Tradition
Pundravardhana
Overview
Pundravardhana or Pundra kingdom (Sanskrit: Puṇḍravardhana) was an ancient kingdom of Iron Age India located in the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent with a territory that included parts of present-day Rajshahi and parts of Rangpur Division of Bangladesh, as well as the West Dinajpur district of West Bengal, India. The capital of the kingdom, then known as Pundranagara (Pundra city), was located at Mahasthangarh in Bogra District of northern Bangladesh. According to old puranic literature, king Pundra gained a mixed non-Vedic and Indo-Aryan heritage. They were a Mlechas (non-Aryan) community.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Sailing from this city, you will arrive at the country of the Automoli, in a space of time equal to that which you took in coming from Elephantine to the capital of the Ethiopians. These Automoli are called by the name of Asmak, which in the language of Greece signifies, "those that stand at the left hand of the king." These, to the number of two hundred and forty thousand of the Egyptian war-tribe, once revolted to…
Herodotus, The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus
States what Pundravardhana is.
So some were appointed to draw stones from the stone-quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and others he ordered to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those which are called the Libyan mountains; and they worked by a hundred thousand men at a time, for each three months continually. Of this oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made…
Herodotus, The History of Herodotus — Volume 1
States what Pundravardhana is.
The Semitic people, whose migration to Babylonia succeeded that of the Sumerians, lost all knowledge of the Sumerian language, but they preserved the written texts as sacred. In the course of folk migrations, cuneiform writing likewise penetrated to the coast regions of Asia Minor, although in this instance it was continually used to express new idioms not to be found in the land of its origin. Letters have been…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Pundravardhana; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Arjuna
- Ashoka
- Ājīvika
- Hindus
- India
- Jainism
- Chandragupta Maurya
- Mahabharata
- Āstika and nāstika
- Xuanzang
- Indian subcontinent
- Mahavira
- Brahmin
- Shiva
- Buddhism
- The Buddha
- Bangladesh
- Iron Age in India
- University of Calcutta
- Maurya Empire
- Ashokavadana
- Vaishnavism
- Dirghatamas
- Benimadhab Barua
Place in the tradition
Part of Ājīvika.