after his return home at the termination of his warlike expedition, went straight to Oudh to erect a pillar at Ayodhya, to signify his already accomplished conquest of Magadha cum Gauḍa, we cannot but be inclined to hold, that Gauḍa at this time lay to the north of Magadha.
The meaning or import of the word Gauḍa is not very clear. Those who keep cattle and sell milk are called Gauḍa in Orissa; here this term must either be the Apabhraṁśa form of Gopāla or a slightly changed form of the Vedic word Gaura which meant wild ox as well as buffalo. If the origin of the name has anything to do with the term Gopāla, we may identify Gopāla Kakṣa of Mahābhārata with the Gauḍa country of our inquiry, since Gopāla Kakṣa is placed near about Kośala, and not far away from the Kauśīki Kaccha or the valley watered by the Kuśī (M. Bh., Sabhā, XXX, 3). The evidence of the Purāṇas is in support of this identification. We get the name of a tribe called Gomanta (those who keep cattle) just after the name of the Magadha people, in the enumeration of the eastern tribes in the 44th verse of the 57th chapter of the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa. In the Vāyu Purāṇa (XLV, 123), after enumerating the tribes of Assam and North Bengal, the Videhas and other tribes of north Bihār have been mentioned; in this enumeration the Govindas come after the Magadhas, while we get Gomanta for Govinda in the Mārkaṇḍeya. The geography of Gauḍa as indicated above and the presence of a tribe near about that Gauḍa with the name Gomanta or Govinda, persuade me to believe, that the word Gauḍa is derived from the name of a tribe who grazed cattle and kept dairy.
When Alberuni visited India, Thāneśwar was included in the Gauḍa country. Mr. Jackson has rightly observed with reference to this extension of Gauḍa country, that
