3. The Voyage of Vancishvara depicted in Annadatri-carita

The voyage of king Vancishvara was started from the port of Vanci to Kurukshetra through Dakshina Samudra (present Indian Ocean). His voyage was via Lanka and entered the Vangasamudra (Bay of Bengal),and then he reached Kurukshetra by entering theriver mouth of the Ganges into Bay of Bengal (Gangasamudra).The playwright might be depicted this voyage based on an ancient Indian trade route through the sea. But the dramatist provides no clear evidences about the path which was used by the king to reach Kurukshetra. Most probably, they used the water transportation to reach there.In fact, such a transportation system was sustained in ancient India. Not only that, the water transport system was always comfortable for carrying goods from one place to another.

According to the third act of the drama Annadatricarita, the voyage of Vancishvara towards the Kurukshetra is given as—

[...]^[1]

With reference to this statement the route of the voyage by Vancishvara towards Kurukshetra can assume as given below-

From the Vanci domain, by passing the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, king Vancishvara reached the merging point of river Ganga with the Bay of Bengal. From there, he may possiblycontinue the transportation throughthe river Ganges to reach at the ancient Banaras, the present Varanasi. From there they sailed to Prayag^[2], and then the boats entered to the river Yamuna and reached the present Haryana state through the river.^[3] The ancient Kurukshetra region is now identified in the modern Kurukshetra district of Haryana. After entering the Haryana region the goods possibly willbrought to Kurukshetra by the terrain route.This is a possibility of Vancishvara’s journey to Kurukshtra, whatever the case may be the author did not described on it.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Ibid.,24.

[2]:

Formerly known as Allahabad and now renamed as Prayagraj. This is the merging point of the trinity of rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the invisible river Saraswati.

[3]:

Moti Chandra, Trade and Trade routes in Ancient India, (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1997), 17.