which Proto-Bengali developed in the twelfth century, should better have been distinguished from the 'Nāgarī' found in the inscriptions discovered in other parts of India by applying a more specific name to it. Secondly, when, even earlier than the eleventh century A.D.,³ the same script was used in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Orissa and when even now Bengal and Assam use practically the same alphabet while the Maithili and Oriya alphabets are nearly the same, the name Proto-Bengali can hardly be regarded as quite appropriate, in spite of the fact that, along with its literature, Bengal's alphabet has come to occupy a more important position. Thirdly, as early as the first half of the eleventh century, the same East Indian script was named after Gauḍa. Al-Birūnī, who wrote his work on India about 1030 A.D., speaks of the following alphabets : (1) Siddhamātṛkā used in the Kashmir, Banāras and Kanauj regions, (2) Nāgara used in Mālava (3-5) Ardhanāgarī, Malwārī and Saindhava, used in Sindh, (6-9) Karṇāṭa, Āndhrī, Drāviḍī and Lārī used respectively in the Kannaḍa, Andhra, Drāviḍa and Lāṭa countries, (10) Gauḍī used in Pūrva-deśa, *i.e.* the eastern country, and (11) Bhaikṣukī which was the writing of the Buddha (*i.e.* the Buddhists) used in Udunpur (possibly Uddaṇḍapura, *i.e.* modern Biharsharif in the Patna District) in Pūrva-deśa.¹ This shows that the East Indian script, called Proto-Bengali by Bühler, was named after Gauḍa at least by the beginning of the eleventh century. Many of the names found in the list of sixty-four alphabets in the *Lalitavistara* (translated into Chinese in 308 A.D.) are apparently imaginary and doubtful ; but the separate mention of the Aṅga-lipi, Vaṅga-lipi, Magadha-lipi, Drāviḍa-lipi, Kanāri-lipi, Dakṣiṇa-lipi, Apara-Gauḍ-ādi-lipi, etc.,² seems to suggest that the tendency towards the growth of special characteristics in the alphabets of Southern and Eastern India was noticed even in an earlier age.
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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, Vol. XXXIII, App., p. 58.
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² *Ibid.*, p. 60.
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³ Ojha (*Prācīnalipimālā*, p. 77) has traced letters like *e* and *kh* of the Bengali type in the inscriptions of the time of Nārāyaṇapāla (*circa* 854-908 A. D.), that is to say, in records belonging to the ninth and tenth centuries. Bühler himself does not deny such facts.
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¹ Sachau, *Alberuni's India*, Vol. I, p. 173.
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² G. H. Ojha, *op. cit.*, p. 7, note 3.
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What has been said above would show that the name Gauḍa was specially applied to the literary style and script of Eastern India and that Gauḍa in these cases indicates the East Indian countries generally. In this connection, attention may be invited to the language of the *caryā* songs assigned by linguists to the period between the tenth and twelfth centuries A.D. They no doubt offer the earliest stage of the East Indian dialect just emerged from the Apabhraṁśa stage. But there is a great controversy among scholars as regards the closeness of the language of the *caryās* with the different dialects now spoken in Eastern India such as Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Maithili and Eastern Hindi. Linguisticians whose mother-tongue is any of the above languages have tried to prove the special affinity of the *caryā* dialect with their mother-tongue. Thus H. P. Sastri, S. K. Chatterji, P. C. Bagchi, S. K. Sen and other Bengali scholars believe that the *caryās* are written in old Bengali. K. L. Barua and other Assamese writers regard the language of the *caryās* as old Assamese which they call Kāmarūpī. J. K. Misra and others from Mithila take the *caryā* language to be old Maithili. There are also similar claims on behalf of Oriya and Eastern Hindi.¹ We are however inclined to believe that the characteristics of the *caryā* language may be easily traced in all the languages now spoken in Eastern India because it was the language of Eastern India generally. The authors of the songs may be attributed to particular areas and their compositions may exhibit in some cases certain regional peculiarities; but it will hardly be correct for the matter of that to regard the language of the songs to be any one of those that later developed in the areas in question especially in view of the fact that the modern languages of Eastern India have a good deal in common amongst them. It is very probable that, in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D., the difference among these languages was not as remarkable as in modern times and that the literary language of the *caryās* was easily understood in different parts of Eastern India. The proper name for the *caryā* language should therefore be Gauḍī or East Indian and not old Bengali, Assamese, Maithili, Oriya or Eastern Hindi. We may then have a Gauḍa language besides a Gauḍa style of Sanskrit composition and a Gauḍa alphabet. East Indian linguists of particular areas may successfully trace affinities of their mother-tongue with the *caryā* language; but they should better not regard it as the origin exclusively of their mother-tongue.²
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¹ See S. K. Sen, *op. cit.*, pp. 45 ff. ; K. L. Barua, *Early History of Kāmarūpa*, pp. 318 ff.; J. K. Misra, *History of Maithila Literature*, p. x; etc.
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² The Gauḍi dialect (*vibhāṣā*) is recognised in Puruṣottama’s *Prākṛtānuśāsana* (12th century). See my *Gram. Prak. Lang.*, p. 118.
Linked texts (2)
- Nāṭyaśāstra — Bharata, Sanskrit
- Kāvyādarśa — Daṇḍin, Sanskrit