Dedication

Firstly I would like to express my sincere and deep felt gratitude to both of my respected Ph.D. Supervisor, and Co-Supervisor Dr. Chandan Kumar Chakraborty and Dr. Debaraj Panigrahi for their guidance, continuous support, kind help and motivation during my research work.

Besides my Supervisor, my sincere gratitude goes to retired Professors Prof. Biswapati Roy, Prof. Braja Kishor Swin, Prof. Apurba Chandra Barthakuria, Prof. Ratna Basu, and Prof. Didhiti Biswas. I also express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Gopabandhu Mishra, Prof. Dilip Kumar Mohanta for their insightful suggestions and encouragement. In particular I am grateful to Prof.(Rtd.) Shila Purakayastha for enlightening me at the first glance of research.

I express my cordial thanks to all of my RAC members for their valuable suggestions and kind support.

I am thankful to all faculty members Dr. Sipra Roy, Prof.(Rtd.) Jyotish Nath, Dr. S. N. Tiwary, Jay Saha, Partha Sarathi Sil of the Department of Sanskrit, TU, for their support, inspirations and kind help.

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Surochita Basu, Assistant Professor, Department of Botany, TU, for continuous help and encouragement.

I thank my friend Priyanku Chakraborty for the stimulating discussions and kind help for collecting photos during the period of field work.

I am thankful to Non-teaching staffs, Research Scholars, my seniors, juniors and friends.

I am also thankful to the priests of Hayagrīva Madhava Temple at Hājo, Assam and Sambhu Datta Sharma for their kind cooperation.

I wish to thanks Dhar Brothers for printing and binding support.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, my brother and my family for supporting me throughout writing this thesis. Without their cooperation and inspiration this work would not have been possible.

(Anindita Adhikari)