Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.158

c6.158

The *Rājatarangiṇī* offers clear proof that so far west as in Kashmir also in the eighth and ninth centuries of the Christian era, Gauḍa was considered to be in Bengal and we must remember, as Stein observes,¹ that Kalhaṇa is very reliable and precise as a guide to the scenes of his narrative. Thus we read of King Lalitāditya who reigned in the early years of the eighth century, that on his expedition of conquest, after vanquishing Yaśovarman of Kānyakubja, "his army proceeded with ease to the Eastern Ocean. His elephants, which there saw the land of their birth, were only with difficulty induced by the abuse of their impatient drivers to march on from the *Kaliṅga* country. Numberless elephants joined him from the Gauḍa lands as if attracted by friendship for the elephant [carrying] the couch of Lakṣmī, who was attached [to the king]. When his advanced troops reached the Eastern Ocean, it seemed as if the trunks of the hosts of his war-elephants grasped in the waves the hair of the Ocean."² Here we find that Gauḍa was near the Eastern Ocean in the neighbourhood of the Kaliṅga country, so that it was no doubt Bengal. In the same chapter, Kalhaṇa also speaks of the assassination of the Gauḍa King who had sought refuge in Kashmir and of the wonderful bravery shown by that King's followers.³ Again we are told that Lalitāditya's grandson, Jayāpīḍa who reigned in the last half of the eighth century, while travelling incognito "entered the city of Paundravardhana, subject to the Kings of Gauḍa and [at that time] protected by a prince called Jayanta,"¹ and further that Jayāpīḍa married the daughter of Jayanta and showed there his valour by defeating even without preparation, the five Gauḍa chiefs, and by making his father-in law their sovereign."² Here the fact that the Gauḍas were ruling at Pauṇḍravardhana shows that the Gauḍa country was there in Bengal. Whether these events are to be regarded as based upon actual historical facts, or as creations of the poet's fancy, there can be no doubt that there was some historical tradition behind it and it is clear that there were some relations between Kashmir and Gauḍa in the eighth and ninth centuries and that this Gauḍa was in Bengal.