Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.148

c6.148

Gauḍa as the name of a city, a country, or a people, is found from very early times in Indian literature including the works of Pāṇini and Kautilya, and almost everywhere it appears to refer to Bengal. But as some scholars have expressed a doubt about it, the question deserves to be very carefully examined. Cunningham expressed the opinion that the ancient Gauḍa was "only a sub-division of Uttara-Kosala"² as against the medieval city of Gauḍa in Bengal.³ Again, the late Mr. A. M. T. Jackson also, in connection with an inscription wherein the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king, Kṛṣṇa II, is declared to have been Gauḍānām vinaya-vratārppaṇa-guruḥ,⁴ observes "It is too often assumed that in the tenth century and earlier the name Gauḍa means Bengal. I think, however, that this is a mistake which is responsible for much misreading of Indian History. It was, I think, Professor R. G. Bhandarkar who first expressed doubts on the point, and suggested that Gauḍa meant Gonda in Oudh. The key to the riddle is to be found in Alberuni's notes on the 'Voelkertafel' of Varāhamihira (Sachau's Alberuni's India, I, 300) which informs us that Guḍa = Tāneshar. This explains why the Sārasvat Brahmans of the holy Sarasvatī are the Gauḍas *par excellence*, and why Gauḍa and Vaṅga are mentioned separately in the Baroda Grant of 812 A.D. The Gauḍas whom Kṛṣṇa II ‘humbled’ or ‘schooled’ were therefore the rulers of ‘Hindustan’ in the narrow sense, or in other words the Gurjaras themselves.”[1] Most of these opinions expressed here by Mr. Jackson can be clearly shown to be absolutely wrong. In the first place, as regards the tenth century, no serious historian now doubts that the Gauḍa emperor Devapala who was the son of Raṇṇadevi, a sister of Kṛṣṇa II,[2] belonged to Bengal and not to the Gonda district of Cunningham or Thanesar of Mr. Jackson, so that this point need not be expatiated upon.