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THE PUŅDRAS
279
the Po-shih-po monastery, situated just 4 miles to the west of the capital city of Pundravardhana. This conclusion is confirmed by the mention of 'Pundanagala' (= Pundranagara, the city of the Pundras) in a fragmentary Maurya Brāhmi Inscription paleographically dated in the second century B.C., which has been discovered at Mahāsthān, 7 miles north of the modern town of Bogra.2
About the second century B.C., then, the Pundras had their chief city at Pundranagara. Not long after, they had spread over a wider area, which came to be known as Punavadhana (= Pundravardhana), for the name Punavadhana occurs in at least two inscriptions (Nos. 102 and 217, Ep. Ind., Vol. II, pp. 108 and 380) of the Sānchi stūpa. Its inhabitants, Dhamatā (Dharmadattā) and Isinadana (Rsinandana), made gifts of architectural pieces that went to the building up of the Sānchi stūpa and its walls and toranas. The Mahāsthān fragmentary inscription proves that the district of Bogra was certainly included in what later came to be known as Pundravardhana. That it also included the district of Rajshahi, or at least portions of it, is proved by the recently discovered Pāhārpur copperplate (478-9 A.D.) which purports to have been issued from Pundravardhana city itself.3 But contemporaneously the term appears as the name of a bhukti or provincial division. Thus, in the Damodarpur (a village in the Dinajpur district) Copperplate Inscriptions (Ep. Ind., XV, pp. 113ff.) of Kumāragupta I (443 and 448 A.D.) and of Budhagupta, the Pundravardhanabhukti is referred to as being governed successively by Cirātadatta, Brahmadatta and Yayadatta, all provincial governors. In all these records, Kotivarşavisaya is recorded as a subdivision of the Pundravardhanabhukti. But naturally enough it is in the epigraphic records of the Pālas and Senas of Bengal that the name most frequently occurs. Pundravardhana continued as in the days of the Guptas to be a provincial division of Bengal. Among the Pāla records, it is referred to in the Khalimpur grant of Dharmapāla, the Nālandā grant of Devapāla, the Bāngarh grant of Mahīpāla I, the Amgachi grant of Vigrahapāla III and
1 A.S.R., XV, p. 110.
2 This inscription has been edited by D. R. Bhandarkar for the Ep. Ind. Cf. also “Mahāsthān and its environs' (monograph No. 2); and also D. R. Bhandarkar's Important Fragmentary Inscription found at Mahāsthān (Bogra district) belonging to the Varendra Research Society', published in the Indian Antiquary, September, 1933.
3 In the Sangli copperplates (Saka year 855) of the Rāstrakūta king Govinda Suvarna-varsa, Paundravardhananagara is mentioned as the place from which the donee, Keśava Diksita, is said to have come (Ind. Ant., XII, pp. 251ff.).
