Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/50

28 in India. The traditional and legendary accounts relating to Annam, as are reported to appear in some Chinese records, affirm that the leader of the Bengali adventurers, who became the king, of Annam, bore the name Luck-lom, and that he married one Annamese girl named Auki. It has been gathered from these records, that the province of India to which Luck-lom and his people belonged, was called Bong-long, and that Luck-lom and his followers were of Nāga Vaṁśa or rather had Nāga for their tribal totem. It becomes pretty clear, that the name of the land, which was then unknown in Āryāvarta, was Bong-long (the original form of Bānglā) and the people of Bong-long were known by the name Bong. That the term Vanga indicated the name of a tribe may be amply proved on the authority of the old Hindu literature. You may refer to Col. Gerini's accounts regarding the Bong-long kings in his work entitled "Researches in Ptolemy's Geography." Archæological research in Cambodia and Annam by Ayomounier, De la Ponte and other European antiquarians should be carefully studied in the interest of the History of India. We will presently see that those who bore the names Anga, Vanga and Kalinga, were regarded by the Aryans to have been of non-Aryan origin. I should also mention here, that the kings of Bong tribe reigned till the second decade of the 3rd century B. C, when some Buddhist Kṣatriyas of the Magadha country became supreme in Annam. It is known that eighteen kings of Bong-long origin reigned for over 350 years in Annam. We find that the compound letter or suffix "long" was added to "Bong" to signify the country belonging to the Bong people. I am inclined to think that this "long" is the Annamese form of the non-Aryan suffix "lā," and that not only the name Bong or Vanga as the name of a tribe, but the word "Bānglā" is as old as the