Surasena

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.

Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts.Many units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.

Surasena

The ancient name of a tract of country in Northern India, round Muttra. According to the Puranas it was the name of the grandfather of Krishna, whose history is closely connected with Muttra. The inhabitants of the tract were called Saurasenas, and Arrian mentions the Saurasenoi as possessing two large cities, Methora (Muttra) and Cleisobora or Cyrisgbora (not certainly identified) while the Jobares river (Jumna) flowed through their territory. Pliny describes the Jotjianes as flowing between Methora and Carisobora.

• Lassen (Ind. Alt., vol. i, p. 127 n. 3) suggests that this is equivalent to Krishna-

pura, which he places at Agra. Cunningham (Anciefit Geography of India, p. 375) identifies it with Brindaban. Muttra, Agra, and Brindaban are all on the right bank of the Jumna. See also M’Crindle, Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian, pp. 140-1 and note.

Varaha Mihira, the Sanskrit geographer of the sixth century a.d., makes several references to the Saurasenas, who are placed in the Madhya Desa or ' middle country.' The name has been applied to a variety of Prakrit, called Saurasena, which appears to have been the ancestor of the present language described as Western Hindi in the Linguistic Survey of India, In later times part of this tract was called Braj or Braj Mandal, a name which still survives (see Muttra District).