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CHAPTER LI
THE VANGAS It is not difficult for the philologist to recognise the present Bengal in the tribal name 'Vanga'. But Vanga in ancient days denoted only a portion of present-day Bengal; it is distinguished in ancient literature and epigraphic records not only from Rādha which included Suhma 1 or was conterminous with it 2 and Gauda which at one time included Karnasuvarņa and a portion of Rādha, 4 all making up what is now roughly known as Western Bengal,-- but also from Pundra or Pundravardhana which included Varendra or Varendri,5 making up what is roughly identical with present Northern Bengal. Vanga thus stood for what is now known as Eastern Bengal comprising the modern Dacca and Chittagong divisions. Among the important divisions of Vanga in ancient days were included Samatata (mod. Faridpur), according to Watters, and for some time even Tāmralipta or Tāmalitti (mod. Tamluk). Hemacandra in his Abhidhānacintāmani (IV, 23), however, identifies the country of the Vanga with that of a tribe called the Harikelas.? In the eleventh century Cola Inscription (Tirumalai Rock Ins. of Rājendra Cola) as well as in the Goharwa Plate of Karnadeva, king of Cedi (c. 1040-1070 A.D.), the Varga country is referred to as Bangāla-deśam, which, in the thirteenth century, came to be called Bangāla (Wright's Marco Polo) and in Mohamedan times Bānglā. The Tirumalai Inscription distinguishes Vanga from South Rādha (Takkana Lādham and North Rādha (Uttila Lādham). Thus Vanga which at one time denoted Eastern Bengal has now given its name to the entire province of modern Bengal, the English rendering of the name being derived from Bargāla or Bārglā.8
1 1.H.Q., Vol. VIII, No. 3, pp. 525-9.
2 S.B.E., Vol. XXII, pp. 84-5, Nilakantha's commentary on the Sabhāparvan of the Mahābhārata. Suhmāh Rādhāh' = The Suhmas are the Rādhas.
3 M. Chakravarti, J.A.S.B., 1908, p. 274. 4 Prabodhacandrodaya, Canto II.
5 Tarpandighi Grant of Laksmanasena, Inscriptions of Bengal, III, pp. 99ff. But in some of the Sena records Vanga is included in Pundravardhanabhukti.
8 1.H.O., Vol. VIII, No. 3, p. 533.
7 According to I-tsing (I-tsing, Takakusu, p. xlvi), Wuhing, another Chinese pilgrim, visited Harikela, which was the eastern limit of E. India. Harikela is also mentioned in an illustrated manuscript of A stasahasra prajñāpāramitā in the Camb. Univ. Library (MSS. Add. 1643).
8 In a Nālandā Inscription recently edited by N. G. Majumdar (Ep. Ind., Vol. XXI, Pt. III, pp. 97ff.) the name Vangāla deśa appears.
