Did the name of Vanga (Banga or Bengal) appear in Rig Veda?
It will be quite unscientific, however, to come to such a positive conclusion on the basis of this silence, that the Vedic fathers had no knowledge of the country or tribe which b ore the name Vanga (Banga or Bengal later).
The uncritical scholars do not see that, even if it be conceded that all the mantra or prayers to gods, as had been composed at different times by the Rishis, were wholly collected and we get them now fully preserved in the Samhitas, it cannot be asserted that a complete picture of the Vedic times can be presented with the help of the mantra material alone. In this connection the late D. L. Roy, once taunted that the "Gopis" of "Brindaban" perhaps did not know the use of "Jira Marich" since it is not mentioned Srimad Bhagabatam (Gita).
We cannot afford to forget that however much the Vedas, relate to the general conditions of life of the ancient times, they are but ideal prayers and hymns, which, again, only a section of the Indian Aryans offered to the gods. There is ample evidence in the very Veda Samhita, that all the Aryans of India did not pursue the religion which reflected in the Vedic mantras.
No doubt we do not meet the with the name "Vanga" in the Veda Samhitas and the Arharvan mentions only "Anga" as the outermost border country lying to the south-east of the territories of the Aryas; but when we come upon this fact, that the latter Vedic literature such as the Aitareya Brahmana, mentions Vanga as a country held by a barbarian tribe, while the early Buddhist literature (not likely of a date earlier than the Brahmana) is silent as the Vedas are, it becomes difficult to attribute such a silence to ignorance. From these facts we can only make this plausible inference that Vanga and its adjacent parts were not colonized by the Aryans till the 6th Century, B.C.
It is evident from the manner in which the border tribes have been mentioned in the 22nd Sukta of the 5th Book of the Atharva Veda that the Magadhas and the Angas were alien barbarous people who resided outside the pale of the Aryan country but it is also clear that the countries of these Barbarians were in close proximity to the land of the Rsis.
In this Sukta, this wish has been expressed in offering a prayer to Agni that the fever call "Takman" may leave the holy land of the Aryas and may reside in such border countries as Anga and Magadha, which are really home (Okah) of the fever. This fever which is considered to be of malarial type has been asked in the prayer to assail the barbarians and specially their wanton fugitive women (described as Sudras) on account of their having left the Aryan protection in Aryan homes. It is rather clear from this mention that the Rsis of the Atharva Veda utilized the services of the people of Magadha and Anga and were particularly keen about keeping the Sudra women in Aryan villages.
Looking to what has been stated of Anga we may only provisionally hold that Vanga, which lay still further off to the south-east, was only inhabited in "those" days by people other than the Aryans. We get in the Satapatha Brahmana of a much later date that the holy sacrificial fire traveled as far east as Videgha (Videha) in Mithila. It is therefore, pretty certain that the Aryans did not even then come in any real contact with the Vangas of Bengal. We notice in the Atharva Veda that the "Kirata" people of the Himalaya region were the neighbors of the Aryans and the Kirata women supplied such roots and herbs as were used for charms and for medicine; such a peaceful relation with the south-eastern border tribes is not indicated in any Sukta.
The History of the Bengali Language--by Bijay Chandra Mazumdar.
