Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.190

c6.190

We have already seen Bāṇabhaṭṭa speak of Saśāṅka, the king of Bengal (Karṇasuvarṇa of Yuan Chwang) as Gauḍādhipa. When the same author in one of the introductory verses ¹ to his Harṣacarita speaks of the fondness for a display of sonorous words (akṣara-ḍambara) as the characteristic of the people of Gauḍa, he cannot mean by the word any other country than Bengal. Daṇḍin, the author of the Kāvyādarśa, who also is generally supposed to have flourished about the same time as Bāṇa, i.e., the seventh century after Christ, expatiates at some length on the differences of the two styles of Vidarbha and Gauḍa and besides, speaks of them as the Southern (Dākṣiṇātya) and the Eastern (Paurastya) styles.³ This characterisation of the Gauḍi as the Paurastyā or the Eastern style shows that the Gauḍa of Daṇḍin must have been in Eastern India and without doubt, Bengal, in as much as we find his contemporary, Bāṇa, placing Gauḍa in Bengal.