History of Gujarát / Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Volume I, Part I.

by James M. Campbell

CAMBODIA.

Cambodia.The close connection between Java and Cambodia, the alternate supremacy of Cambodia in Java and of Java in Cambodia, the likelihood of settlers passing from Java to Cambodia explain, to a considerable extent, why the traditions and the buildings of Java and Cambodia should point to a common origin in north-west India. The question remains: Do the people and buildings of Cambodia contain a distinct north Hindu element which worked its way south and east not by sea but by land across the Himálayas and Tibet and down the valley of the Yang-tse-kiang to Yunnan and Angkor. Whether the name Cambodia[39] proves an actual race or historical connection with Kamboja or the Kábul valley is a point
Appendix IV.
Cambodia. on which authorities disagree. Sir H. Yule held that the connection was purely literary and that as in the case of Inthapatha-puri or Indraprastha (Dehli) the later capital of Cambodia and of Ayodhya or Oudh the capital of Assam no connection existed beyond the application to a new settlement of ancient worshipful Indian place-names. The objection to applying this rule to Cambodia is that except to immigrants from the Kábul valley the name is of too distant and also of too scanty a reputation to be chosen in preference to places in the nearer and holier lands of Tirhut and Magadha. For this reason, and because the view is supported by the notable connection between the two styles of architecture, it seems advisable to accept Mr. Fergusson’s decision that the name Cambodia was given to a portion of Cochin-China by immigrants from Kamboja that is from the Kábul valley. Traces remain of more than one migration from India to Indo-China. The earliest is the mythic account of the conversion of Indo-China to Buddhism before the time of Aśoka (b.c. 240). A migration in the first century a.d. of Yavanas or Śakas, from Tamluk or Ratnávate on the Hugli, is in agreement with the large number of Indian place-names recorded by Ptolemy (a.d. 160).[40] Of this migration Hiuen Tsiang’s name Yavana (Yen-mo-na) for Cambodia may be a trace.[41] A Śaka invasion further explains Pausanias’ (a.d. 170) name Sakæa for Cochin-China and his description of the people as Skythians mixed with Indians.[42] During the fifth and sixth centuries a fresh migration seems to have set in. Cambodia was divided into shore and inland and the name Cambose applied to both.[43] Chinese records notice an embassy from the king of Cambodia in a.d. 617.[44] Among the deciphered Cambodian inscriptions a considerable share belong to a Bráhmanic dynasty whose local initial date is in the early years of the seventh century,[45] and one of whose kings Somaśarmman (a.d. 610) is recorded to have held daily Mahábhárata readings in the temples.[46] Of a fresh wave of Buddhists, who seem to have belonged to the northern branch, the earliest deciphered inscription is a.d. 953 (S. 875) that is about 350 years later.[47] Meanwhile, though, so far as information goes, the new capital of Angkor on the north bank of lake Tale Sap about 200 miles up the Mekong river was not founded till a.d. 1078 (S. 1000),[48] the neighbourhood of the holy lake was already sacred and the series of temples of which the Nakhonwat or Nága’s Shrine[49] is one of the latest and finest examples, was begun at least as early as a.d. 825 (S. 750), and
Appendix IV.
Cambodia. Nakhonwat itself seems to have been completed and was being embellished in a.d. 950 (S. 875).[50] During the ninth and tenth centuries by conquest and otherwise considerable interchange took place between Java and Cambodia.[51] As many of the inscriptions are written in two Indian characters a northern and a southern[52] two migrations by sea seem to have taken place one from the Orissa and Masulipatam coasts and the other, with the same legend of the prince of Rúm land, from the ports of Sindh and Gujarát.[53] The question remains how far there is trace of such a distinct migration as would explain the close resemblance noted by Fergusson between the architecture of Kashmir and Cambodia as well as the northern element which Fergusson recognises in the religion and art of Cambodia.[54] The people by whom this Panjáb and Kashmir influence may have been introduced from the north are the people who still call themselves Khmers to whose skill as builders the magnificence of Cambodian temples lakes and bridges is apparently due.[55] Of these people, who, by the beginning of the eleventh century had already given their name to the whole of Cambodia, Alberuni (a.d. 1031) says: The Kumairs are whitish of short stature and Turk-like build. They follow the religion of the Hindus and have the practice of piercing their ears.[56] It will be noticed that so far as information is available the apparent holiness of the neighbourhood of Angkor had lasted for at least 250 years before a.d. 1078 when it was chosen as a capital. This point is in agreement with Mr. Fergusson’s view that the details of Nakhonwat and other temples of that series show that the builders came neither by sea nor down the Ganges valley but by way of Kashmir and the back of the Himálayas.[57] Though the evidence is incomplete and to some extent speculative the following considerations suggest a route and a medium through which the Roman and Greek elements in the early (a.d. 100–500) architecture of the Kábul valley and Pesháwar may have been carried inland to Cambodia. It may perhaps be accepted that the Ephthalites or White Húṇas and a share of the Kedarites, that is of the later Little Yuechi from Gandhára the Pesháwar country, retreated to Kashmir before the father of Śrí Harsha (a.d. 590–606) and afterwards (a.d. 606–642) before Śrí Harsha himself.[58] Further it seems fair to assume that from
Appendix IV.
Cambodia. Kashmir they moved into Tibet and were the western Turks by whose aid in the second half of the seventh century Srongbtsan or Srongdzan-gambo (a.d. 640–698), the founder of Tibetan power and civilization, overran the Tarim valley and western China.[59] During the first years of the eighth century (a.d. 703) a revolt in Nepal and the country of the Bráhmans was crushed by Srongdzan’s successor Donsrong,[60] and the supremacy of Tibet was so firmly established in Bengal that, for over 200 years, the Bay of Bengal was known as the sea of Tibet.[61] In a.d. 709 a Chinese advance across the Pamirs is said to have been checked by the great Arab soldier Kotieba the comrade of Muhammad Kasim of Sindh.[62] But according to Chinese records this reverse was wiped out in a.d. 713 by the defeat of the joint Arab and Tibet armies.[63] In the following years, aided by disorders in China, Tibet conquered east to Hosi on the upper Hoangho and in a.d. 729 ceased to acknowledge the overlordship of China. Though about a.d. 750 he was for a time crippled by China’s allies the Shado Turks the chief of Tibet spread his power so far down the Yangtsekiang valley that in a.d. 787 the emperor of China, the king of Yunnan to the east of Burma, certain Indian chiefs, and the Arabs joined in a treaty against Tibet. As under the great Thisrong (a.d. 803–845) and his successor Thi-tsong-ti (a.d. 878–901) the power of Tibet increased it seems probable that during the ninth century they overran and settled in Yunnan.[64] That among the Tibetans who passed south-east into Yunnan were Kedarites and White Húṇas is supported by the fact that about a.d. 1290, according both to Marco Polo and to Rashid-ud-din, the common name of Yunnan was Kárájang whose capital was Yachi and whose people spoke a special language.[65] The name Kárájang was Mongol meaning Black People and was used to distinguish the mass of the inhabitants from certain fair tribes who were known as Chaganjang or Whites. That the ruler of Kárájang was of Hindu origin is shown by his title Mahara or Mahárája. That the Hindu element came from the Kábul valley is shown by its Hindu name of Kandhár that is Gandhára or Pesháwar, a name still in use as Gand­álarit (Gandhára-rashtra) the Burmese for Yunnan.[66] The strange confusion which Rashid-ud-din makes between the surroundings of Yunnan and of Pesháwar is perhaps due to the fact that in his time the connection between the two places was still known and admitted.[67] A further trace
Appendix IV.
Cambodia. of stranger whites like the Chaganjang of Yunnan occurs south-east in the Anin or Honli whose name suggests the Húṇas and whose fondness for silver ornaments at once distinguishes them from their neighbours and connects them with India.[68] Even though these traces may be accepted as confirming a possible migration of Húṇas and Kedaras to Yunnan and Anin a considerable gap remains between Anin and Angkor. Three local Cambodian considerations go some way to fill this gap. The first is that unlike the Siamese and Cochin Chinese the Khmers are a strong well made race with very little trace of the Mongoloid, with a language devoid of the intonations of other Indo-Chinese dialects, and with the hair worn cropped except the top-knot. The second point is that the Khmers claim a northern origin; and the third that important architectural remains similar to Nakhonwat are found within Siam limits about sixty miles north of Angkor.[69] One further point has to be considered: How far is an origin from White Húṇas and Kedáras in agreement with the Nága phase of Cambodian worship. Hiuen Tsiang’s details of the Tarim Oxus and Swát valleys contain nothing so remarkable as the apparent increase of Dragon worship. In those countries dragons are rarely mentioned by Fa Hian in a.d. 400: dragons seem to have had somewhat more importance in the eyes of Sung-Yun in a.d. 520; and to Hiuen Tsiang, the champion of the Maháyána or Broadway, dragons are everywhere explaining all misfortunes earthquakes storms and diseases. Buddhism may be the state religion but the secret of luck lies in pleasing the Dragon.[70]

Appendix IV.
Cambodia. This apparent increased importance of dragon or Nága worship in north-west India during the fifth and sixth centuries may have been due partly to the decline of the earlier Buddhism partly to the genial wonder-loving temper of Hiuen Tsiang. Still so marked an increase makes it probable that with some of the great fifth and sixth century conquerors of Baktria Kábul and the Panjáb, of whom a trace may remain in the snake-worshipping
Appendix IV.
Cambodia. Nágas and Takkas of the Kamaon and Garhwal hills, the Dragon was the chief object of worship. Temple remains show that the seventh and eighth century rulers of Kashmir, with a knowledge of classic architecture probably brought from beyond the Indus, were Nága worshippers.[72] The fact that the ninth century revision of religion in Tibet came mainly from Kashmir and that among the eighteen chief gods of the reformed faith the great Serpent had a place favours the view that through Tibet passed the scheme and the classic details of the Kashmir Nága temples which in greater wealth and splendour are repeated in the Nakhonwat of Angkor in Cambodia.[73] It is true that the dedication of the great temple to Nága worship before the Siamese priests filled it with statues of Buddha is questioned both by Lieut. Garnier and by Sir H. Yule.[74] In spite of this objection and though some of the series have been Buddhist from the first, it is difficult to refuse acceptance to Mr. Fergusson’s conclusions that in the great Nákhon, all traces of Buddhism are additions. The local conditions and the worshipful Tale Sap lake favour this conclusion. What holier dragon site can be imagined than the great lake Tale Sap, 100 miles by 30, joined to the river Mekong by a huge natural channel which of itself empties the lake in the dry season and refills it during the rains giving a water harvest of fish as well as a land harvest of grain. What more typical work of the dragon as guardian water lord. Again not far off between Angkor and Yunnán was the head-quarters of the dragon as the unsquared fiend. In Carrajan ten days west of the city of Yachi Marco Polo (a.d. 1290) found a land of snakes and great serpents ten paces in length with very great heads, eyes bigger than a loaf of bread, mouths garnished with pointed teeth able to swallow a man whole, two fore-legs with claws for feet and bodies equal in bulk to a great cask. He adds: ‘These serpents devour the cubs of lions and bears without the sire and dam being able to prevent it. Indeed if they catch the big ones they devour them too: no one can make any resistance. Every man and beast stands in fear and trembling of them.’ Even in these fiend dragons was the sacramental guardian element. The gall from their inside healed the bite of a mad dog, delivered a woman in hard labour, and cured itch or it might be worse. Moreover, he concludes, the flesh of these serpents is excellent eating and toothsome.[75]

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[1] Sir Stamford Raffles’ Java, II. 83. From Java Hindus passed to near Banjar Massin in Borneo probably the most eastern of Hindu settlements (Jour. R. A. Soc. IV. 185). Temples of superior workmanship with Hindu figures also occur at Waahoo 400 miles from the coast. Dalton’s Diaks of Borneo Jour. Asiatique (N. S.) VII. 153. An instance may be quoted from the extreme west of Hindu influence. In 1873 an Indian architect was found building a palace at Gondar in Abyssinia. Keith Johnson’s Africa, 269. [↑]

[2] Raffles’ Java, II. 65–85. Compare Lassen’s Indische Alterthumskunde, II. 10, 40; IV. 460. [↑]

[3] Raffles’ Java, II. 87. [↑]

[4] Compare Tod’s Annals of Rájasthán (Third Reprint), I. 87. The thirty-nine Chohán successions, working back from about a.d. 1200 with an average reign of eighteen years, lead to a.d. 498. [↑]

[5] Compare Note on Bhinmál page [467]. [↑]

[6] According to Cunningham (Ancient Geography, 43 and Beal’s Buddhist Records, I. 109 note 92) the site of Hastinagara or the eight cities is on the Swát river eighteen miles north of Pesháwar. In Vedic and early Mahábhárata times Hastinapura was the capital of Gandhára (Hewitt Jour. Roy. As. Soc. XXI. 217). In the seventh century it was called Pushkalávatí. (Beal’s Buddhist Records, I. 109.) Taxila, the capital of the country east of the Indus, was situated about forty miles east of Attok at Sháhderi near Kálaka-sarai (Cunningham’s Ancient Geography, 105). According to Cunningham (Ditto 109), Taxila continued a great city from the time of Alexander till the fifth century after Christ. It was then laid waste apparently by the great White Húṇa conqueror Mihirakula (a.d. 500–550). A hundred years later when Hiuen Tsiang visited it the country was under Kashmir, the royal family were extinct, and the nobles were struggling for power (Beal’s Buddhist Records, I. 136). Rumadesa. References to Rumadesa occur in the traditions of Siam and Cambodia as well as in those of Java. Fleets of Rúm are also noted in the traditions of Bengal and Orissa as attacking the coast (Fergusson’s Architecture, III. 640). Coupling the mention of Rúm with the tradition that the Cambodian temples were the work of Alexander the Great Colonel Yule (Ency. Brit. Article Cambodia) takes Rúm in its Musalmán sense of Greece or Asia Minor. The variety of references suggested to Fergusson (Architecture, III. 640) that these exploits are a vague memory of Roman commerce in the Bay of Bengal. But the Roman rule was that no fleet should pass east of Ceylon (Reinaud Jour. As. Ser. VI. Tom. I. page 322). This rule may occasionally have been departed from as in a.d. 166 when the emperor Marcus Aurelius sent an ambassador by sea to China. Still it seems unlikely that Roman commerce in the Bay of Bengal was ever active enough to gain a place as settler and coloniser in the traditions of Java and Cambodia. It was with the west not with the east of India that the relations of Rome were close and important. From the time of Mark Antony to the time of Justinian, that is from about b.c. 30 to a.d. 550, their political importance as allies against the Parthians and Sassanians and their commercial importance as controllers of one of the main trade routes between the east and the west made the friendship of the Kusháns or Śakas who held the Indus valley and Baktria a matter of the highest importance to Rome. How close was the friendship is shown in a.d. 60 by the Roman General Corbulo escorting the Hyrkanian ambassadors up the Indus and through the territories of the Kusháns or Indo-Skythians on their return from their embassy to Rome. (Compare Rawlinson’s Parthia, 271.) The close connection is shown by the accurate details of the Indus valley and Baktria recorded by Ptolemy (a.d. 166) and about a hundred years later (a.d. 247) by the author of the Periplus and by the special value of the gifts which the Periplus notices were set apart for the rulers of Sindh. One result of this long continued alliance was the gaining by the Kushán and other rulers of Pesháwar and the Panjáb of a knowledge of Roman coinage astronomy and architecture. Certain Afghán or Baktrian coins bear the word Roma apparently the name of some Afghán city. In spite of this there seems no reason to suppose that Rome attempted to overlord the north-west of India still less that any local ruler was permitted to make use of the great name of Rome. It seems possible that certain notices of the fleets of Rúm in the Bay of Bengal refer to the fleets of the Arab Al-Rami that is Lambri or north-west Sumatra apparently the Romania of the Chaldean breviary of the Malabár Coast. (Yule’s Cathay, I. lxxxix. note and Marco Polo, II. 243.) [↑]

[7] Compare Fergusson’s Architecture, III. 640; Yule in Ency. Brit. Cambodia. [↑]

[8] Java, I. 411. Compare Fergusson’s Architecture, III. 640. [↑]

[9] See Yule in Jour. Roy. As. Soc. (N. S.), I. 356; Fergusson’s Architecture, III. 631. [↑]

[10] Of the Java remains Mr. Fergusson writes (Architecture, III. 644–648): The style and character of the sculptures of the great temple of Boro Buddor are nearly identical with those of the later caves of Ajanta, on the Western Gháts, and in Sálsette. The resemblance in style is almost equally close with the buildings of Takht-i-Bahi in Gandhára (Ditto, 647). Again (page 637) he says: The Hindu immigrants into Java came from the west coast of India. They came from the valley of the Indus not from the valley of the Ganges. Once more, in describing No. XXVI. of the Ajanta caves Messrs. Fergusson and Burgess (Rock-cut Temples, 345 note 1) write: The execution of these figures is so nearly the same as in the Boro Buddor temple in Java that both must have been the work of the same artists during the latter half of the seventh century or somewhat later. The Buddhists were not in Java in the fifth century. They must have begun to go soon after since there is a considerable local element in the Boro Buddor. [↑]

[11] Traditions of expeditions by sea to Java remain in Márwár. In April 1895 a bard at Bhinmál related how Bhojrája of Ujjain in anger with his son Chandrabau drove him away. The son went to a Gujarát or Káthiáváḍa port obtained ships and sailed to Java. He took with him as his Bráhman the son of a Magh Pandit. A second tale tells how Vikram the redresser of evils in a dream saw a Javanese woman weeping, because by an enemy’s curse her son had been turned into stone. Vikram sailed to Java found the woman and removed the curse. According to a third legend Chandrawán the grandson of Vir Pramár saw a beautiful woman in a dream. He travelled everywhere in search of her. At last a Rishi told him the girl lived in Java. He started by sea and after many dangers and wonders found the dream-girl in Java. The people of Bhinmál are familiar with the Gujaráti proverb referred to below; Who goes to Java comes not back. MS. Notes, March 1895. [↑]

[12] Another version is:

Je jáe Jáve te phari na áve

Jo phari áve to parya parya kháve

Etalu dhan láve.

Who go to Java stay for aye.

If they return they feast and play

Such stores of wealth their risks repay.

[↑]

[13] Compare Crawford (a.d. 1820) in As. Res. XIII. 157 and Lassen Ind. Alt. II. 1046. [↑]

[14] The following details summarise the available evidence of Gujarát Hindu enterprise by sea. According to the Greek writers, though it is difficult to accept their statements as free from exaggeration, when, in b.c. 325, Alexander passed down the Indus the river showed no trace of any trade by sea. If at that time sea trade at the mouth of the Indus was so scanty as to escape notice it seems fair to suppose that Alexander’s ship-building and fleet gave a start to deep-sea sailing which the constant succession of strong and vigorous northern tribes which entered and ruled Western India during the centuries before and after the Christian era continued to develope.[15] According to Vincent (Periplus, I. 25, 35, 254) in the time of Agatharcides (b.c. 200) the ports of Arabia and Ceylon were entirely in the hands of the people of Gujarát. During the second century after Christ, when, under the great Rudradáman (a.d. 143–158), the Sinh or Kshatrapa dynasty of Káthiáváḍa was at the height of its power, Indians of Tientço, that is Sindhu, brought presents by sea to China (Journal Royal Asiatic Society for January 1896 page 9). In a.d. 166 (perhaps the same as the preceding) the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius sent by sea to China ambassadors with ivory rhinoceros’ horn and other articles apparently the produce of Western India (DeGuignes’ Huns, I. [Part I.] 32). In the third century a.d. 247 the Periplus (McCrindle, 17, 52, 64, 96, 109) notices large Hindu ships in the east African Arab and Persian ports and Hindu settlements on the north coast of Sokotra. About a century later occurs the doubtful reference (Wilford in Asiatic Researches, IX. 224) to the Diveni or pirates of Diu who had to send hostages to Constantine the Great (a.d. 320–340) one of whom was Theophilus afterwards a Christian bishop. Though it seems probable that the Kshatrapas (a.d. 70–400) ruled by sea as well as by land fresh seafaring energy seems to have marked the arrival on the Sindh and Káthiáváḍ coasts of the Juan-Juan or Avars (a.d. 390–450) and of the White Húṇas (a.d. 450–550). During the fifth and sixth centuries the ports of Sindh and Gujarát appear among the chief centres of naval enterprise in the east. How the sea ruled the religion of the newcomers is shown by the fame which gathered round the new or revised gods Śiva the Poseidon of Somnáth and Kṛishṇa the Apollo or St. Nicholas of Dwárka. (Compare Tod’s Annals of Rájasthán, I. 525.) In the fifth century (Yule’s Cathay, I. lxxviii.) according to Hamza of Ispahán, at Hira near Kufa on the Euphrates the ships of India and China were constantly moored. In the early sixth century (a.d. 518–519) a Persian ambassador went by sea to China (Ditto, I. lxxiv.) About the same time (a.d. 526) Cosmas (Ditto, I. clxxviii.) describes Sindhu or Debal and Orhota that is Soratha or Verával as leading places of trade with Ceylon. In the sixth century, apparently driven out by the White Húṇas and the Mihiras, the Jats from the Indus and Kachh occupied the islands in the Bahrein gulf, and perhaps manned the fleet with which about a.d. 570 Naushiraván the great Sassanian (a.d. 531–574) is said to have invaded the lower Indus and perhaps Ceylon.[16] About the same time (Fergusson Architecture, III. 612) Amrávati at the Kṛishṇa mouth was superseded as the port for the Golden Chersonese by the direct voyage from Gujarát and the west coast of India. In a.d. 630 Hiuen Tsiang (Beal’s Buddhist Records, II. 269) describes the people of Suráshṭra as deriving their livelihood from the sea, engaging in commerce, and exchanging commodities. He further notices that in the chief cities of Persia Hindus were settled enjoying the full practice of their religion (Reinaud’s Abulfeda, ccclxxxv.) That the Jat not the Arab was the moving spirit in the early (a.d. 637–770) Muhammadan sea raids against the Gujarát and Konkan coasts is made probable by the fact that these seafaring ventures began not in Arabia but in the Jat-settled shores of the Persian Gulf, that for more than fifty years the Arab heads of the state forbad them, and that in the Mediterranean where they had no Jat element the Arab was powerless at sea. (Compare Elliot, I. 416, 417.) That during the seventh and eighth centuries when the chief migrations by sea from Gujarát to Java and Cambodia seem to have taken place, Chinese fleets visited Diu (Yule’s Cathay, lxxix.), and that in a.d. 759 Arabs and Persians besieged Canton and pillaged the storehouses going and returning by sea (DeGuignes’ Huns, I. [Pt. II.] 503) suggest that the Jats were pilots as well as pirates.[17] On the Sindh Kachh and Gujarát coasts besides the Jats several of the new-come northern tribes showed notable energy at sea. It is to be remembered that as detailed in the Statistical Account of Thána (Bombay Gazetteer, XIII. Part II. 433) this remarkable outburst of sea enterprise may have been due not only to the vigour of the new-come northerners but to the fact that some of them, perhaps the famous iron-working Turks (a.d. 580–680), brought with them the knowledge of the magnet, and that the local Bráhman, with religious skill and secrecy, shaped the bar into a divine fish-machine or machiyantra, which, floating in a basin of oil, he consulted in some private quarter of the ship and when the stars were hid guided the pilot in what direction to steer. Among new seafaring classes were, on the Makrán and Sindh coasts the Bodhas Kerks and Meds and along the shores of Kachh and Káthiáváḍa the closely connected Meds and Gurjjaras. In the seventh and eighth centuries the Gurjjaras, chiefly of the Chápa or Chávaḍá clan, both in Dwárka and Somnáth and also inland, rose to power, a change which, as already noticed, may explain the efforts of the Jats to settle along the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. About a.d. 740 the Chápas or Chávaḍás, who had for a century and a half been in command in Dwárka and Somnáth, established themselves at Aṇahilaváḍa Pattan. According to their tradition king Vanarája (a.d. 720–780) and his successor Yogarája (a.d. 806–841) made great efforts to put down piracy. Yogarája’s sons plundered some Bengal or Bot ships which stress of weather forced into Verával. The king said ‘My sons with labour we were raising ourselves to be Chávaḍás of princely rank; your greed throws us back on our old nickname of Choras or thieves.’ Yogarája refused to be comforted and mounted the funeral pyre. Dr. Bhagvánlál’s History, 154. This tale seems to be a parable. Yogarája’s efforts to put down piracy seem to have driven large bodies of Jats from the Gujarát coasts. In a.d. 834–35, according to Ibn Alathyr (a.d. 834), a fleet manned by Djaths or Jats made a descent on the Tigris. The whole strength of the Khiláfat had to be set in motion to stop them. Those who fell into the hands of the Moslems were sent to Anararbe on the borders of the Greek empire (Renaud’s Fragments, 201–2). As in the legend, the Chávaḍá king’s sons, that is the Chauras Mers and Gurjjaras, proved not less dangerous pirates than the Jats whom they had driven out.[18] About fifty years later, in a.d. 892, Al-Biláduri describes as pirates who scoured the seas the Meds and the people of Sauráshṭra that is Devpatan or Somnáth who were Choras or Gurjjaras.[19] Biláduri (Reinaud Sur L’Inde, 169) further notices that the Jats and other Indians had formed the same type of settlement in Persia which the Persians and Arabs had formed in India. During the ninth and tenth centuries the Gujarát kingdom which had been established in Java was at the height of its power. (Ditto, Abulfeda, ccclxxxviii.) Early in the tenth century (a.d. 915–930) Masudi (Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 344; Elliot, I. 65) describes Sokotra as a noted haunt of the Indian corsairs called Bawárij which chase Arab ships bound for India and China. The merchant fleets of the early tenth century were not Arab alone. The Chauras of Aṇahilaváḍa sent fleets to Bhot and Chin (Rás Mála, I. 11). Nor were Mers and Chauras the only pirates. Towards the end of the tenth century (a.d. 980) Grahári the Chúḍásamá, known in story as Graharipu the Ahir of Sorath and Girnár, so passed and repassed the ocean that no one was safe (Ditto, I. 11). In the eleventh century (a.d. 1021) Alberuni (Sachau, II. 104) notes that the Bawárij, who take their name from their boats called behra or bira, were Meds a seafaring people of Kachh and of Somnáth a great place of call for merchants trading between Sofala in east Africa and China. About the same time (a.d. 1025) when they despaired of withstanding Máhmud of Ghazni the defenders of Somnáth prepared to escape by sea,[20] and after his victory Máhmud is said to have planned an expedition by sea to conquer Ceylon (Tod’s Rajasthán, I. 108). In the twelfth century Idrísi (a.d. 1135) notices that Tatariya dirhams, that is the Gupta (a.d. 319–500) and White Húṇa (a.d. 500–580) coinage of Sindh and Gujarát, were in use both in Madagascar and in the Malaya islands (Reinaud’s Mémoires, 236), and that the merchants of Java could understand the people of Madagascar (Ditto, Abulfeda, cdxxii).[21] With the decline of the power of Aṇahilaváḍa (a.d. 1250–1300) its fleet ceased to keep order at sea. In a.d. 1290 Marco Polo (Yule’s Ed. II. 325, 328, 341) found the people of Gujarát the most desperate pirates in existence. More than a hundred corsair vessels went forth every year taking their wives and children with them and staying out the whole summer. They joined in fleets of twenty to thirty and made a sea cordon five or six miles apart. Sokotra was infested by multitudes of Hindu pirates who encamped there and put up their plunder to sale. Ibn Batuta (in Elliot, I. 344–345) fifty years later makes the same complaint. Musalmán ascendancy had driven Rájput chiefs to the coast and turned them into pirates. The most notable addition was the Gohils who under Mokheráji Gohil, from his castle on Piram island, ruled the sea till his power was broken by Muhammad Tughlak in a.d. 1345 (Rás Mála, I. 318). Before their overthrow by the Muhammadans what large vessels the Rájput sailors of Gujarát managed is shown by Friar Oderic, who about a.d. 1321 (Stevenson in Kerr’s Voyages, XVIII. 324) crossed the Indian ocean in a ship that carried 700 people. How far the Rájputs went is shown by the mention in a.d. 1270 (Yule’s Cathay, 57 in Howorth’s Mongols, I. 247) of ships sailing between Sumena or Somnáth and China. Till the arrival of the Portuguese (a.d. 1500–1508) the Ahmedábád Sultáns maintained their position as lords of the sea.[22] In the fifteenth century Java appears in the state list of foreign bandars which paid tribute (Bird’s Gujarát, 131), the tribute probably being a cess or ship tax paid by Gujarát traders with Java in return for the protection of the royal navy.[23] In east Africa, in a.d. 1498 (J. As. Soc. of Bengal, V. 784) Vasco da Gama found sailors from Cambay and other parts of India who guided themselves by the help of the stars in the north and south and had nautical instruments of their own. In a.d. 1510 Albuquerque found a strong Hindu element in Java and Malacca. Sumatra was ruled by Parameshwara a Hindu whose son by a Chinese mother was called Rájput (Commentaries, II. 63; III. 73–79). After the rule of the sea had passed to the European, Gujarát Hindus continued to show marked courage and skill as merchants seamen and pirates. In the seventeenth century the French traveller Mandelslo (a.d. 1638, Travels 101, 108) found Achin in north Sumatra a great centre of trade with Gujarát. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Sanganians or Sangar Rájputs of Mándvi in Kachh and of Navánagar in north Káthiáváḍa were much dreaded. In a.d. 1750 Grose describes the small cruisers of the Sanganians troubling boats going to the Persian Gulf, though they seldom attacked large ships. Between a.d. 1803 and 1808 (Low’s Indian Navy, I. 274) pirates from Bet established themselves in the ruined temple at Somnáth. In 1820, when the English took Bet and Dwárka from the Wághels, among the pirates besides Wághels were Badhels a branch of Ráhtors, Bhattis, Khárwás, Lohánás, Makwánás, Ráhtors, and Wagharis. A trace of the Chauras remained in the neighbouring chief of Aramra.[24] Nor had the old love of seafaring deserted the Káthiáváḍa chiefs. In the beginning of the present century (a.d. 1825) Tod (Western India, 452; compare Rás Mála, I. 245) tells how with Biji Singh of Bhávnagar his port was his grand hobby and shipbuilding his chief interest and pleasure; also how Ráo Ghor of Kachh (a.d. 1760–1778) built equipped and manned a ship at Mándvi which without European or other outside assistance safely made the voyage to England and back to the Malabár Coast where arriving during the south-west monsoon the vessel seems to have been wrecked.[25] [↑]

[15] Alexander built his own boats on the Indus. (McCrindle’s Alexander, 77.) He carried (pages 93 and 131) these boats to the Hydaspes: on the Jhelum (134 note 1) where he found some country boats he built a flotilla of gallies with thirty oars: he made dockyards (pages 156–157): his crews were Phoenikians, Cyprians, Karians, and Egyptians. [↑]

[16] Reinaud’s Mémoire Sur L’Inde, 125. The statement that Naushiraván received Karáchi from the king of Seringdip (Elliot’s History, I. 407: Tabari, II. 221) throws doubt on this expedition to Ceylon. At the close of the sixth century Karáchi or Diul Sindhi cannot have been in the gift of the king of Ceylon. It was in the possession of the Sáharái kings of Aror in Upper Sindh perhaps of Sháhi Tegin Devaja shortened to Shahindev. (Compare Cunningham Oriental Congress, I. 242.) According to Garrez (J. As. Ser. VI. Tom. XIII. 182 note 2) this Serendip is Surandeb that is Syria and Antioch places which Naushiraván is known to have taken. Several other references that seem to imply a close connection between Gujarát and Ceylon are equally doubtful. In the Mahábhárata (a.d. 100–300?) the Sinhalas bring vaidúryas (rubies?) elephants’ housings and heaps of pearls. The meaning of Sainhalaka in Samudragupta’s inscription (a.d. 395) Early Gujarát History page 64 and note 5 is uncertain. Neither Mihirakula’s (a.d. 530) nor Lalitáditya’s (a.d. 700) conquest of Ceylon can be historical. In a.d. 1005 when Abul Fatha the Carmatian ruler of Multán was attacked by Máhmud of Ghazni he retired to Ceylon. (Reinaud’s Mémoire, 225). When Somnáth was taken (a.d. 1025) the people embarked for Ceylon (Ditto, 270). [↑]

[17] Compare at a later period (a.d. 1342) Ibn Batuta’s great ship sailing from Kandahár (Gandhár north of Broach) to China with its guard of Abyssinians as a defence against pirates. Reinaud’s Abulfeda, cdxxv. [↑]

[18] As an example of the readiness with which an inland race of northerners conquer seamanship compare the Franks of the Pontus who about a.d. 279 passed in a few years from the Pontus to the Mediterranean ports and leaving behind them Malta the limit of Greek voyages sailed through Gibraltar to the Baltic. Gibbon, I. 404–405. [↑]

[19] Reinaud’s Mémoire Sur L’Inde, 200. The traders of Chorwár, that is of the old Chaura or Chápa country near Virával and Mangrul, are now known in Bombay as Chápadias. The received explanation of Chápadia is the roofed men it is said in derisive allusion to their large and heavy headdress. But as the Porbandar headdress is neither specially large nor ungraceful the common explanation can be hardly more than a pun. This suggests that the name Chápadia is a trace of the early Chápa tribe of Gurjjaras who also gave their name to Chápanir. Tod’s (Western India, 250, 256) description of the Chauras race with traditions of having come from the Red Sea and as a nautical Arabia is the result of taking for Sokotra Sankodwára that is Bet to the north of Dwárka. [↑]

[20] According to Abulfeda a.d. 1334 (Reinaud’s Abulfeda, cccxlix.) some of the besieged fled to Ceylon. Farishtah (Briggs’ Muhammadan Powers, I. 75) records that after the fall of Somnáth Máhmud intended to fit out a fleet to conquer Ceylon and Pegu. According to Bird (Mirát-i-Ahmedi, 146) Ceylon or Sirandip remained a dependency of Somnáth till a.d. 1290 when the king Vijayabáhu became independent. [↑]

[21] The common element in the two languages may have been the result of Gujarát settlements in Madagascar as well as in Java and Cambodia. This is however doubtful as the common element may be either Arabic or Polynesian. [↑]

[22] When in a.d. 1535 he secured Bahádur’s splendid jewelled belt Humáyún said These are the trappings of the lord of the sea. Bayley’s Gujarát, 386. [↑]

[23] Compare in Bombay Public Diary 10, pages 197–207 of 1736–37, the revenue headings Surat and Cambay with entries of two per cent on all goods imported and exported from either of these places by traders under the Honourable Company’s protection. [↑]

[24] These Badhels seem to be Hamilton’s (a.d. 1720) Warels of Chance (New Account, I. 141). This Chance is Chách near Diu apparently the place from which the Bhátiás get their Bombay name of Cháchiás. Towards the close of the eighteenth century Bhátiás from Chách seem to have formed a pirate settlement near Dáhánu on the Thána coast. Major Price (Memoirs of a Field Officer, 322) notes (a.d. 1792 June) the cautionary speed with which in travelling from Surat to Bombay by land they passed Dáhánu through the Chánsiáh jungle the district of a piratical community of that name. [↑]

[25] According to Sir. A. Burnes (Jl. Bombay Geog. Soc. VI. (1835) 27, 28) the special skill of the people of Kachh in navigation and ship-building was due to a young Rájput of Kachh. Rámsingh Málani, who about a century earlier had gone to Holland and learned those arts. See Bombay Gazetteer, V. 116 note 2. [↑]

[26] Crawford (a.d. 1820) held that all Hindu influence in Java came from Kalinga or north-east Madras. Fergusson (Ind. Arch. 103, Ed. 1876) says: The splendid remains at Amrávati show that from the mouths of the Kṛishṇa and Godávari the Buddhist of north and north-west India colonised Pegu, Cambodia, and eventually the Island of Java. Compare Tavernier (a.d. 1666: Ball’s Translation, I. 174.) Masulipatam is the only place in the Bay of Bengal from which vessels sail eastwards for Bengal, Arrakan, Pegu, Siam, Sumatra, Cochin China, and the Manillas and west to Hormuz, Makha, and Madagascar. Inscriptions (Indian Antiquary, V. 314; VI. 356) bear out the correctness of the connection between the Kalinga coast and Java which Java legends have preserved. As explained in Dr. Bhandarkar’s interesting article on the eastern passage of the Śakas (Jour. B. B. R. A. S. XVII.) certain inscriptions also show a Magadhi element which may have reached Java from Sumatra and Sumatra from the coast either of Bengal or of Orissa. Later information tends to increase the east and south Indian share. Compare Notices et Extraits des Manuscripts de la Bibliotheque Nationale Vol. XXVII. (Partie II) 2 Fasicule page 350. [↑]

[27] Compare Hiuen Tsiang in Beal’s Buddhist Records, II. 222 note 102. Táhia may be Tochara that is Baktria, but the Panjáb seems more likely. Compare Beal’s Life of Hiuen Tsiang, 136 note 2. [↑]

[28] Idrísi a.d. 1135 (Elliot, I. 92) has a Romala a middling town on the borders of the desert between Multán and Seistán. Cunningham (Ancient Geog. 252) has a Romaka Bazaar near where the Nára the old Indus enters the Ran of Kachh. [↑]

[29] Cunningham’s Num. Chron. 3rd Ser. VIII. 241. The Mahábhárata Romakas (Wilson’s Works, VII. 176: Cunningham’s Anc. Geog. 187) may have taken their name from one of these salt stretches. Ibn Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) mentions Rumála (Elliot, I. 14, 87, 92, 93) as one of the countries of Sindh. In connection with the town Romala Al Idrísi a.d. 1153 (Elliot, I. 74, 93) has a district three days’ journey from Kalbata. [↑]

[30] Cunningham’s Numismatic Chronicle 3rd Ser. VIII. 236. The date of Kárur is uncertain. Fergusson (Arch. III. 746) puts it at a.d. 544. It was apparently earlier as in an inscription of a.d. 532 Yaśodharmman king of Málwa claims to hold lands which were never held by either Guptas or Húṇas. Cunningham Num. Chron. 3rd Ser. VIII. 236. Compare History Text, 76, 77. [↑]

[31] Jour. As. Soc. Bl. VII. (Plate I.) 298; Burnes’ Bokhára, III. 76; Elliot’s History, I. 405. Diu which is specially mentioned as a Sáharái port was during the seventh and eighth centuries a place of call for China ships. Yule’s Cathay, I. lxxix. [↑]

[32] Phra like the Panjáb Porus of the embassy to Augustus in b.c. 30 (though this Porus may be so called merely because he ruled the lands of Alexander’s Porus) may seem to be the favourite Parthian name Phraates. But no instance of the name Phraates is noted among White Húṇa chiefs and the use of Phra as in Phra Bot or Lord Buddha seems ground for holding that the Phra Thong of the Cambodia legend means Great Lord. [↑]

[33] Epigraphia Indica, I. 67. [↑]

[34] In a.d. 637 raiders attacked Thána from Oman and Broach and Sindh from Bahrein. Reinaud’s Mémoire Sur L’Inde, 170, 176. [↑]

[35] The passage of a Chinese army from Magadha to the Gandhára river about a.d. 650 seems beyond question. The emperor sent an ambassador Ouang-h-wuentse to Śrí Harsha. Before Ouang-h-wuentse arrived Śrí Harsha was dead (died a.d. 642), and his place taken by an usurping minister (Se-na-fu-ti) Alana-chun. The usurper drove off the envoy, who retired to Tibet then under the great Songbtsan. With help from Tibet and from the Rája of Nepál Ouang returned, defeated Alana, and pursued him to the Gandhára river (Khien-to-wei). The passage was forced, the army captured, the king queen and king’s sons were led prisoners to China, and 580 cities surrendered, the magistrates proclaimed the victory in the temple of the ancients and the emperor raised Ouang to the rank of Tch’ao-sau-ta-fore. Journal Asiatique Ser. IV. Tom. X. pages 81–121. The translator thinks the whole war was in the east of India and that the mention of the Gandhára river is a mistake. The correctness of this view is doubtful. It is to be remembered that this was a time of the widest spread of Chinese power. They held Balk and probably Bamian. Yule’s Cathay, I. lxviii. Compare Julien in Jour. As. Soc. Ser. IV. Tom. X. 289–291. [↑]

[36] Regarding these disturbances see Beal’s Life of Hiuen Tsiang, 155; Max Müller’s India, 286. The Arab writers (a.d. 713) notice to what a degraded state Chach had reduced the Jats. In comparing the relative importance of the western and eastern Indian strains in Java it is to be remembered that the western element has been overlaid by a late Bengal and Kalinga layer of fugitives from the Tibetan conquest of Bengal in the eighth century, the Babu with the Gurkha at his heels, and during the ninth and later centuries by bands of Buddhists withdrawing from a land where their religion was no longer honoured. [↑]

[37] In a.d. 116 after the capture of Babylon and Ctesiphon Hadrian sailed down the Tigris and the Persian Gulf, embarked on the waters of the South Sea, made inquiries about India and regretted he was too old to get there. Rawlinson’s Ancient Monarchies, VI. 313. [↑]

[38] Reinaud’s Abulfeda, cccxc. [↑]

[39] The origin of the name Kámboja seems to be Kámbojápura an old name of Kábul preserved almost in its present form in Ptolemy’s (a.d. 160) Kaboura. The word is doubtfully connected with the Achæmenian Kambyses (b.c. 529–521) the Kambujiya of the Behistun inscription. In the fifth of the Aśoka edicts (b.c. 240) Kámboja holds the middle distance between Gandhára or Pesháwar and Yona or Baktria. According to Yáska, whose uncertain date varies from b.c. 500 to b.c. 200, the Kambojas spoke Sanskrit (Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, II. 355 note 145). In the last battle of the Mahábhárata, a.d. 100 to 300 (Jl. Roy. As. Soc. [1842] VII. 139–140), apparently from near Bamian the Kambojas ranked as Mlechchhas with Śakas Daradas and Húṇas. One account (Fergusson, III. 665) places the original site of the Kambojas in the country round Taxila east of the Indus. This is probably incorrect. A trace of the Kambojas in their original seat seems to remain in the Kaumojas of the Hindu Kush. [↑]

[40] See Hunter’s Orissa, I. 310. [↑]

[41] Yavana to the south-west of Siam. Beal’s Life of Hiuen Tsiang, xxxii. [↑]

[42] Quoted in Bunbury’s Ancient Geography, II. 659. Bunbury suggests that Pausanias may have gained his information from Marcus Aurelius’ (a.d. 166) ambassador to China. [↑]

[43] Jour. Bengal Soc. VII. (I.) 317. [↑]

[44] Remusat Nouveaux Melanges Asiatiques, I. 77 in Jour. Asiatique Series, VI. Tom. XIX. page 199 note 1; Fergusson’s Architecture, III. 678. [↑]

[45] Barth in Journal Asiatique Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. page 150. [↑]

[46] Barth in Journal Asiatique, X. 57. [↑]

[47] Barth in Jour. As. Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. page 190; Journal Royal Asiatic Society, XIV. (1882) cii. [↑]

[48] Barth in Journal Asiatique Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. pages 181, 186. [↑]

[49] Mr. Fergusson (Architecture page 666) and Colonel Yule (Ency. Brit. Cambodia) accept the local Buddhist rendering of Nakhonwat as the City Settlement. Against this it is to be noted (Ditto ditto) that nagara city corrupts locally into Angkor. Nagara therefore can hardly also be the origin of the local Nakhon. Farther as the local Buddhists claim the temple for Buddha they were bound to find in Nakhon some source other than its original meaning of Snake. The change finds a close parallel in the Nága that is snake or Skythian now Nágara or city Bráhman of Gujarát. [↑]

[50] Barth in Journal Asiatique Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. 190. [↑]

[51] Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 108; Reinaud’s Abulfeda, cdxvi. [↑]

[52] Barth in Journal Asiatique Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. 174. [↑]

[53] Mr. Fergusson at first suggested the fourth century as the period of migration to Cambodia. He afterwards came to the conclusion that the settlers must have been much the same as the Gujarát conquerors of Java. Architecture, III. 665–678. [↑]

[54] Fergusson, Architecture, 665. Compare Tree and Serpent Worship, 49, 50. The people of Cambodia seem Indian serpent worshippers: they seem to have come from Taxila. [↑]

[55] The name Khmer has been adopted as the technical term for the early literature and arts of the peninsula. Compare Barth J. As. Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. 193; Renan in ditto page 75 note 3 and Ser. VII. Tom. VIII. page 68; Yule in Encyclopædia Britannica Art. Cambodia. The resemblance of Cambodian and Kábul valley work recalls the praise by Chinese writers of the Han (b.c. 206–a.d. 24) and Wei (a.d. 386–556) dynasties of the craftsmen of Kipin, that is Kophene or Kamboja the Kábul valley, whose skill was not less remarkable in sculpturing and chiselling stone than in working gold silver copper and tin into vases and other articles. Specht in Journal Asiatique, II. (1883), 333 and note 3. A ninth century inscription mentions the architect Achyuta son of Ráma of Kámboja. Epigraphia Indica, I. 243. [↑]

[56] Reinaud’s Abulfeda, cdxxi.; Sachau’s Alberuni, I. 210. [↑]

[57] Fergusson’s Architecture, III. 666. [↑]

[58] For the joint Kedarite-Ephthalite rule in Kashmir see Cunningham’s Ninth Oriental Congress, I. 231–2. The sameness of names, if not an identity of rulers, shows how close was the union between the Ephthalites and the Kedarites. The coins preserve one difference depicting the Yuechi or Kedarite ruler with bushy and the White Húṇa or Ephthalite ruler with cropped hair. [↑]

[59] About a.d. 700 Urumtsi Kashgar Khoten and Kuche in the Tarim valley became Tibetan for a few years. Parker’s Thousand Years of the Tartars, 243. In a.d. 691 the western Turks who for some years had been declining and divided were broken by the great eastern Turk conqueror Mercho. The following passage from Masúdi (Prairies D’Or, I. 289) supports the establishment of White Húṇa or Mihira power in Tibet. The sons of Amúr (a general phrase for Turks) mixed with the people of India. They founded a kingdom in Tibet the capital of which they called Med. [↑]

[60] Encyclopædia Britannica Articles Tibet and Turkestan. [↑]

[61] Both Ibn Haukal and Al Istakhri (a.d. 950) call the Bay of Bengal the sea of Tibet. Compare Reinaud’s Abulfeda, ccclviii.; Encyclopædia Britannica Article Tibet page 345. [↑]

[62] Yule’s Cathay, I. lxxxi. [↑]

[63] Ency. Brit. China, 646. [↑]

[64] Thisrong besides spreading the power of Tibet (he was important enough to join with Mámún the son of the great Harun-ar-Rashid (a.d. 788–809) in a league against the Hindus) brought many learned Hindus into Tibet, had Sanskrit books translated, settled Lamaism, and built many temples. It is remarkable that (so far as inscriptions are read) the series of Nakhonwat temples was begun during Thisrong’s reign (a.d. 803–845). [↑]

[65] Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 39–42; J. R. A. Soc. I. 355. [↑]

[66] Yule Jour. R. A. Soc. (N. S.) I. 356. [↑]

[67] Compare Yule in Jour. R. A. S. (N. S.) I. 355. Kandahár in south-west Afghanistán is another example of the Kedarite or Little Yuechi fondness for giving to their colonies the name of their parent country. [↑]

[68] Compare Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 82–84. [↑]

[69] Yule in Ency. Brit. Art. Cambodia, 724, 725, 726. [↑]

[70] Fa Hian (a.d. 400) about fifty miles north-west of Kanauj found a dragon chapel (Beal’s Buddhist Records, I. 40) of which a white-eared dragon was the patron. The dragon, he notes, gives seasonable showers and keeps off all plagues and calamities. At the end of the rains the dragon turns into a little white-eared serpent and the priests feed him. At the deserted Kapilavastu in Tirhut Fa Hian was shown a tank and in it a dragon who, he says, constantly guards and protects a tower to Buddha and worships there night and morning (Ditto, I. 50).

Sung-Yun (a.d. 519) notices (Beal’s Buddhist Records, I. 69) in Swát (Udyána) a tank and a temple with fifty priests called the temple of the Nága Rája because the Nága supplies it with funds. In another passage (Ditto, 92) he notices that in a narrow land on the border of Posse (Fars) a dragon had taken his residence and was stopping the rain and piling the snow. Hiuen Tsiang (Ditto, I. 20) notes that in Kucha, north of the Tarim river east of the Bolor mountains, the Shen horses are half dragon horses and the Shen men half dragon men. In Aksu, 150 miles west of Kucha, fierce dragons molest travellers with storms of flying sand and gravel (Ditto, 25); the hot lake or Johai, 100 miles north-east of Aksu, is jointly inhabited by dragons and fish; scaly monsters rise to the surface and travellers pray to them (Ditto, 26). An Arhat (page 63) prays that he may become a Nágarája. He becomes a Nágarája, kills the real Nágarája, takes his palace, attaches the Nágas to him, and raises winds and tempests; Kanishka comes against him and the Arhat takes the form of a Bráhman and knocks down Kanishka’s towers. A great merit-flame bursts from Kanishka’s shoulders and the Bráhman Nágarája apologises. His evil and passionate spirit, the fruit of evil deeds in a former birth, had made the Arhat pray to be a Nágarája. If clouds gathered the monks knew that the Nágarája meant mischief. The convent gong was beaten and the Nágarája pacified (or scared) Ditto, 64–66. Nágas were powerful brutes, cloud-riding wind-driving water-walking brutes, still only brutes. The account of the Nága or dragon of Jelalábád (in Kambojia) is excellent. In Buddha’s time the dragon had been Buddha’s milkman. He lost his temper, laid flowers at the Dragon’s cave, prayed he might become a dragon, and leaped over the cliff. He laid the country waste and did so much harm that Tathágata (or Buddha) converted him. The Nága asked Buddha to take his cave. Buddha said No. I will leave my shadow. If you get angry look at my shadow and it will quiet you (Ditto, 94). Another typical dragon is Apalála of the Swát river (Ditto, 68). In the time of Kaśyapa Buddha Apalála was a weaver of spells named Gangi. Gangi’s spells kept the dragons quiet and saved the crops. But the people were thankless and paid no tithes. May I be born a dragon, cursed Gangi, poisonous and ruinous. He was born the dragon of the Swát valley, Apalála, who belched forth a salt stream and burned the crops. The ruin of the fair and pious valley of Swát reached Śakya’s (Buddha’s) ears. He passed to Mangala and beat the mountain side with Indra’s mace. Apalála came forth was lectured and converted. He agreed to do no more mischief on condition that once in twelve years he might ruin the crops. (Ditto, 122.) In a lake about seven miles west of Takshaśilá, a spot dear to the exiled Kambojan, lived Elápatra the Nágarája, a Bhikshu or ascetic who in a former life had destroyed a tree. When the crops wanted rain or fair weather, the Shamans or medicine-men led the people to pray at Elápatra’s tank (page 137). In Kashmir, perhaps the place of halt of the Kambojan in his conquests eastwards, in old times the country was a dragon lake.[71] Madhyantika drove out the waters but left one small part as a house for the Nága king (I. 150). What sense have these tales? In a hilly land where the people live in valleys the river is at once the most whimsical and the most dangerous force. Few seasons pass in which the river does not either damage with its floods or with its failure and at times glaciers and landslips stop the entire flow and the valley is ruined. So great and so strange an evil as the complete drying of a river must be the result of some one’s will, of some one’s temper. The Dragon is angry he wants a sacrifice. Again the river ponds into a lake, the lake tops the earth bank and rushes in a flood wasting as only a dragon can waste. For generations after so awful a proof of power all doubts regarding dragons are dead. (Compare Drew’s Cashmere and Jummoo, 414–421.) In India the Chinese dragon turns into a cobra. In China the cobra is unknown: in India than the cobra no power is more dreaded. How can the mighty unwieldy dragon be the little silent cobra. How not? Can the dragon be worshipful if he is unable to change his shape. To the spirit not to the form is worship due. Again the worshipped dragon becomes the guardian. The great earth Bodhisattva transforms himself into a Nágarája and dwells in lake Anavatapta whose flow of cool water enriches the world (Buddhist Records, II. 11). In a fane in Swát Buddha takes the form of a dragon and the people live on him (125). A pestilence wasted Swát. Buddha becomes the serpent Suma, all who taste his flesh are healed of the plague (126). A Nága maiden, who for her sins has been born in serpent shape and lives in a pool, loves Buddha who was then a Śakya chief. Buddha’s merit regains for the girl her lost human form. He goes into the pool slays the girl’s snake-kin and marries her. Not even by marriage with the Śakya is her serpent spirit driven out of the maiden. At night from her head issues a nine-crested Nága. Śakya strikes off the nine crests and ever since that blow the royal family has suffered from headaches (132). This last tale shows how Buddhism works on the coarser and fiercer tribes who accept its teaching. The converts rise to be men though a snake-head may peep out to show that not all of the old leaven is dead. In other stories Buddha as the sacramental snake shows the moral advance in Buddhism from fiend to guardian worship. The rest of the tales illustrate the corresponding intellectual progress from force worship to man, that is mind, worship. The water force sometimes kindly and enriching sometimes fierce and wasting becomes a Bodhisattva always kindly though his goodwill may have to give way to the rage of evil powers. So Bráhmanism turns Náráyana the sea into Śiva or Somnáth the sea ruler. In this as in other phases religion passes from the worship of the forces of Nature to which in his beginnings man has to bow to the worship of Man or conscious Mind whose growth in skill and in knowledge has made him the Lord of the forces. These higher ideals are to a great extent a veneer. The Buddhist evangelist may dry the lake; he is careful to leave a pool for the Nágarája. In times of trouble among the fierce struggles of pioneers and settlers the spirit of Buddha withdraws and leaves the empty shrine to the earlier and the more immortal spirit of Force, the Nágarája who has lived on in the pool which for the sake of peace Buddha refrained from drying. [↑]

[71] Kashmir has still a trace of Gandhára. Compare (Ency. Brit. Art. Kashmir page 13: The races of Kashmir are Gandháras, Khasás, and Daradas.) [↑]

[72] Mr. Fergusson (Architecture, 219) places the Káshmir temples between a.d. 600 and 1200 and allots Mártand the greatest to about a.d. 750. The classical element, he says, cannot be mistaken. The shafts are fluted Grecian Doric probably taken from the Gandhára monasteries of the fourth and fifth centuries. Fergusson was satisfied (Ditto, 289) that the religion of the builders of the Káshmir temples was Nága worship. In Cambodia the Bráhman remains were like those of Java (Ditto, 667). But the connection between the Nakhonwat series and the Káshmir temples was unmistakeable (Ditto, 297, 665). Nága worship was the object of both (Ditto, 677–679). Imperfect information forced Fergusson to date the Nakhonwat not earlier than the thirteenth century (Ditto, 660, 679). The evidence of the inscriptions which (J. As. Ser. VI. Tom. XIX. page 190) brings back the date of this the latest of a long series of temples to the ninth and tenth centuries adds greatly to the probability of some direct connection between the builders of the Mártand shrine in Káshmir and of the great Nakhonwat temple at Angkor. [↑]

[73] Ency. Brit. Art. Tibet, 344. [↑]

[74] Ency. Brit. Art. Cambodia. [↑]

[75] Yule’s Marco Polo, II. 45, 47. [↑]

APPENDIX V.

ARAB REFERENCES.[1]

Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.The earliest Arab reference to Gujarát is by the merchant Sulaimán[2] a.d. 851 (a.h. 237). Other Arab accounts follow up to a.d. 1263, a period of over four centuries. Sulaimán describes Jurz or Gujarát as bordering on the kingdom of the Balhára (a.d. 743–974) and as forming a tongue of land, rich in horses and camels and said to have “mines of gold and silver, exchanges being carried on by means of these metals in dust.”

Al Biláduri[3] (a.d. 892) states that the first Islámic expedition to India was the one despatched against Táná[4] (Thána) by Usmán, son of Al-Ási the Thakafi, who in the fifteenth year of the Hijrah (a.d. 636) was appointed governor of Bahrein and Umán (the Persian Gulf) by the second Khalífah Umar, the son of Khattáb. On the return of the expedition, in reply to his governor’s despatch, the Khalífah Umar is said to have written:[5] “Oh brother of Thakíf, thou hast placed the worm in the wood, but by Alláh, had any of my men been slain, I would have taken an equal number from thy tribe.” In spite of this threat Usmán’s brother Hakam, who was deputed by the governor to the charge of Bahrein, despatched a force to Bárúz[6] (Broach). Al Biláduri does not record the result of this expedition, but
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. mentions a more successful one to Debal at the mouth of the Indus sent by Hakam under the command of his brother Mughaira. On the death of his uncle Al-Hajjáj (a.d. 714; H. 95) Muhammad the son of Kásim the Arab conqueror of Sindh, is said to have made peace with the inhabitants of Surast or Káthiáváḍ with whom he states the people of Bátia[7] that is Bet to the north of Dwárka were then at war. Al Biláduri describes the Bátia men as Meds seafarers and pirates. In the reign of Hishám (a.d. 724) Junnaid, son of Abdur Rahmán Al Murri, who was appointed to the frontier of Sindh is stated to have conquered Jurz (Gujarát) and Bárús (Broach).[8] A more permanent result followed a great expedition from Mansúrah in Sindh. This result was the overthrow, from which it never recovered, of the great seaport and capital of Vala or Valabhi.[9] Al Biláduri’s next mention[10] of Gujarát is in connection with the conquest of Sindán in Kachh and the founding there of a Jámá mosque by Fazl, son of Mahán in the reign of the Abbási Khalífah Al Mámún (a.d. 813–833) the son of the famous Hárún-ur-Rashíd. After Fazl’s death his son Muhammad sailed with sixty vessels against the Meds of Hind, captured Máli[11] apparently Mália in north Káthiáváḍ after a great slaughter of the Meds and returned to Sindán.

The dissension between Muhammad and his brother Mahán, who in Muhammad’s absence had usurped his authority at Sindán, re-established the power of the Hindus. The Hindus however, adds Al Biláduri, spared the assembly mosque in which for long the Musalmáns used to offer their Friday prayers.[12] Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912; H. 300) erroneously enumerates Bárúh and Sindán (Broach and Sindán) as cities of Sindh.[13] The king of Juzr he describes as the fourth Indian sovereign. According to Al Masúdi[14] (a.d. 915) the country of the Balháras or Ráshṭrakúṭas (a.d. 743–974), which is also called the country of Kumkar (Konkan), is open on one side to the attacks of the king of Juzr (Gujarát) a prince owning many horses and camels and troops who does not think any king on earth equal to him except the king of Bábal (Babylon). He prides himself and holds himself high above all other kings and owns many elephants, but hates Musalmáns. His country is on a tongue of land, and there are gold and silver mines in it, in which trade is carried on. Al Istakhri[15] (H. 340; a.d. 951) gives an itinerary in which he shows the distance between
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. Mansúrah and Kámhal[16] (Anhilwára) to be eight days’ journey; from Kámhal to Kambáya (Cambay) four days; from Kambáya to the sea about two farasangs that is between seven and eight miles[17]; from Kambáya to Surabáya[18] perhaps Surabára the Surat river mouth which is half a farasang (between 1½ and two miles) from the sea, about four days. He places five days between Surabáya (Surat) and Sindán (St. John near Daman) and a like distance between Sindán and Saimúr (Chewal or Cheul) thirty miles south of Bombay. Ibni Haukal[19] (H. 366; a.d. 976) enumerates[20] (Fámhal)[21] (Anhilwára), Kambáya (Cambay), Surbáráh (Surat), Sindán (Daman), and Saimúr (Cheul) as cities of Al Hind (India), as opposed to As Sindh or the Indus valley. From Kambáya to Saimúr, he writes, is the land of the Balhára, which is in the possession of several kings.[22] Ibni Haukal describes the land between Kámhal (Anhilwára) and Kambáya (Cambay), and Bánia three days’ journey from Mansúrah as desert,[23] and between Kambáya and Saimúr as thickly covered with villages. Al Bírúni,[24] in his famous Indica about a.d. 1030–31 writes: From Kanauj, travelling south-west you come to Ási, a distance of eighteen farsakhs[25] that is of seventy two miles; to Sahiva 17 farsakhs or sixty-eight miles; to Chandra 18 farsakhs or seventy-two miles; to Rajauri fifteen farsakhs or sixty miles; and to Nárána (near Jaipur) the former capital of Gujarát, 18 farsakhs or seventy-two miles. Nárána he adds was destroyed and the capital transferred to another town on the frontier. From Nárána at a distance of 60 farsakhs or 240 miles south-west lies Anhilwára, and thence to Somnáth on the sea is fifty farsakhs or 200 miles. From Anhilwára, passing south is Lárdes with its capitals Bihruch (Broach) and Rahánjur[26] (Rándir) forty-two farsakhs (168
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. miles). These he states are on the shore of the sea to the east of Tána (the modern Thána).[27] After describing the coast of Makrán till it reaches Debal[28] (Karáchi or Thatta) Abu Rihán comes to the coast of Kachh[29] and Somnáth, the population of which he calls the Bawárij because, he says, they commit their piratical depredations in boats called Baira.[30] He gives the distance[31] between Debal (Karáchi or Thatta) and Kachh the country that yields mukl (gum or myrrh)[32] and bádrúd (balm) as six farsakhs (24 miles); to Somnáth (from Debal) fourteen (56 miles); to Kambáya thirty (120 miles); to Asáwal the site of Ahmedábád (from Cambay) two days’ journey; to Bahrúj (Broach) (from Debal)[33] thirty, to Sindán or St. John (from Debal) fifty; to Subára (Sopára) from Sindán six[34]; to Tána (from Sopára) five. Rashíd-ud-dín in his translation (a.d. 1310) of Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) states[35] that beyond Gujarát are Konkan and Tána. He calls Tánah the chief town of the Konkans and mentions the forest of the Dángs as the habitat of the sharva an animal resembling the buffalo, but larger than a rhinoceros, with a small trunk and two big horns with which it attacks and destroys the elephant. Al Idrísi,[36] writing about the end of the eleventh century but with tenth century materials, places[37] in the seventh section of the second climate, the Gujarát towns of Mámhal (Anhilwára), Kambáya (Cambay), Subára (apparently Surabára or Surat), Sindán[38] (Sanján in Thána), and Saimúr (Chewal or Cheul). He adds, probably quoting from Al Jauhari (a.d. 950), that Nahrwára is governed by a great prince who bears the title of Balhára who owns the whole country from Nahrwára to Saimúr. He ranks the king of Juzr fourth among Indian potentates. The country from Debal to Kambáya (Karáchi to Cambay) he describes[39] as “nothing but a marine strand without habitations and almost without water, and impassable for travellers.”[40] The situation of Mámhal (Anhilwára) he gives as between Sindh and Hind. He notices the Meds as Mánds[41] grazing their flocks to within a short distance of
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. Mámhal (Anhilwára). He speaks of Mámhal, Kambáya, Subára (probably Surabára or Surat), Sindán, and Saimúr as countries of Hind (India) touching upon Sindh.[42] He describes Mámhal as a frontier town, numbered by some among the cities of Sindh, and he classifies Aubkin, Mánd, Kulámmali (Quilon),[43] and Sindán (Sandhán in Kachh) as maritime islands. Among the numerous towns of India are Mámhal (Anhilwára),[44] Kambáya (Cambay), Subára, Asáwal (Ahmedábád), Janáwal (Chunvál), Sindán, Saimúr, Jandur[45] (Rándir), Sandur (apparently a repetition of Rándir), and Rumála (perhaps the south Panjáb).[46] He speaks of Kalbata, Augasht, Nahrwára (Anhilwára), and Lahawar (Lahori Bandar) as in the desert[47] of Kambáya. Of the three Subára (Surabára or Surat), Sindán (the Thána Sanján), and Saimúr (Cheul), he says Saimúr alone belongs to the Balhára, whose kingdom, he adds, is large, well-peopled, commercial, and fertile. Near Subára (apparently Surabára) he locates small islands which he styles Bára where, he adds, cocoanuts and the costus grow.[48] East of Sindán, due to a confusion between Sandhán in Kachh and Sanján in Thána, he places another island bearing the same name as the port and under the same government as the mainland, highly cultivated and producing the cocoa palm the bamboo and the cane. Five miles by sea from Kulámmali lies another island called Máli, an elevated plateau, but not hilly, and covered with vegetation. The mention of the pepper vine suggests that Al Idrísi has wandered to the Malabár Coast. In the eighth section of the second clime Al Idrísi places Bárúh (Broach), Sandápúr (apparently Goa), Tána (Thána), Kandárina (Gandhár, north of Broach), Jirbátan a town mentioned by Al Idrísi as the nearest in a voyage from Ceylon to the continent of India on that continent. It is described as a populous town on a river supplying rice and grain to Ceylon,[49] Kalkáyan, Luluwa, Kanja, and Samandirún, and in the interior Dulaka (Dholka), Janwál (Chunvál or Viramgám), and Nahrwár (Anhilwára).[50] Opposite the sea-port of Bárúh (Broach), Al Idrísi places an island called Mullán, producing large quantities of pepper. Al Idrísi describes the port of Bárúh (Broach) as accessible to ships from China and Sindh. The distance from Bárúh to Saimúr he puts at two days journey, and that between Bárúh and Nahrwára (Anhilwára) at eight days through a flat country travelled over in wheeled carriages drawn by oxen, which he adds furnished the only mode for the conveyance also of merchandise. He locates the towns of Dulaka and Hanawal
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. or Janáwal (Chunwál or Jháláwár) with Asáwal (Ahmedábád) between Bárúh and Nahrwára. He represents all three of these towns to be centres of a considerable trade, and among their products mentions the bamboo and the cocoanut. From Bárúh to Sandábúr (that is, Goa), a commercial town with fine houses and rich bazárs situated on a great gulf where ships cast anchor, the distance along the coast given by Al Idrísi is four days. Al Kazwíni[51] writing about the middle of the thirteenth century a.d. 1263–1275, but mainly from information of the tenth century notes Saimúr (Cheul) “a city of Hind near the confines of Sindh” with its handsome people of Turkish extraction worshippers of fire having their own fire-temples. Al Kazwíni (a.d. 1230) dwells at length on the wonders of Somnáth and its temple. He calls it a celebrated city of India situated on the shore of the sea and washed by its waves. Among its wonders is Somnáth, an idol hung in space resting on nothing. In Somnáth he says Hindus assemble by the ten thousand at lunar eclipses, believing that the souls of men meet there after separation from the body and that at the will of the idol they are re-born into other animals. The two centuries since its destruction by the idol-breaker of Ghaznah had restored Somnáth to its ancient prosperity. He concludes his account of Somnáth by telling how Mahmúd ascertained that the chief idol was of iron and its canopy a loadstone and how by removing one of the walls the idol fell to the ground.

Rivers.Regarding the rivers and streams of Gujarát the Arab writers are almost completely silent. The first reference to rivers is in Al Masúdi (a.d. 944) who in an oddly puzzled passage says:[52] “On the Lárwi Sea (Cambay and Cheul) great rivers run from the south whilst all the rivers of the world except the Nile of the Egypt, the Mehrán (Indus) of Sindh, and a few others flow from the north.” Al Bírúni a.d. 970–1030) states that between the drainage areas of the Sarsut and the Ganges is the valley of the river Narmaza[53] which comes from the eastern mountains and flows south-west till it falls into the sea near Bahrúch about 180 miles (60 yojanas) east of Somnáth. Another river the Sarsut (Sarasvatí) he rightly describes as falling into the sea an arrowshot to the east of Somnáth.[54] He further mentions the Tábi (Tápti) from the Vindu or Vindhya hills and the Támbra Barani or copper-coloured, apparently also the Tápti, as coming from Málwa. In addition he refers to the Máhindri or Máhi and the Sarusa apparently
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. Sarasvatí perhaps meant for the Sábarmati. Al Idrísi (a.d. 1100) is the only other Arab writer who names any of the Gujarát rivers. As usual he is confused, describing Dulka (Dholka) as standing on the bank of a river flowing into the sea which forms an estuary or gulf on the east of which stands the town of Bárúh (Broach).[55]

The Arab writers record the following details of twenty-two leading towns:

Towns.
Anahalváda.Anahalváda (Ámhal, Fámhal, Kámhal, Kámuhul, Mámhul, Nahlwára, Nahrwála). Al Istakhri (H. 340; a.d. 951) mentions Ámhal Fámhal and Kámhal, Ibni Haukal (a.d. 976) Fámhal Kámhal and Kámuhal, and Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) Mámhul. That these are perversions of one name and that this town stood on the border of ‘Hind’ or Gujarát (in contradistinction to Sindh) the position given to each by the Arab geographers[56] places beyond question. Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) alone calls the place by the name of Ámhal which he mentions[57] as one of the chief cities of ‘Hind.’ Later he gives the name of Fámhal to a place forming the northern border of “Hind”, as all beyond it as far as Makrán belongs to Sindh. Again a little later[58] he describes Kámhal as a town eight days from Mansúrah and four days from Kambáya, thus making Kámhal the first Gujarát town on the road from Mansúrah about seventy miles north of Haidarábád in Sindh to Gujarát. Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–976) in his Ashkál-ul-Bilád gives Fámhal in his text and Kámhal in his map[59] and again while referring[60] to the desert between Makrán and Fámhal as the home of the Meds, he styles it Kámhal. Once more he refers to Fámhal as a strong and great city, containing a Jámá or Assembly Mosque; a little later[61] he calls it Kámuhul and places it eight days from Mansúrah and four from Kambáya. He afterwards contradicts himself by making Mansúrah two days’ journey from ‘Kámuhul,’ but this is an obvious error.[62] Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1039) notices Anhilwára and does not recognize any other form.[63] Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) adopts no form but Mámhal referring to it as one of the towns of the second climate[64] on the confines of a desert between Sindh and “Hind” (India or Gujarát) the home of the sheep-grazing and horse and camel-breeding Meds,[65] as a place numbered by some among the cities of Hind (Gujarát) by others as one of the cities of Sindh situated at the extremity of the desert which stretches between Kambáya, Debal, and Bánia.[66] Again he describes Mámhal as a town of moderate importance on the route “from Sindh to India,” a place of little trade, producing small quantities of fruit but numerous flocks, nine days from Mansúrah through Bánia and five from Kambáya.[67] Al Idrísi (quoting from tenth century
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Towns.
Anahalváda. materials) also notices Nahrwára as eight days’ journey from Bárúh (Broach) across a flat country a place governed by a prince having the title of the Balhára, a prince with numerous troops and elephants, a place frequented by large numbers of Musalmáns who go there on business.[68] It is remarkable that though Vanarája (a.d. 720–780?) founded Anhilwára as early as about a.d. 750 no Arab geographer refers to the capital under any of the many forms into which its name was twisted before Al Istakhri in a.d. 951. At first Anhilwára may have been a small place but before the tenth century it ought to have been large enough to attract the notice of Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) and Al Masúdi (a.d. 915). In the eleventh century the Musalmán historians of Mahmúd’s reign are profuse in their references to Anhilwára. According to Farishtah[69] after the capture of Anhilwára and the destruction of Somnáth (H. 414; a.d. 1025) Mahmúd was anxious to make Anhilwára his capital especially as it had mines of gold and as Singaldip (Ceylon) rich in rubies was one of its dependencies. Mahmúd was dissuaded from the project by his ministers.[70] But two mosques in the town of Pattan remain to show Mahmúd’s fondness for the city. The next Muhammadan reference to Anhilwára is by Núr-ud-dín Muhammad Úfi, who lived in the reign of Shams-ud-dín Altamsh (a.d. 1211).[71] In his Romance of History Úfi refers to Anhilwára as the capital of that Jai Ráj, who on receiving the complaint of a poor Musalmán preacher of Cambay, whose mosque the Hindus instigated the fire-worshippers of the place to destroy, left the capital alone on a fleet dromedary and returning after personal enquiry at Cambay summoned the complainant and ordered the chief men of the infidels to be punished and the Musalmán mosque to be rebuilt at their expense.[72]

The Jámi-ûl-Hikáyát of Muhammad Úfi alludes[73] to the defeat of Sultán Shaháb-ud-dín or Muhammad bin Sám, usually styled Muhammad Ghori, at the hands of Múlarája II. of Aṇahilaváḍa in a.d. 1178. And the Tájul Maásir[74] describes how in a.d. 1297 the Musalmáns under Kutb-ud-dín Aibak retrieved the honour of their arms by the defeat of Karan and his flight from Anhilwára. This account refers to Gujarát as “a country full of rivers and a separate region of the world.” It also notices that Sultán Násir-ud-dín Kabáchah (a.d. 1246–1266) deputed his general Kháskhán from Debal to attack Nahrwála and that Kháskhán brought back many captives and much spoil. After the conquest of Gujarát, in a.d. 1300 Sultán Alá-ud-dín Khilji despatched Ulughkhán (that is the Great Khán commonly styled Alfkhán) to destroy the idol-temple of Somnáth. This was done and the largest idol was sent to Alá-ud-dín.[75]

Chief Towns.
Asáwal.Asáwal. Abú Rihán Al Bírúni is the first (a.d. 970–1039) of Arab geographers to mention Asáwal the site of Ahmedábád which he correctly
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Chief Towns.
Asáwal. places two days journey from Cambay.[76] The next notice is along with Khábirún (probably Kávi on the left mouth of the Máhi) and near Hanáwal or Janáwal, apparently Chunvál or Viramgám, by Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) as a town, populous, commercial, rich, industrious, and productive of useful articles.[77] He likens Asáwal “both in size and condition” to Dhulaka both being places of good trade.[78] In the early fourteenth century (a.d. 1325) Ziá-ud-dín Barni refers to Asáwal as the place where Sultán Muhammad Tughlak (a.d. 1325–1351) had to pass a month in the height of the rains owing to the evil condition to which his horses were reduced in marching and countermarching in pursuit of the rebel Tághi. In the beginning of the fifteenth century (a.d. 1403–4) the Tárikh-i-Mubárak Sháhi notices Asáwal as the place where Tátárkhán the son of Zafarkhán had basely seized and confined his own father.[79] The Mirát-i-Sikandari also speaks[80] of Asáwal (a.d. 1403) but with the more courtly remark that it was the place where Zafarkhán the grandfather of Sultán Ahmad the founder of Ahmedábád, retired into private life after placing his son Tátárkhán on the throne.[81] The Mirát-i-Sikandari states that Ahmedábád.the city of Ahmedábád was built[82] in the immediate vicinity of Asáwal. The present village of Asarwa is, under a slightly changed name, probably what remains of the old town.

Barda.Barda. See Valabhi.

Capital and Port Towns.
Broach.Broach (Báhrúj, Bárúh, Bárús) is one of the places first attacked by the Muslim Arabs. In the fifteenth year of the Hijrah (a.d. 636) the Khalífah Umar appointed Usmán son of Abdul Ási to Bahrein. Usmán sent Hakam to Bahrein and Hakam despatched a float to Báráúz (or Broach).[83] Al Biláduri (a.d. 892–93) speaks of Junnaid the son of Abdur Rahmán Al Murri on his appointment to the frontier of Sindh in the Khiláfat of Hishám bin Abdal Malik (a.d. 724–743) sending an expedition by land against Bárús (Broach) … and overrunning Jurz[84] (Gujarát). Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) enumerates Bárúh among the countries of Sindh.[85] Broach is next noticed[86] by Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1039) as standing near the estuary of the river Narbada, as 120 miles (30 parasangs) from Debal, and as being with Rahanjur (Ránder) the capital of Lárdes. In describing the coasts of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean Al Masúdi (a.d. 915–944) speaks of Broach as بَروُص‎ Barús adding from which come the famous lance shafts called Bárúsi.[87] Al Idrísi (a.d. 1100) mentions[88] Bárúh as a large town well-built of brick and plaster, the inhabitants rich, engaged in trade and ready to enter upon speculations and distant expeditions, a port for vessels coming from China and Sindh, being two days’ journey from Saimúr (Cheul) and eight days from Nahrwára Anhilwára Pattan. In the fourteenth century (a.d. 1325) Broach is described as in the flames of the insurrection
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. caused by the foreign amírs or nobles of the hot-tempered and impolitic Muhammad bin Tughlak (a.d. 1325–1351) who visited it in person to quell their revolt. Ziá-ud-dín Barni the famous annalist of his reign and the author of the Tárikh-i-Fírúz Sháhi speaks of his deputation to Broach by Malik Kabír the future Sultán Fírúz Sháh with a letter to the Sultán.[89]

Port or Coast Towns.
Cambay.Cambay (Kambáya, Kambáyat, Kambáyah, Khambáit.) According to Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) Kambáya formed the north boundary of the land of the Balháras.[90] Al Istakhri describes it as four days from Kámhal (Anhilwára) sixteen miles (4 farsangs) from the sea and four days from Surabáya probably Surabára or the mouth of the Tápti a term which is still in use.[91] Al Masúdi (a.d. 915) in speaking[92] of the ebb and flow of the ocean mentions Kambáya. He notices that Kambáya was famous in Baghdád, as it still is famous in Gujarát, for its shoes. These shoes, he says, were made in Kambáya and the towns about it like Sindán (Sanján in Thána) and Sufáráh (Supára). He notices that when he visited Kambáya in H. 303 (a.d. 913–14) the city was ruled by a Bráhman of the name of Bánia, on behalf of the Balhára, lord of Mánkir (Málkhet). He states that this Bánia was kind to and held friendly discussions with stranger Musalmáns and people of other faiths. He gives a pleasing picture of Cambay, on a gulf far broader than the estuaries of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Tigris whose shores were covered with villages, estates, and gardens wooded and stocked with palm and date groves full of peacocks parrots and other Indian birds. Between Kambáya and the sea from which this gulf branches was two days’ journey. When, says Al Masúdi, the waters ebb from the gulf stretches of sands come to view. One day I saw a dog on one of these desert-like stretches of sand. The tide began to pour up the gulf and the dog hearing it ran for his life to the shore, but the rush was too rapid. The waters overtook and drowned him. Al Masúdi speaks of an emerald known as the Makkan emerald being carried from Kambáya by Aden to Makkah where it found a market.[93] Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–996) names Kambáya among the cities of Hind.[94] In his time there were Jámá or assembly mosques in Kambáya, where the precepts of Islám were openly taught. Among the productions of Kambáya he gives mangoes cocoanuts lemons and rice in great plenty and some honey but no date trees.[95] He makes Kambáya four miles (one farasang) from the sea and four (that is four days’ journey) from Subára apparently Surabára that is Surat. The distance to Kámuhul or Anhilwára by some mistake is shown as four farsangs instead of four days’ journey.[96] Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) places Kambáya within the large country of Gujarát (120 miles)[97] (30 farsakh) from Debal (Karáchi). He says the men of Kambáya receive tribute from the chiefs of the island of Kís or Kísh (probably Kich-Makrán).[98] Al Idrísi (a.d. 1100) places Kambáya with other Gujarát cities in the second
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Port or Coast Towns.
Cambay. climate.[99] He says it is a pretty and well known naval station, second among the towns of Gujarát.[100] It stands at the end of a bay three miles from the sea where vessels can enter and cast anchor. It is well supplied with water and has a fine fortress built by the Government to prevent the inroads of the pirates of Kísh (Makrán). From Kambáya to the island of Aubkin (Píram) is two and a half days’ sail and from Aubkin to Debal (or Karáchi) two days more. The country is fertile in wheat and rice and its mountains yield the bamboo. Its inhabitants are idolators. In his Tazjiyat-ul-Amsár, Abdullah Wassáf[101] in a.d. 1300 (H. 699) writes: “Gujarát which is commonly called Kambáyat contains 70,000 villages and towns all populous and the people abounding in wealth and luxuries. In the course of the four seasons seventy different species of beautiful flowers bloom. The purity of the air is so great that the picture of an animal drawn with the pen is lifelike. Many plants and herbs grow wild. Even in winter the ground is full of tulips (poppies). The air is healthy, the climate a perpetual spring. The moisture of the dew of itself suffices for the cold season crops. Then comes the summer harvest which is dependent on the rain. The vineyards bring forth blue grapes twice a year.”

The trade in horses from the Persian isles and coast and from Katíf, Láhsa, Bahrein, and Hurmuz was so great that during the reign of Atábak Abu Bakr[102] (a.d. 1154–1189) 10,000 horses worth 2,20,000 dínárs[103] (Rs. 1,10,00,000) were imported into Cambay and the ports of Malabár. These enormous sums were not paid out of the government treasuries but from the endowments of Hindu temples and from taxes on the courtezans attached to them. The same author mentions the conquest[104] of Gujarát and the plunder of Kambáyat by Malik Muîzz-ud-dín (called by Farishtah Alf and by Barni Ulugh meaning the great Khán.) The Táríkh-i-Fírúz Sháhi states that Nasrat Khán and not Ulugh Khán took and plundered Cambay and notices that in Cambay Nasrat Khán purchased Káfúr Hazár Dínári (the thousand Dínár Káfur), the future favourite minister and famous general of Alá-ud-dín. About fifty years later the hot-headed Muhammad bin Tughlak (a.d. 1325–1351) was in Cambay quelling an insurrection and collecting the arrears of Cambay revenue.[105]

Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Port or Coast Towns.
Cheul. Cheul.Cheul (Saimúr). Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) is the first Arab geographer to mention Saimúr.[106] He says: On the coast as in Saimúr Subára and Tána the Láriyyah language is spoken. In describing Saimúr Al Masúdi states[107] that at the time of his visit (H. 304; a.d. 914) the ruler on behalf of the Balhára was Jhánjha (this is the fifth Siláhára a.d. 916). Nearly ten thousand Musalmáns were settled in Saimúr including some (called Bayásirah) born in the land of Arab parents and others from Síráf and Persian Gulf, Basrah, Baghdád, and other towns. A certain Músa bin Is-hák was appointed Raís or ruler[108] by the Balhára or Valabhi, that is the reigning Ráshṭrakúṭa Indra Nityaṃvarsha to adjudicate Muhammadan disputes according to Musalmán law and customs. He describes[109] at length the ceremony of self-destruction by a Besar[110] youth (a Hindu by religion) to gain a better state in his future life, his scalping himself and putting fire on his head, his cutting out a piece of his heart and sending it to a friend as a souvenir.

Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) mentions Saimúr as one of the cities of Hind, makes it the southern end of the Balhára kingdom with Kambáya as the northern,[111] and places it at a distance of five days from Sindán (the Thána Sanján) and fifteen days from Sarandíb or Ceylon.[112] Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968) notices Saimúr as one of the cities of Hind known to him and mentions the sea of Fárs (or the Indian Ocean) as stretching from Saimúr on the east to Tíz or Makrán.[113] He states[114] that the country between Saimúr and Támhal (Anhilawára) belongs to Hind. He makes[115] the distance between Subára (probably Surabára or Swát), Sindán, and Saimúr five days each and between Saimúr and Sarandib (Ceylon) fifteen days. Al Bírúni (a.d. 1020) says:[116] “Then you enter the land of Lárán in which is Saimúr also called Jaimúr or Chaimúr.” Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) mentions Saimúr as one of the towns of the second climate.[117] He describes it as large and well-built, five days from Sindán and among its products notes cocoanut trees in abundance, henna (Lawsonia inermis), and on its mountains many aromatic plants.[118] His remark that Saimúr formed a part of the vast, fertile, well-peopled and commercial kingdom of the Balháras must be taken from the work of Al-Jauhari (a.d. 950).

Al Kazwíni (a.d. 1236) quoting Misâar bin Muhalhil (a.d. 942) describes Saimúr as one of the cities of Hind near the confines of Sind,[119] whose people born of Turkish and Indian parents are very beautiful. It was a flourishing trade centre with a mixed population of Jews, Fireworshippers,
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Port or Coast Towns.
Cheul. Christians, and Musalmáns.[120] The merchandise of the Turks (probably of the Indo-Afghán frontier) was conveyed thither and the best of aloes were exported and called Saimúri after its name. The temple of Saimúr was on an eminence with idols of turquoise and baidjadak or ruby. In the city were many mosques churches synagogues and fire-temples.

Chief Towns.
Dholka.Dholka (Dúlaka). Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) places Dúlaka and another town he calls Hanáwal that is Chunwal or Junawal perhaps Jháláwár between Bárúh (Broach) and Nahrwára. He describes Dúlaka as on the banks of a river (the Sábarmati) which flows into the sea, which forms an estuary or gulf on the west (east) of which stands the town of Bárúh. Both these towns, he adds, stand at the foot of a chain of mountains which lie to the north and which are called Undaran apparently Vindhya. The kana (bamboo) grows here as well as a few cocoanut trees.[121]

Goa.Goa. See Sindábur.

Gondal.Gondal (Kondal). Ziá-ud-dín Barni in his Tárikh-i-Fíruz Sháhi states[122] that Sultán Muhammad Tughlak spent (a.d. 1349) his third rainy season in Gujarát in Kondal (Gondal). Here the Sultán assembled his forces before starting on his fatal march to Sindh.

Capitals.
Kachh.Kachh. Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) is the only Arab writer who refers to Kachh. He calls Kachh[123] with Somnáth the head-quarters of the country of the Bawárij or Medh pirates. Speaking of the Indus he notices[124] that one of its branches which reaches the borders of Kachh is known as Sind Ságar. In a third passage he refers[125] to Kachh as the land of the mukl or balsamodendron and of bádrúd or bezoar. It was twenty-four miles (6 farsangs) from Debal (Karáchi). According to the Táríkh-i-Maâsúmi[126] when (a.d. 1069) the sovereignty of Sindh passed from the descendants of Mahmúd of Ghazni to the Sumras, Singhar, the grandson of Sumra (a.d. 1069)[127] extended his sway from Kachh to Nasarpúr[128] near Sindh Haidarábád and Khafíf the son of Singhar consolidated his power and made Kachh a Sumra dependency.[129] Dúda the grandson of Khafíf quelled a threatened Sumra rising by proceeding to Kachh and chastising the Sammas.[130] On the fall of the Sumras the Chauras became masters of Kachh from whose hands the country passed to those of the Sammas. Ground down under the iron sway of the Sumras a number of Sammas fled from Sindh and entered Kachh where they were kindly received by the Chauras who gave them land to cultivate. After acquainting themselves with the country and the resources of its rulers the Samma immigrants who seem to have increased in numbers and strengthened themselves by union, obtained possession by stratagem but not without heroism of the chief fortress of Kachh.[131] This fort now in ruins
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Capitals.
Kachh. was the fort of Gúntrí.[132] The Tárikh-i-Táhiri states that up to the time the history was written (a.d. 1621)[133] the country was in the possession of the Sammas, both the Ráis Bhára and Jám Sihta of great and little Kachh in his time being of Samma descent.

Kaira.Kaira (Karra). One mention of Karra apparently Kaira or Kheḍá occurs in Ziá-ud-dín Barni’s[134] account of Muhammad Tughlak’s (a.d. 1325) pursuit of his rebellious Gujarát noble Tághi. He speaks of Muhammad’s detention for a month at Asáwal during the rains and his overtaking and dispersing Tághi’s forces at Karra. From Karra the rebels fled in disorder to Nahrwára (Anhilwára). Several of Tághi’s supporters sought and were refused shelter by the Rána of Mándal that is Pátri near Viramgám.

Chief Towns.
Kábirún.Kábirún. Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) mentions Kábirún and Asáwal as towns of the same ‘section’ both of them populous, commercial, rich, and producing useful articles. He adds that at the time he wrote the Musalmáns had made their way into the greater portion of these countries and conquered them. Kábirún like the Akabarou of the Periplus (a.d. 240) is perhaps a town on the Káveri river in south Gujarát.

Kambay.Kambay. See Cambay.

Kanauj.Kanauj. Al Masúdi[135] (a.d. 956) is the first Arab traveller who gives an account of Kanauj. He says:[136] The kingdom of the Baûúra king of Kanauj extends about a hundred and twenty square parasangs of Sindh, each parasang being equal to eight miles of this country. This king has four armies according to the four quarters of the world. Each of them numbers 700,000 or 900,000. The army of the north wars against the prince of Multán and with his Musalmán subjects on the frontier. The army of the south fights against the Balhára king of Mánkír. The other two armies march to meet enemies in every direction. Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–976) says[137] that from the sea of Fárs to the country of Kanauj is three months journey. Rashíd-ud-dín from Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1039) places[138] Kanauj south of the Himálayas and states[139] that the Jamna falls into the Ganga below Kanauj which is situated on the west of the river (Ganga). The chief portion of Hind included in the “second climate” is called the central land or Madhya Desh. He adds that the Persians call it Kanauj. It was the capital of the great, haughty, and proud despots of India. He praises the former magnificence of Kanauj, which he says being now deserted by its ruler has fallen into neglect and ruin, and the city of Bári, three days’ journey from Kanauj on the eastern
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Chief Towns.
Kanauj. side of the Ganges being now the capital. Kanauj was celebrated for its descendants of the Pándavas as Máhura (Mathra) is on account of Bás Dev (Kṛishṇa). Al Idrísi, end of the eleventh century, speaks[140] of Kanauj in connection with a river port town of the name of Samandár “a large town, commercial and rich, where there are large profits to be made and which is dependent” on the rule of the Kanauj king. Samandár, he says, stands on a river coming from Kashmír. To the north of Samandár at seven days is, he says, the city of Inner Kashmír under the rule of Kanauj. The Chách Námah (an Arabic history of great antiquity written before a.d. 753, translated into Persian in the time of Sultán Násir-ud-dín Kabáchah) (a.d. 1216) says[141] that when Chách a.d. 631–670) advanced against Akham Lohána of Brahmanábád that the Lohána wrote to ask the help of “the king of Hindustán,” that is Kanauj, at that time Satbán son of Rásal, but that Akham died before his answer came.

Kol.Kol. Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) has Kol seventy-two miles (18 farsakhs) from Sanján in Kachh.[142] And the Táj-ul-Mâásir[143] relates how in a.d. 1194 Kutb-ud-dín advanced to Kol and took the fort.

Málkhet.Málkhet (Mánkír). Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) is the first Arab writer to mention Mánkír that is Mányákheta now Málkhet about sixty miles south-east of Sholápúr. In relating the extinction of the great Brahma-born dynasty of India Al Masúdi states[144] that at the time the city of Mánkír, the great centre of India, submitted to the kings called the Balháras who in his time were still ruling at Mánkír.[145]

Al Masúdi correctly describes the position of Málkhet as eighty Sindh or eight-mile farsakhs that is six hundred and forty miles from the sea in a mountainous country. Again he notices that the language spoken in Mánkír was Kiriya,[146] called from Karah or Kanara the district where it was spoken. The current coin was the Tártariyeh dirham (each weighing a dirham and a half)[147] on which was impressed the date of the ruler’s reign. He describes the country of the Balháras as stretching from the Kamkar (or Konkan) in the south or south-west north to the frontiers of the king of Juzr (Gujarát), “a monarch rich in men horses and camels.” Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) describes Mánkír as the dwelling of the wide-ruling Balhára. Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–976) repeats almost to the letter the information given by Al Istakhri. The destruction of Málkhet (Mánya Kheta) by the western Chálukya king Tailappa in a.d. 972 explains why none of the writers after Ibni Haukal mentions Mánkír.

Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Chief Towns.
Mándal. Mándal.Mándal. Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) enumerates Mándal (in Viramgám) with Rúmla,[148] Kuli, and Bárúh as countries of Sindh. During the Khiláfat of Hishám the son of Abdul Malik (a.d. 724–743) Junnaid son of Abdur Rahman-al-Murri was appointed to the frontier of Sindh. According to Al Biláduri (a.d. 892) Junnaid sent his officers to Mándal,[149] Dahnaj perhaps Kamlej, and Báhrús (Broach).

Nárána.Nárána. In his Indica Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) notices Nárána near Jaipur as the ancient capital of Gujarát. He says that its correct name is Bazánah but that “it is known to our people (the Arabs) as Náráin.” He places it eighty miles (20 farsakhs) south-west of Kanauj, and adds that when it was destroyed the inhabitants removed to and founded another city.[150] Abú Rihán makes Nárána the starting point of three itineraries to the south the south-west and the west. Al Bírúni’s details suffice to place this centre in the neighbourhood of the modern Jaipúr and to identify it with Náráyan the capital of Bairat of Matsya which according to Farishtah[151] Mahmúd of Ghazni took in a.d. 1022 (H. 412).

Ránder.Ránder (Ráhanjir or Rahanjúr). Al Bírúni (a.d. 1031) gives[152] Ráhanjúr and Báhrúj (Broach) as the capitals of Lar Desh or south Gujarát. Elliot (Note 3. I. 61) writes the word Damanhúr or Dahanhúr but the reading given by Sachau in his Arabic text of Al Bírúni (page 100 chapter 18) is plainly Rahanjúr (رہنجور‎) and the place intended is without doubt Ránder on the right bank of the Tápti opposite Surat. In his list of Indian towns Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) seems to refer[153] to it under the forms Jandúr and Sandúr.

Sanján.Sanján (Sindán). The two Sanjáns, one in Kachh the other in Thána, complicate the references to Sindán. Sindán in Kachh was one of the earliest gains of Islám in India. Al Biláduri[154] (a.d. 892) speaks of Fazl, the son of Máhán, in the reign of the greatest of the Abbási Khalífáhs Al-Mámún (a.d. 813–833), taking Sindán and sending Al Mámún the rare present of “an elephant and the longest and largest sáj or turban or teak spar ever seen.” Fazl built an assembly mosque that was spared by the Hindus on their recapture of the town. Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) includes this Kachh Sindán with Broach and other places in Gujarát among the cities of Sindh. In his itinerary starting from Bakkar, he places Sindán seventy-two miles[155] (18 farsakhs) from Kol. Al Masúdi (a.d. 915–944) states that Indian emeralds from (the Kachh) Sindán and the neighbourhood of Kambáyat (Cambay) approached those of the first water in the intensity of their green and in brilliance. As they found a market in Makkah they were called Makkan emeralds.[156] Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) under cities of Hind places the Konkan Sindán five days from Surabáya (Surabára or Surat) and as many from Saimúr[157]
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350. (Chewal). Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968) mentions (the Kachh) Sindán among the cities of Hind, which have a large Musalmán population and a Jámá Masjid[158] or assembly mosque. Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031)[159] in his itinerary from Debal in Sindh places the Kokan 200 miles (50 farsakhs) from that port and between Broach and Supára. At the end of the eleventh century probably the Kachh Sindán was a large commercial town rich both in exports and imports with an intelligent and warlike, industrious, and rich population. Al Idrísi gives the situation of the Konkan Sindán as a mile and a half from the sea and five days from Saimúr (Cheval).[160] Apparently Abul Fida[161] (a.d. 1324) confused Sindán with Sindábúr or Goa which Ibni Batúta (a.d. 1340) rightly describes as an island.[162]

Port or Coast Towns.
Sindábúr or Sindápúr.Sindábúr or Sindápúr. Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) places Sindápúr he writes it Sindábúra or Goa in the country of the Bughara (Balhára) in India.[163] Al Bírúni (a.d. 1021) places Sindápúr or Sindábúr that is Goa as the first of coast towns in Malabár the next being Fáknúr.[164] Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) describes Sindábúr as a commercial town with fine buildings and rich bazaars in a great gulf where ships cast anchor, four days along the coast[165] from Thána.

Somnáth.Somnáth. Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) is the first of the Arab writers to notice Somnáth. He calls Somnáth and Kachh the capital of the Bawárij pirates who commit their depredations in boats called baira.[166] He places Somnáth (14 farsakhs) fifty-six miles from Debal or Karáchi 200 miles (50 farsakhs) from Anhilwára and 180 miles (60 yojánas) from Broach. He notes that the river Sarsút falls into the sea an arrow-shot from the town. He speaks of Somnáth as an important place of Hindu worship and as a centre of pilgrimage from all parts of India. He tells of votaries and pilgrims performing the last stage of their journey crawling on their sides or on their ankles, never touching the sacred ground with the soles of their feet, even progressing on their heads.[167] Al Bírúni gives[168] the legendary origin of the Somnáth idol: how the moon loved the daughters of Prajápati; how his surpassing love for one of them the fair Rohini kindled the jealousy of her slighted sisters; how their angry sire punished the partiality of the moon by pronouncing a curse which caused the pallor of leprosy to overspread his face; how the penitent moon sued for forgiveness to the saint and how the saint unable to recall his curse showed him the way of salvation by the worship of the Liṅgam; how he set up and called the Moon-Lord a stone which[169] for ages had lain on the sea shore less than three miles to the west of the mouth of the Sarasvatí, and to the east of the site of the golden castle of Bárwi (Verával) the residence of Básúdeo and near the scene of his death and of the destruction of his people the Yádavas. The waxing and the waning of the moon caused the flood that hid the Liṅgam and the ebb that showed it and proved that the Moon was its servant who bathed it regularly. Al Bírúni notices[170] that in his time the castellated walls and other fortifications round the temple were not more than a hundred
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Port or Coast Towns.
Somnáth. years old. Al Bírúni represents the upper part of the Liṅgam as hung with massive and bejewelled gold chains. These chains together with the upper half of the idol were, he observes, carried away by the Emir[171] Mahmúd to Ghazna, where a part of the idol was used to form one of the steps of the Assembly Mosque and the other part was left to lie with Chakra Swám, the Thánesar idol, in the maidán or hippodrome of Mahmúd’s capital. Somnáth, says Al Bírúni,[172] was the greatest of the Liṅgams worshipped in India where in the countries to the south-west of Sindh the worship of these emblems abounds. A jar of Ganges water and a basket of Kashmir flowers were brought daily to Somnáth. Its worshippers believed the stone to possess the power of curing all diseases, and the mariners and the wanderers over the deep between Sofálá and China addressed their prayers to it as their patron deity.[173] Ibni Asír[174] (a.d. 1121) gives a detailed account of the temple of Somnáth and its ancient grandeur. He says Somnáth was the greatest of all the idols of Hind. Pilgrims by the hundred thousand met at the temple especially at the times of eclipses and believed that the ebb and flow of the tide was the homage paid by the sea to the god. Everything of the most precious was brought to Somnáth and the temple was endowed with more than 10,000 villages. Jewels of incalculable value were stored in the temple and to wash the idol water from the sacred stream of the Ganga was brought every day over a distance of two hundred farsangs (1200 miles). A thousand Bráhmans were on duty every day in the temple, three hundred and fifty singers and dancers performed before the image, and three hundred barbers shaved the pilgrims who intended to pay their devotions at the shrine. Every one of these servants had a settled allowance. The temple of Somnáth was built upon fifty pillars of teakwood covered with lead. The idol, which did not appear to be sculptured,[175] stood three cubits out of the ground and had a girth of three cubits. The idol was by itself in a dark chamber lighted by most exquisitely jewelled chandeliers. Near the idol was a chain of gold to which bells were hung weighing 200 mans. The chain was shaken at certain intervals during the night that the bells might rouse fresh parties of worshipping Bráhmans. The treasury containing many gold and silver idols, with doors hung with curtains set with valuable jewels, was near the chamber of the idol. The worth of what was found in the temple exceeded two millions of dínárs (Rs. 1,00,00,000). According to Ibni Asír Mahmúd reached Somnáth on a Thursday in the middle of Zilkaáda H. 414 (a.d. December 1023). On the approach of Mahmúd Bhím the ruler of Anhilváḍ fled abandoning his capital and took refuge in a fort to prepare for war. From Anhilváḍ Mahmúd started for Somnáth taking several forts with images which, Ibni Asír says, were the heralds
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Port or Coast Towns.
Somnáth. or chamberlains of Somnáth. Resuming his march he crossed a desert with little water. Here he was encountered by an army of 20,000 fighting men under chiefs who had determined not to submit to the invader. These forces were defeated and put to flight by a detachment sent against them by Mahmúd. Mahmúd himself marched to Dabalwárah a place said by Ibni Asír to be two days journey from Somnáth. When he reached Somnáth Mahmúd beheld a strong fortress whose base was washed by the waves of the sea. The assault began on the next day Friday. During nearly two days of hard fighting the invaders seemed doomed to defeat. On the third the Musalmáns drove the Hindus from the town to the temple. A terrible carnage took place at the temple-gate. Those of the defenders that survived took themselves to the sea in boats but were overtaken and some slain and the rest drowned.[176]

Supára.Supára (Subárá, Sufára, or Surbáráh.)—The references to Subárá are doubtful as some seem to belong to Surabára the Tápti mouth and others to Sopára six miles north of Bassein. The first Arab reference to Subára belongs to Sopára. Al Masúdi’s (a.d. 915)[177] reference is that in Saimúr (Cheval), Subára (Sopára), and Tána (Thána) the people speak the Láriyáh language, so called from the sea which washes the coast. On this coast Al Istakhri (a.d. 951)[178] refers to Subára that is apparently to Surabára or Surat a city of Hind, four days from Kambáyah (Cambay).[179]

Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–976) mentions[180] Surbárah apparently the Tápti mouth or Surat as one of the cities of Hind four farsakhs, correctly days, from Kambáyah and two miles (half farsakh) from the sea. From Surbára to Sindán, perhaps the Kachh Sanján, he makes ten days. Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) makes Subára perhaps the Thána Sopára six days’ journey from Debal[181] (perhaps Diu). Al Idrísi (a.d. 1100) mentions Subára apparently Sopára as a town in the second climate, a mile and a half from the sea and five days (an excessive allowance) from Sindán. It was a populous busy town, one of the entrepôts of India and a pearl fishery. Near Subára he places Bára, a small island with a growth of cactus and cocoanut trees.[182]

Surábára.Surábára. See Supára.

Capitals.
Thána.Thána (Tána).—That Thána was known to the Arabs in pre-Islám times is shown by one of the first Musalmán expeditions to the coast of India being directed against it. As early as the reign of the second Khalifah Umar Ibnal Khattáb (a.d. 634–643; H. 13–23) mention is made[183] of Usmán, Umar’s governor of Umán (the Persian Gulf) and Bahrein,
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Capitals.
Thána. sending a successful expedition against Thána. Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) refers to Thána on the shore of the Lárwi sea or Indian Ocean, as one of the coast towns in which the Lárwi language is spoken.[184] Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) gives[185] the distance from Mahrat Desh (the Marátha country) to the Konkan “with its capital Tána on the sea-shore” as 100 miles (25 farsakhs) and locates the Lár Desh (south Gujarát) capitals of Báhrûj and Rahanjur (Broach and Ránder) to the east of Thána. He places Thána with Somnáth Konkan and Kambáya in Gujarát and notices that from Thána the Lár country begins. Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) describes[186] Thána as a pretty town upon a great gulf where vessels anchor and from where they set sail. He gives the distance from Sindábur (or Goa) to Thána as four days’ sail. From the neighbourhood of Thána he says the kana or bamboo and the tabáshír or bamboo pith are transported to the east and west.[187]

Vála or Valabhi.Baráda (Porbandar).—Of the Arab attacks on the great sea-port Vala or Valabhi, twenty miles west of Bhávnagar, during the eighth and ninth centuries details are given Above pages 94–96. The manner of writing the name of the city attacked leaves it doubtful whether Balaba that is Valabhi or Baráda near Porbandar is meant. But the importance of the town destroyed and the agreement in dates with other accounts leaves little doubt that the reference is to Valabhi.[188]

In the fourth year of his reign about a.d. 758 the Khalífah Jaâfar-al-Mansúr[189] (a.d. 754–775) the second ruler of the house of Abbás appointed Hishám governor of Sindh. Hishám despatched a fleet to the coast of Barádah, which may generally be read Balabha, under the command of Amru bin Jamál Taghlabi. Tabari (a.d. 838–932) and Ibni Asír (a.d. 1160–1232)[190] state that another expedition was sent to this coast in a.h. 160 (a.d. 776) in which though the Arabs succeeded in taking the town, disease thinned the ranks of the party stationed to garrison the port, a thousand of them died, and the remaining troops while returning to their country were shipwrecked on the coast of Persia. This he adds deterred
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Capitals.
Vála or Valabhi. Al Mahdi[191] (a.d. 775–785) the succeeding Khalífah from extending the eastern limits of his empire. Besides against Balaba the Sindhi Arabs sent a fleet against Kandhár apparently, though somewhat doubtfully,[192] the town of that name to the north of Broach where they destroyed a temple or budd and built a mosque. Al Bírúni[193] (a.d. 1030) writing of the Valabhi era describes the city of Balabah بلبہ‎ as nearly thirty jauzhans (yojanas) that is ninety miles to the south of Anhilvára. In another passage[194] he describes how the Bánia Ránka sued for and obtained the aid of an Arab fleet from the Arab lord of Mansúrah (built a.d. 750) for the destruction of Balaba. A land grant by a Valabhi chief remains as late as a.d. 766. For this reason and as the invaders of that expedition fled panic-struck by sickness Valabhi seems to have continued as a place of consequence if the expedition of a.d. 830 against Bala king of the east refers to the final attack on Valabhi an identification which is supported by a Jain authority which places the final overthrow of Valabhi at 888 Samvat that is a.d. 830.[195]

Kings.Of the rulers of Gujarát between a.d. 850 and a.d. 1250 the only dynasty which impressed the Arabs was the Balháras of Málkhet or Mányakheta (a.d. 630–972) sixty miles south-east of Sholápúr. From about a.d. 736 to about a.d. 978, at first through a more or less independent local branch and afterwards (a.d. 914) direct the Ráshṭrakúṭas continued overlords of most of Gujarát. The Arabs knew the Ráshṭrakúṭas by their title Vallabha or Beloved in the case of Govind III. (a.d. 803–814), Pṛithivívallabha, Beloved by the Earth, and of his successor the long beloved Amoghavarsha Vallabhaskanda, the Beloved of Śiva. Al Masúdi (a.d. 915–944) said: Bálárái is a name which he who follows takes. So entirely did the Arabs believe in the overlordship of the Ráshṭrakúṭas in Gujarát that Al Idrísi (a.d. 1100, but probably quoting Al Jauhari a.d. 950) describes Nehrwalla as the capital of the Balarás. Until Dr. Bhandárkar discovered its origin in Vallabha, the ease with which meanings could be tortured out of the word and in Gujarát its apparent connection with the Valabhi kings (a.d. 509–770) made the word Balarái a cause of matchless confusion.[196]

The merchant Sulaimán (a.d. 851) ranks the Balhára, the lord of Mánkír, as the fourth of the great rulers of the world. Every prince in India even in his own land paid him homage. He was the owner of many elephants and of great wealth. He refrained from wine and paid his troops and servants regularly. Their favour to Arabs was famous. Abu Zaid (a.d. 913) says that though the Indian kings acknowledge the supremacy of no one, yet the Balháras or Ráshṭrakúṭas by virtue of the title Balhára are kings of kings. Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) describes the Balháras as the greatest of Indian kings being as the name imports the king of kings. Al Masúdi (a.d. 915) described Balhára as a dynastic name which he who followed took. Though he introduces two other potentates the king of Jurz and the Baûra or Parmár king of Kanauj fighting with each other and with the Balhára he makes the Balhára, the lord of the Mánkír or the great centre, the greatest king
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Kings. of India[197] to whom the kings of India bow in their prayers and whose emissaries they honour. He notices that the Balhára favours and honours Musalmáns and allows them to have mosques and assembly mosques. When Al Masúdi was in Cambay the town was ruled by Bánia, the deputy of the Balhára. Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) describes the land from Kambáyah to Saimúr (Cheul) as the land of the Balhára of Mánkír. In the Konkan were many Musalmáns over whom the Balhára appointed no one but a Musalmán to rule. Ibni Haukal (a.d. 970) describes the Balhára as holding sway over a land in which are several Indian kings.[198] Al Idrísi (a.d. 1100 but quoting Al Jauhari a.d. 950) agrees with Ibni Khurdádbah that Balhára is a title meaning King of Kings. He says the title is hereditary in this country, where when a king ascends the throne he takes the name of his predecessor and transmits it to his heirs.[199]

Condition.That the Arabs found the Ráshṭrakúṭas kind and liberal rulers there is ample evidence. In their territories property was secure,[200] theft or robbery was unknown, commerce was encouraged, foreigners were treated with consideration and respect. The Arabs especially were honoured not only with a marked and delicate regard, but magistrates from among themselves were appointed to adjudicate their disputes according to the Musalmán law.

The Gurjjaras.The ruler next in importance to the Balhára was the Jurz that is the Gurjjara king. It is remarkable, though natural, that the Arabs should preserve the true name of the rulers of Anhilváḍa which the three tribe or dynastic names Chápa or Chaura (a.d. 720–956), Solaṅki or Cáulukya (a.d. 961–1242), and Vághela (a.d. 1240–1290) should so long have concealed. Sulaimán (a.d. 851) notices that the Jurz king hated Musalmáns while the Balhára king loved Musalmáns. He may not have known what excellent reasons the Gurjjaras had for hating the Arab raiders from sea and from Sindh. Nor would it strike him that the main reason why the Balhára fostered the Moslem was the hope of Arab help in his struggles with the Gurjjaras.

Jurz.According to the merchant Sulaimán[201] (a.d. 851) the kingdom next after the Balhára’s was that of Jurz the Gurjjara king whose territories “consisted of a tongue of land.” The king of Jurz maintained a large force: his cavalry was the best in India. He was unfriendly to the Arabs. His territories were very rich and abounded in horses and camels. In his realms exchanges were carried on in silver and gold dust of which metals mines were said to be worked.

The king of Jurz was at war with the Balháras as well as with the neighbouring kingdom of Táfak or the Panjáb. The details given under Bhínmál page 468 show that Sulaimán’s tongue of land, by which he apparently meant either Káthiáváḍ or Gujarát was an imperfect idea of the extent of Gurjjara rule. At the beginning of the tenth century a.d. 916 Sulaimán’s editor Abu Zaid describes Kanauj as a large country
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Kings.
Jurz. forming the empire of Jurz,[202] a description which the Gurjjara Vatsarája’s success in Bengal about a century before shows not to be impossible. Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) ranks the king of Juzr as fourth in importance among Indian kings. According to him “the Tátariya dirhams were in use in the Juzr kingdom.” Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) speaks of the Konkan country of the Balhára as on one side exposed to the attacks of the king of Juzr a monarch rich in men horses and camels. He speaks of the Juzr kingdom bordering on Táfán apparently the Panjáb and Táfán as bounded by Rahma[203] apparently Burma and Sumátra. Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–976) notices that several kingdoms existed, including the domain of the Śiláháras of the north Konkan within the land of the Balhára between Kambáyah and Saimúr.[204] Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) uses not Juzr, but Gujarát.[205] Beyond that is to the south of Gujarát he places Konkan and Tána. In Al Bírúni’s time Náráyan near Jaipúr, the former capital of Gujarát, had been taken and the inhabitants removed to a town on the frontier.[206] Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century really from tenth century materials) ranks the king of Juzr as the fourth and the king of Sáfán or Táfán as the second in greatness to the Balhára.[207] In another passage in a list of titular sovereigns Al Idrísi enters the names of Sáfir (Táfán) Hazr (Jazr-Juzr) and Dumi (Rahmi).[208] By the side of Juzr was Táfak (doubtfully the Panjáb) a small state producing the whitest and most beautiful women in India; the king having few soldiers; living at peace with his neighbours and like the Balháras highly esteeming the Arabs.[209] Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) calls Tában the king next in eminence to the Balhára.[210] Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) calls Táfak the ruler of a mountainous country like Kashmír[211] with small forces living on friendly terms with neighbouring sovereigns and well disposed to the Moslims.[212] Al Idrísi (end of eleventh century but materials of the tenth century) notices Sáfán (Táfán) as the principality that ranks next to the Konkan that is to the Ráshṭrakúṭas.

Rahma or Ruhmi.Rahma or Ruhmi, according to the merchant Sulaimán (a.d. 851) borders the land of the Balháras, the Juzr, and Táfán. The king who was not much respected was at war with both the Juzr and the Balhára. He had the most numerous army in India and a following of 50,000 elephants when he took the field. Sulaimán notices a cotton fabric made in Rahma, so delicate that a dress of it could pass through a signet-ring. The medium of exchange was cowries Cypræa moneta shell money. The country produced gold silver and aloes and the whisk of the sámara or yák Bos poëphagus the bushy-tailed ox. Ibni Khurdádbah[213] (a.d. 912) places Rahmi as the sixth kingdom. He apparently identified it with Al Rahmi or north Sumátra as he notes that between it and the other kingdoms communication is kept up by ships. He notices that the ruler had five thousand elephants and that cotton cloth and aloes probably the well-known Kumári
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Kings.
Rahma or Ruhmi. or Cambodian aloes, were the staple produce. Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) after stating that former accounts of Rahma’s[214] elephants, troops and horses were probably exaggerated, adds that the kingdom of Rahma extends both along the sea and the continent and that it is bounded by an inland state called Káman (probably Kámarup that is Assam). He describes the inhabitants as fair and handsome and notices that both men and women had their ears pierced. This description of the people still more the extension of the country both along the sea and along the continent suggests that Masúdi’s Al Rahmi is a combination of Burma which by dropping the B he has mixed with Al Rahma. Lane identifies Rahmi[215] with Sumátra on the authority of an Account of India and China by two Muhammadan Travellers of the Ninth Century. This identification is supported by Al Masúdi’s[216] mention of Rámi as one of the islands of the Java group, the kingdom of the Indian Mihráj. The absence of reference to Bengal in these accounts agrees with the view that during the ninth century Bengal was under Tibet.

Products.In the middle of the ninth century mines of gold and silver are said to be worked in Gujarát.[217] Abu Zaid (a.d. 916) represents pearls as in great demand. The Tártáriyah, or according to Al Masúdi the Táhiriyah dínárs of Sindh, fluctuating[218] in price from one and a half to three and a fraction of the Baghdád dínárs, were the current coin in the Gujarát ports. Emeralds also were imported from Egypt mounted as seals.[219]

Ibni Khurdádbah[220] (a.d. 912) mentions teakwood and the bamboo as products of Sindán that is the Konkan Sanjan.[221] Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) notes that at the great fair of Multán the people of Sindh and Hind offered Kumar that is Cambodian aloe-wood of the purest quality worth twenty dínárs a man.[222] Among other articles of trade he mentions an inferior emerald exported from Cambay and Saimúr to Makkah,[223] the lance shafts of Broach,[224] the shoes of Cambay,[225] and the white and handsome maidens of Táfán[226] who were in great demand in Arab countries. Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–976) states that the country comprising Fámhal, Sindán, Saimúr, and Kambáyah produced mangoes cocoanuts lemons and rice in abundance. That honey could be had in great quantities, but no date palms were to be found.[227]

Al Bírúni (a.d. 1031) notices that its import of horses from Mekran and the islands of the Persian Gulf was a leading portion of Cambay trade.[228] According to Al Idrísi (a.d. 1100) the people of Mámhal[229] (Anhilwára) had many horses and camels.[230] One of the peculiarities of
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Products. the Nahrwála country was that all journeys were made and all merchandise was carried in bullock waggons. Kambáyah was rich in wheat and rice and its mountains yielded the Indian kaná or bamboo. At Subára[231] (Sopára) they fished for pearls and Bára a small island close to Subára produced the cocoanut and the costus. Sindán according to Al Idrísi produced the cocoa palm, the ratan, and the bamboo. Saimúr had many cocoa palms, much henna (Lawsonia inermis), and a number of aromatic plants.[232] The hills of Thána yielded the bamboo and tabáshír[233] or bamboo pith. From Saimúr according to Al Kazwíni (a.d. 1236, but from tenth century materials) came aloes. Rashíd-ud-dín (a.d. 1310) states that in Kambáyah, Somnáth, Kankan, and Tána the vines yield twice a year and such is the strength of the soil that cotton-plants grow like willow or plane trees and yield produce for ten years. He refers to the betel leaf, to which he and other Arab writers and physicians ascribe strange virtues as the produce of the whole country of Malabár. The exports from the Gujarát coasts are said to be sugar (the staple product of Málwa), bádrúd that is bezoar, and haldi that is turmeric.[234]

According to Ibni Haukal (a.d. 170) from Kambáya to Saimúr the villages lay close to one another and much land was under cultivation.[235] At the end[236] of the eleventh century trade was brisk merchandise from every country finding its way to the ports of Gujarát whose local products were in turn exported all over the east.[237] The Ráshṭrakúṭa dominion was vast, well-peopled, commercial, and fertile.[238] The people lived mostly on a vegetable diet, rice peas beans haricots and lentils being their daily food.[239] Al Idrísi speaks of certain Hindus eating animals whose deaths had been caused by falls or by being gored,[240] but Al Masúdi states that the higher classes who wore the “baldric like yellow thread” (the Janoi) abstained from flesh. According to Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968–970) the ordinary dress of the kings of Hind was trousers and a tunic.[241] He also notices that between Kambáyah and Saimúr the Muslims and infidels wear the same cool fine muslin dress and let their beards grow in the same fashion.[242] During the tenth century on high days the Balhára wore a crown of gold and a dress of rich stuff. The attendant women were richly clad, wearing rings of gold and silver upon their feet and hands and having their hair in curls.[243] At the close of the Hindu period (a.d. 1300) Rashíd-ud-dín describes Gujarát as a flourishing country with no less than 80,000 villages and hamlets the people happy the soil rich growing in the four seasons seventy varieties of flowers. Two harvests repaid the husbandman, the earlier crop refreshed by the dew of the cold season the late crop enriched by a certain rainfall.[244]

Review.In their intercourse with Western India nothing struck the Arabs more than the toleration shown to their religion both by chief and peoples.
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Review. This was specially marked in the Ráshṭrakúṭa towns where besides free use of mosques and Jámá mosques Musalmán magistrates or kázis were appointed to settle disputes among Musalmáns according to their own laws.[245] Toleration was not peculiar to the Balháras. Al Bírúni records[246] that in the ninth century (a.d. 581), when the Hindus recovered Sindán (Sanján in Kachh) they spared the assembly mosque where long after the Faithful congregated on Fridays praying for their Khalífah without hindrance. In the Balhára country so strongly did the people believe in the power of Islám or which is perhaps more likely so courteous were they that they said that our king enjoys a long life and long reign is solely due to the favour shown by him to the Musalmáns. So far as the merchant Sulaimán saw in the ninth century the chief religion in Gujarát was Buddhism. He notices that the principles of the religion of China were brought from India and that the Chinese ascribe to the Indians the introduction of Buddhas into their country. Of religious beliefs metempsychoses or re-birth and of religious practices widow-burning or satti and self-torture seem to have struck him most.[247] As a rule the dead were burned.[248] Sulaimán represents the people of Gujarát as steady abstemious and sober abstaining from wine as well as from vinegar, ‘not’ he adds ‘from religious motives but from their disdain of it.’ Among their sovereigns the desire of conquest was seldom the cause of war.[249] Abu Zaid (a.d. 916) describes the Bráhmans as Hindus devoted to religion and science. Among Bráhmans were poets who lived at kings’ courts, astronomers, philosophers, diviners, and drawers of omens from the flight of crows.[250] He adds: So sure are the people that after death they shall return to life upon the earth, that when a person grows old “he begs some one of his family to throw him into the fire or to drown him.”[251] In Abu Zaid’s time (a.d. 916) the Hindus did not seclude their women. Even the wives of the kings used to mix freely with men and attend courts and places of public resort unveiled.[252] According to Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) India has forty-two religious sects “part of whom believe in God and his Prophet (on whom be peace) and part who deny his mission.”[253] Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) describes the Hindus as divided into seven classes. Of these the first are Thákarias[254] or Thákurs men of high caste from whom kings are chosen and to whom men of the other classes render homage, the second are the Baráhmas[255] who abstain from wine and fermented liquors; the third are the Katariya or Kshatrias who drink not more than three cups of wine; the fourth are the Sudaria or Shudras husbandmen by profession; the fifth are the Baisura or Vaish artificers and domestics; the sixth Sandalias or Chandala menials; and the seventh the ‘Lahúd,’ whose women adorn themselves and whose men are fond of amusements and games of skill. Both among the people and the kings of Gujarát[256] wine
Appendix V.
Arab References, a.d. 851–1350.
Review. was “unlawful and lawful” that is it was not used though no religious rule forbade its use. According to Al Masúdi (a.d. 943) a general opinion prevailed that India was the earliest home of order and wisdom. The Indians chose as their king the great Bráhma who ruled them for 366 years. His descendants retain the name of Bráhman and are honoured as the most illustrious caste. They abstain from the flesh of animals.[257] Hindu kings cannot succeed before the age of forty nor do they appear in public except on certain occasions for the conduct of state affairs. Royalty and all the high offices of state[258] are limited to the descendants of one family. The Hindus strongly disapprove of the use of wine both in themselves and in others not from any religious objection but on account of its intoxicating and reason-clouding qualities.[259] Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1031) quoted by Rashíd-ud-dín (a.d. 1310) states that the people of Gujarát are idolators and notices the great penance-pilgrimages to Somnáth details of which have already been given.[260] Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) closely follows Ibni Khurdádbah’s (a.d. 912) division of the people of India. The chief exception is that he represents[261] the second class, the Bráhmans, as wearing the skins of tigers and going about staff in hand collecting crowds and from morn till eve proclaiming to their hearers the glory and power of God. He makes out that the Kastariás or Kshatriyas are able to drink three ratl (a ratl being one pound troy) of wine and are allowed to marry Bráhman women. The Sabdaliya or Chandal women, he says, are noted for beauty. Of the forty-two sects he enumerates worshippers of trees and adorers of serpents, which they keep in stables and feed as well as they can, deeming it to be a meritorious work. He says that the inhabitants of Kambáya are Buddhists (idolators)[262] and that the Balhára also worships the idol Buddha.[263] The Indians, says Al Idrísi[264] (end of the eleventh century) are naturally inclined to justice and in their actions never depart from it. Their reputation for good faith, honesty, and fidelity to their engagements brings strangers flocking to their country and aids its prosperity. In illustration of the peaceable disposition of the Hindus, he quotes the ancient practice of duhái or conjuring in the name of the king, a rite which is still in vogue in some native states. When a man has a rightful claim he draws a circle on the ground and asks his debtor to step into the circle in the name of the king. The debtor never fails to step in nor does he ever leave the circle without paying his debts. Al Idrísi describes the people of Nahrwára as having so high a respect for oxen that when an ox dies they bury it. “When enfeebled by age or if unable to work they provide their oxen with food without exacting any return.”[265]

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[1] Contributed by Khán Sáheb Fazlulláh Lutfulláh Farídi of Surat. [↑]

[2] This account which is in two parts is named Silsilát-ut-Tawáríkh, that is the Chain of History. The first part was written in a.d. 851–52 by Sulaimán and has the advantage of being the work of a traveller who himself knew the countries he describes. The second part was written by Abu Zeid-al-Hasan of Siráf on the Persian Gulf about sixty years after Sulaimán’s account. Though Abu Zeid never visited India, he made it his business to read and question travellers who had been in India. Abul Hasan-el-Masúdi (a.d. 915–943) who met him at Basrah is said to have imparted to and derived much information from Abu Zeid. Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 2. [↑]

[3] Ahmed bin Yahyâ, surnamed Abu Jaâfar and called Biláduri or Bilázuri from his addiction to the electuary of the Malacca bean (bilázur بلازر‎) or anacardium, lived about the middle of the ninth century of the Christian era at the court of Al-Mutawakkil the Abbási, as an instructor to one of the royal princes. He died a.h. 279 (a.d. 892–93). His work is styled the Futúh-ul-Buldán The Conquest of Countries. He did not visit Sindh, but was in personal communication with men who had travelled far and wide. [↑]

[4] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 115–116. [↑]

[5] The reason of Umar’s dislike for India is described by Al Masúdi (Murúj Arabic Text, Cairo Edition, III. 166–171), to have originated from the description of the country by a philosopher to whom Umar had referred on the first spread of Islám in his reign. The philosopher said: India is a distant and remote land peopled by rebellious infidels. Immediately after the battle of Kadesiah (a.d. 636) when sending out Utbah, his first governor to the newly-founded camp-town of Basrah Umar is reported to have said: I am sending thee to the land of Al-Hind (India) as governor. Remember it is a field of the fields of the enemy. The third Khalífah Usmán (a.d. 643–655) ordered his governor of Irák to depute a special officer to visit India and wait upon the Khalífah to report his opinion of that country. His report of India was not encouraging. He said: Its water is scarce, its fruits are poor, and its robbers bold. If the troops sent there are few they will be slain; if many they will starve. (Al-Biláduri in Elliot, I. 116.) [↑]

[6] Sir H. Elliot’s History of India, I. 116. [↑]

[7] Sir H. Elliot (Hist. of India) transliterates this as Básia. But neither Básea nor his other supposition (Note 4 Ditto) Budha seem to have any sense. The original is probably Bátiah, a form in which other Arab historians and geographers also allude to Baet, the residence of the notorious Bawárij who are referred to a little farther on as seafarers and pirates. Ditto, I. 123. [↑]

[8] This important expedition extended to Ujjain. Details Above page 109 and also under Bhínmál. Raids by sea from Sindh were repeated in a.d. 758, 760, 755, and perhaps a.d. 830. Reinaud’s Fragments, 212. See Above Bhagvánlál’s Early History page 96 note 3. [↑]

[9] Details Above pages 94–96. [↑]

[10] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 129. [↑]

[11] Sir Henry Elliot (History of India, I. 129) calls it Kállari though (Ditto note 3) he says the text has Máli. [↑]

[12] Sir H. Elliot’s History of India, I. 129. [↑]

[13] Ibni Khurdádbah a Musalmán of Magian descent as his name signifies, died H. 300 (a.d. 912). He held high office under the Abbási Khalífahs at Baghdád (Elliot’s History of India, I. 13). [↑]

[14] Abul Hasan Al Masudi, a native of Baghdád, who visited India about a.d. 915 and wrote his “Meadows of Gold” (Murúj-uz-zahab) about a.d. 950–51 and died a.d. 956 in Egypt. (Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 23–25.) [↑]

[15] Abu Is-hák Al Istakhri, a native (as his cognomen signifies) of Persepolis who flourished about the middle of the tenth century and wrote his Book of Climes (Kitábul Akálím) about a.h. 340 (a.d. 951). Elliot’s History of India, I. 26. [↑]

[16] See Appendix A. Volume I. Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India. [↑]

[17] Elliot’s History of India, 394, where Sir Henry Elliot calculates a parsang or farsang (Arabic farsakh) to be 3½ miles. Al Bírúni, however, counts four kroh or miles to a farsakh. Sachau’s Al Bírúni Arabic Text, chapter 18 page 97. [↑]

[18] Sir Henry Elliot (History of India, I. 403) locates Surabáya somewhere near Surat. The mouth of the Tápti is still known in Surat as the Bára. [↑]

[19] Ibni Haukal (Muhammad Abul Kásim) a native of Baghdád, left that city in H. 331 (a.d. 943), returned to it H. 358 (a.d. 968), and finished his work about H. 366 (a.d. 976). Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 31. [↑]

[20] Elliot, I. 34. [↑]

[21] Sir Henry Elliot (History of India, I. 363) correctly takes Fámhal to be a misreading for Anhal that is Anhilwára. Al Bírúni (a.d. 970–1039) uses the name Anhilwára without any Arab peculiarity of transliteration or pronunciation. Sachau’s Arabic Text, 100. Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century) styles Anhilwára “Nahrwára” (Elliot, I. 84) an equally well known name. [↑]

[22] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 34. [↑]

[23] M. Gildemeister’s Latin translation of Ibni Haukal’s Ashkál-ul-Bilád (Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 39). [↑]

[24] Abu Rihán Al Bírúni was a native of Balkh in Central Asia. He accompanied Mahmúd of Ghazni to India in his expeditions and acquired an accurate knowledge of Sanskrit. His acquaintance with this language and Greek and his love of enquiry and research together with his fairness and impartiality, make his Indica a most valuable contribution to our information on India in the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh centuries. He finished his work after the death of his patron in a.d. 1030–31. See Sachau’s Preface to the Arabic Text of the Indica, ix. [↑]

[25] Al Bírúni makes his farsakh of four miles. Sachau’s Arabic Text, 97. [↑]

[26] Sir Henry Elliot’s translation and transliteration of Rahanjúr (History of India, I. 61) are, be it said with all respect to the memory of that great scholar, inaccurate. He cannot make anything of the word (note 3) while in the Arabic Text of Sachau (page 100) the first letter is a plain ر‎ = r and not د‎ = d. From the context also the ancient town of Rándir seems to be meant. It is plainly written (رهنجور‎) Rahanjúr and is very likely the copyist’s mistake for the very similar form رهندور‎ or Ráhandúr. [↑]

[27] Sachau’s Arabic Text of Al Bírúni, 98 and Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 61. [↑]

[28] Elphinstone’s History of India, Book V. Chapter I. 263 Note 25 (John Murray’s 1849 Edition) on the authority of Captain MacMurdo and Captain Alexander Burnes inclines to the opinion that Debal was somewhere near the site of the modern Karáchi. [↑]

[29] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 65. Sachau’s Text of Al Bírúni, chapter 18 page 102. [↑]

[30] Al Biláduri uses the word Barija for a strong built war vessel. Sir Henry Elliot derives the word from the Arabic and gives an interesting note on the subject in his Appendix I. 539. The word is still used in Hindustáni as beda (بيڈا‎) to signify a boat or bark. [↑]

[31] Sachau’s Arabic Text, 102. [↑]

[32] According to Richardson (Arabic Dictionary voce مقل‎ myrrh) though rendered gum by all translators. According to the Makhzan the word mukl (Urdu gughal) is Balsamodendron and Bádrud the corruption of Báruz (Urdu biroza) is balsam or bezoar. [↑]

[33] Sachau’s Arabic Text page 99 chapter 18. [↑]

[34] After giving the distances in days or journeys the Text (page 102 Sachau’s Text of Al Bírúni) does not particularise the distances of the places that follow in journeys or farsakhs. [↑]

[35] Elliot’s History of India, I. 67. [↑]

[36] Abu Abdallah Muhammad Al Idrísi, a native of Ceuta in Morocco and descended from the royal family of the Idrísis of that country, settled at the court of Roger II. of Sicily, where and at whose desire he wrote his book The Nuzhat-ul-Mushták or The Seeker’s Delight. Elliot’s History of India, I: 74. Almost all Al Idrísi’s special information regarding Sindh and Western India is from Al-Jauhari governor of Khurásán (a.d. 892–999), whose knowledge of Sindh and the Indus valley is unusually complete and accurate. Compare Reinaud’s Abulfeda, lxiii. [↑]

[37] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 77. [↑]

[38] Bombay Gazetteer, II. 69. [↑]

[39] Elliot’s History of India, I. 76. [↑]

[40] Elliot’s History of India, I. 79. [↑]

[41] Elliot’s History of India, I. 79. [↑]

[42] Elliot’s History of India, I. 84. [↑]

[43] The details of Kulámmali given by Al Kazwíni (a.d. 1263–1275) seem to show it is Quilon on the Malabár Coast. When a ruler died his successor was always chosen from China. [↑]

[44] Elliot (I. 363–364) on the authority of Al Istakhri thinks that all the names Ámhal, Fámhal, Kámhal, and Mámhal are faulty readings of Anhal (Anhil)wára owing to irregularity in the position or absence of diacritical points. [↑]

[45] This is probably Ránder, a very natural Arab corruption. Instance Al Bírúni’s Ranjhur. See page 507 note 11 and page 520. [↑]

[46] Rumála is mentioned at pages 14, 87, 92 and 93 volume I. of Elliot. It is first mentioned (page 14) by Ibni Khurdádbah (a.d. 912) as one of the countries of Sindh. It is next mentioned by Al Idrísi (end of the eleventh century according to Elliot, I. 74) as one of the places of the eighth section describing the coast of India, but is mentioned along with Nahrwára, Kandhár, and Kalbata (?). At page 92 (Ditto) the same writer (Idrísi) says that Kalbata and Rumála are on the borders of the desert which separates Multán from Sijistán. Again at page 93 (Ditto) Idrísi gives the distance between Kalbata and Rumála as a distance of three days. [↑]

[47] Elliot’s History of India, I. 84. [↑]

[48] Sir H. Elliot’s History of India, I. 85. [↑]

[49] Elliot, I. 90–93. [↑]

[50] Elliot’s History of India, I. 89. [↑]

[51] Zakariah Ibni Muhammad Al Kazwíni, a native of Kazwín (Kasbin) in Persia, wrote his Ásár-ul-Bilád or “Signs or Monuments of Countries” about a.h. 661 (a.d. 1263) compiling it chiefly from the writings of Al Istakhri (a.d. 951) and Ibni Haukal (a.d. 976). He also frequently quotes Misâr bin Muhalhil, a traveller who (a.d. 942) visited India and China. Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 94. [↑]

[52] Barbier De Meynard’s Text of Al Masúdi’s Les Prairies D’Or, I. 382. [↑]

[53] Sir Henry Elliot misreads Tamraz for Al Bírúni’s Arabic form of Narmaza. He says: It comes from the city of Tamraz and the eastern hills; it has a south-easterly course till it falls into the sea near Báhruch about 60 yojanas to the east of Somnáth. The literal translation of the text of Al Bírúni (see Sachau’s Al Bírúni’s India, 130) is that given above: It is hard to believe that the accurate Al Bírúni while in one place (see Sachau’s Text, 99) giving the name of the Narbada faultlessly, should in another place fall into the error of tracing it from Tirmiz a city of Central Asia. A comparison of Elliot’s version with the text sets the difficulty at rest. Compare Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 49 and note 3 ditto and Sachau’s Arabic Text of Al Bírúni, 180 chapter 25. [↑]

[54] Compare Sachau’s Al Bírúni with Sir Henry Elliot, I. 49, who is silent as to the distance. [↑]

[55] See Ahmedábád Gazetteer, IV. 338; also Elliot’s History of India, I. 356–357. [↑]

[56] See Appendix Elliot’s History of India, I. 363. [↑]

[57] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 27. [↑]

[58] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 30. [↑]

[59] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 32–34. [↑]

[60] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 34–38. [↑]

[61] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 39. [↑]

[62] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 40. [↑]

[63] Al Bírúni in Elliot (History of India), I. 61. [↑]

[64] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 77. [↑]

[65] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 79. [↑]

[66] Bánia seems to be a copyist’s error for Bazána or Náráyana. The distances agree and the fact that to this day the neighbourhood of Jaipur is noted for its flocks of sheep bears additional testimony to the correctness of the supposition. [↑]

[67] Al Idrísi in Elliot’s History of India, I. 84. [↑]

[68] Al Idrísi in Elliot’s History of India, I. 9. The Balháras or Ráshṭrakúṭas lost their power in a.d. 974. The only explanation of Idrísi’s (a.d. 1100) Balháras at Anhilwára is that Idrísi is quoting from Al Bírúni a.d. 950. [↑]

[69] Farishtah Persian Text Lithographed Bombay Edition, I. 57. [↑]

[70] Farishtah Persian Text Lithographed Bombay Edition, IV. 48. The Rauzat-us-Safa states that it was at Somnáth the Ghaznavide wanted to fix his capital (IV. 42 Persian Text, Lakhnau Edition). Aṇahilaváḍa seems more likely. [↑]

[71] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, II. 155. [↑]

[72] The Jámi-ûl-Hikáyát in Elliot (History of India), II. 162. [↑]

[73] Elliot’s History of India, II. 200. [↑]

[74] Elliot’s History of India, II. 229–30. [↑]

[75] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, III. 74. [↑]

[76] Sachau’s Text, 102. [↑]

[77] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 87. [↑]

[78] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 88. [↑]

[79] Elliot’s History of India, III. 260. [↑]

[80] Bayley’s Gujarát, 81. [↑]

[81] Elliot’s History of India, IV. 39; History of Gujarát, 81. [↑]

[82] Bayley’s Gujarát, 90. [↑]

[83] Al Biláduri (a.d. 892) in Elliot’s History of India, I. 116. [↑]

[84] Al Biláduri (a.d. 892) in Elliot’s History of India, I. 126. Details of this far-stretching affliction of Sindh, Kachh, the Chávaḍás, Chitor, Bhínmál, and Ujjain are given above, History 109. [↑]

[85] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot (History of India), I. 14. [↑]

[86] Al Bírúni in Elliot (History of India, I. 49–66), and Sachau’s Arabic Text, 100. [↑]

[87] Barbier DeMeynard’s Arabic Text of Les Prairies D’Or, I. 239. [↑]

[88] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 87. [↑]

[89] Elliot’s History of India, III. 256–260. [↑]

[90] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 27. [↑]

[91] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 30. [↑]

[92] Prairies D’Or (Barbier DeMeynard’s Arabic Text), I. 253–54. [↑]

[93] Prairies D’Or (Arabic Text), III. 47. [↑]

[94] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 34. [↑]

[95] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 38. [↑]

[96] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 39. [↑]

[97] Rashíd-ud-dín from Al Bírúni in Elliot’s History of India, I. 66 and Sachau’s Arabic Text, chapter 18 pages 99–102. [↑]

[98] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 67. [↑]

[99] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 77. [↑]

[100] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 84. [↑]

[101] Tazjiyat-ul-Amsar in Elliot, III. 32. [↑]

[102] Saâdi’s patron mentioned by him in his Garden of Roses. [↑]

[103] The word dínár is from the Latin denarius (a silver coin worth 10 oz. of brass) through the Greek δηναριον. It is a Kuráanic word, the ancient Arabic equivalent being متقال‎ mithkál. The dínár sequin or ducat varied in value in different times. In Abu Haúfah’s (the greatest of the four Sunni Jurisconsults’) time (a.d. 749) its value ranged from 10 to 12 dirhams. Then from 20 to 25 dirhams or drachmas. As a weight it represented a drachma and a half. Though generally fluctuating, its value may be assessed at 9s. or 10 francs to half a sovereign. For an elaborate article on the Dínár see Yule’s Cathay, II. 439; Burton’s Alf Leilah, I. 32. The word Dirham is used in Arabic in the sense of “silver” (vulg. siller) the Greek δραχμη and the drachuma of Plautus. This silver piece was 9¾d. and as a weight 66½ grains. Sir Henry Elliot does not speak more at length of the dínár and the dirham than to say (History of India, I. 461) that they were introduced in Sindh in the reign of Abdul Malik (a.d. 685) and Elliot, VII. 31) that the dínár was a Rúm and the dirham a Persian coin. The value of the dínár in modern Indian currency may be said to be Rs. 5 and that of the dirham nearly annas 4. [↑]

[104] Wassáf gives the date of this event as a.d. 1298, but the Tárikh-i-Alái of Amír Khusrao places it at a.d. 1300. See Elliot’s History of India, III. 43 and 74. [↑]

[105] Elliot’s History of India, III. 256–57. [↑]

[106] Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India), I. 24. [↑]

[107] Prairies D’Or, II. 85. [↑]

[108] He was called a Hairam or Hairamah in the language of the country. Al Masúdi’s Murúj Arabic Text Cairo Edition, II. 56. [↑]

[109] Al Masúdi’s Murúj Arabic Text Cairo Edition, II. 56–57. [↑]

[110] One born in India of an Arab father and an Indian mother probably from the Gujaráti word Ádh-besra meaning mixed blood. This seems the origin of the Bais Rájput. The performer in the case in the text was a Hindu. Al Masúdi (Murúj Arabic Text II. 57 Cairo Edition) says that the singular of Bayásirah is Besar. [↑]

[111] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 27. [↑]

[112] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 30. [↑]

[113] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 33–34. [↑]

[114] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 38. [↑]

[115] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 38. [↑]

[116] Al Bírúni Sachau’s Arabic Text, 102; Elliot’s History of India, I. 39, 66. [↑]

[117] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 77. [↑]

[118] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 77, 85. [↑]

[119] Al Kazwíni in Elliot (History of India), I. 97. [↑]

[120] Though Al Kazwíni wrote in the thirteenth century, he derives his information of India from Misâar bin Muhalhil, who visited India about a.d. 942. Elliot (History of India), I. 94. [↑]

[121] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 87. [↑]

[122] Tárikh-i-Fírúz Sháhi by Ziá Barni (Elliot’s History of India), III. 264–65. [↑]

[123] Rashíd-ud-dín (a.d. 1310) from Al Birúni in Elliot’s History of India, I. 65. [↑]

[124] Rashíd-ud-dín (a.d. 1310) from Al Birúni in Elliot’s History of India, I. 49. [↑]

[125] Rashíd-ud-dín (a.d. 1310) from Al Birúni in Elliot’s History of India, I. 66. [↑]

[126] Written a.d. 1600 (Elliot, I. 213). [↑]

[127] Táríkh-i-Maâsumi in Elliot, I. 16. [↑]

[128] Tuhfat-ul-Kirám in Elliot, I. 344. [↑]

[129] Táríkh-i-Maâsumi in Elliot, I. 217. [↑]

[130] Tárikh-i-Maâsumi in Elliot, I. 218. [↑]

[131] Tárikh-i-Táhiri (Elliot’s History of India), I. 267–68. [↑]

[132] Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal for February 1838, 102. [↑]

[133] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 268. [↑]

[134] Tárikh-i-Fírúz Sháhi in Elliot, II. 260. [↑]

[135] In his Arabic Text of the Murúj (Prairies D’Or, Cairo Edition) Al Masúdi writes the name of the Kanauj king as Farwarah. (If the F stands for P and the w for m, as is quite possible in Arab writing, then this can be Parmárah the Arab plural for Parmár.) At volume I. page 240 the word Farwarah is twice used. Once: “And the king of Kanauj, of the kings of Sindh (India) is Farwarah.” Again at the same page (240): “And Farwarah he who is king of Kanauj is opposed to Balhara.” Then at page 241: Farwarah is again used in the beginning of the account quoted by Elliot in I. 23. [↑]

[136] Elliot’s History of India, I. 23. In the Cairo Edition of the Arabic Text of Al Masúdi’s Murúj (Prairies D’Or) vol. I. page 241 is the original of this account. [↑]

[137] Elliot’s History of India, I. 33. [↑]

[138] Elliot’s History of India. I. 45. [↑]

[139] Elliot’s History of India, I. 49. [↑]

[140] Elliot, I. 90. [↑]

[141] Elliot’s History of India, I. 147. [↑]

[142] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 15. [↑]

[143] Táj-ul-Mâásir in Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, II. 222. ‘After staying some time at Dehli he (Kutb-ud-dín) marched in a.d. 1194 (H. 590) towards Kol and Banâras passing the Jumna which from its exceeding purity resembled a mirror.’ It would seem to place Kol near Banâras. [↑]

[144] Al Masúdi’s Prairies D’Or (Arabic Text), I. 168. [↑]

[145] Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India), I. 19, 20, 21 and Prairies D’Or, I. 178. [↑]

[146] Al Masúdi Arabic Text Prairies D’Or, (I. 381); Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India), I. 24. [↑]

[147] That is an Arab dirhem and a half. Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 27. These Tártariyya dirhems are mentioned by almost all Arab writers. Al Idrísi says they were current in Mansúrah in Sindh and in the Malay archipelago. See Elliot, I. 3 note 4. According to Sulaimán (a.d. 851) the Tártariya dirham weighed “a dirham and a half of the coinage of the king.” Elliot, I. 3. Al Masúdi (Prairies D’Or, I. 382) calls these “Tátiriyyah” dirhams, giving them the same weight as that given by Sulaimán to the Tártariyah dirhams. Ibni Haukal calls it the Titari dirhem and makes its weight equal to “a dirham and a third” (Elliot, I. 85). [↑]

[148] Kumlah is rauma salt land. There is a Rúm near Kárur about sixty miles south-east of Multán. Al Idrísi (a.d. 1135) has a Rumálah three days from Kalbata the salt range. Elliot, I. 92. [↑]

[149] Probably Okhámandal. See Appendix vol. I. page 390 Elliot’s History of India. [↑]

[150] Sachau’s Arabic Text of Al Bírúni’s Indica, 99. [↑]

[151] Persian Text Bombay Edition of 1832, I. 53. [↑]

[152] Sachau’s Arabic Text of Al Bírúni, 100. [↑]

[153] Elliot’s History of India, I. 84. [↑]

[154] Al Biláduri in Elliot (History of India), I. 129. The word sáj in the Arabic text means besides a teak-spar (which seems to be an improbable present to be sent to a Khalifáh), a large black or green turban or sash. [↑]

[155] Ibni Khurdádbha in Elliot (History of India), I. 14 and 15. [↑]

[156] De Meynard’s Arabic Text of Les Prairies D’Or, III. 47–48. [↑]

[157] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 27 and 30. [↑]

[158] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 34 and 38. [↑]

[159] Al Bírúni in Elliot, I. 66. [↑]

[160] Al Idrísi in Elliot, I. 77–85. [↑]

[161] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 403 Appendix. [↑]

[162] Lee’s Ibni Batuta, 166. [↑]

[163] Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India), I. 21. [↑]

[164] Rashid-ud-dín from Al Bírúni in Elliot, I. 68. [↑]

[165] Al Idrísi in Elliot, I. 89. [↑]

[166] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 65; Sachau’s Arabic Text of Al Bírúni, 102. [↑]

[167] Elliot’s History of India, I. 67. [↑]

[168] Sachau’s Text of Al Bírúni, 252. [↑]

[169] Sachau’s Arabic Text, 253. [↑]

[170] Sachau’s Arabic Text, 253 chapter 58. [↑]

[171] It appears that at the time of his expedition to Somnáth Mahmúd had not adopted the title of Sultán. [↑]

[172] Sachau’s Arabic Text, 253 chapter 58. [↑]

[173] Sachau’s Text, 253 chapter 58. [↑]

[174] The Táríkh-i-Kámil. Ibni Asír (a.d. 1160–1232) is a voluminous and reliable historian. Ibni Khallikán, the author of the famous biographical dictionary, knew and respected Asír always alluding to him as “our Sheikh.” See Elliot, II. 245. [↑]

[175] From the term ‘sculptured’ it would seem the idol was of stone. It is curious how Ibni Asír states a little further that a part of the idol was “burned by Mehmúd.” See Elliot, II. 471. The Tárikh-i-Alfi says (Elliot, II. 471) that the idol was cut of solid stone. It however represents it as hollow and containing jewels, in repeating the somewhat hackneyed words of Mahmúd when breaking the idol regardless of the handsome offer of the Bráhmans, and finding it full of jewels. [↑]

[176] The Rauzat-us-Safa (Lithgd. Edition, IV. 48) speaks of Mahmúd’s project of making Somnáth his capital and not Anhilwára as stated by Farishtah (I. 57, Original Persian Text). The Rauzát-us-Safa says that when Mahmúd had conquered Somnáth he wished to fix his residence there for some years as the country was very large and had a great many advantages including mines of pure gold and rubies brought from Sarandíb or Ceylon which he represents as a dependency of Gujarát. At last he yielded to his minister’s advice and agreed to return to Khurásán. [↑]

[177] Prairies D’Or (DeMeynard’s Arabic Text, I. 381); also Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India. I. 24). [↑]

[178] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 27. [↑]

[179] Al Istakhri in Elliot (History of India), I. 30. [↑]

[180] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 34, 39. [↑]

[181] Thus in Sachau’s Arabic Text page 102, but Elliot (I. 66) spells the word Sufára in his translation. It might have assumed that form in coming from the Arabic through Rashíd-ud-dín’s Persian version from which Sir Henry Elliot derives his account. [↑]

[182] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 77 and 85. [↑]

[183] Al Bilázuri in Elliot, I. 116. [↑]

[184] Barbier DeMeynard’s Text of Masúdi’s Prairies D’Or, I. 330 and 381. [↑]

[185] Sachau’s Arabic Text of Al Bírúni, chapters 18, 99, 102 and Elliot’s History of India, I. 60–61, 66–67. [↑]

[186] Al Idrísi in Elliot, 1–89. [↑]

[187] Al Idrísi says the real tabáshír is extracted from the root of the reed called sharki. Sarki is Gujaráti for reed. It is generally applied to the reeds growing on river banks used by the poor for thatching their cottages. Tabáshír is a drug obtained from the pith of the bamboo and prescribed by Indian physicians as a cooling drink good for fever. [↑]

[188] The name Barádah برادة‎ in Arabic orthography bears a close resemblance to برابہ‎ Barâbah, بارلبہ‎ Bárlabah, برلبہ‎ Barlabah, all three being the forms or nearly the forms in which the word ولبہ‎ Walabah or وَلَبي‎ Walabi would be written by an Arab, supposing the diacritical points to be, as they often are, omitted. Besides as Barádah the word has been read and miswritten نارند‎ Nárand or Bárand and بارد‎ Bárad or Barid. In the shikastah or broken hand Nárand or Bárand بارند‎ would closely resemble بارلبہ‎ Bárlabah or Báradah باردة‎. Al Bilázuri in Elliot’s History of India I. 127, writes the word Nárand or Bárand. Sir Henry Elliot (History, I. 444) reads the word Barada and would identify the place with the Barda hills inland from Porbandar in south-west Káthiáváḍ. The objection to this is that the word used by the Arab writers was the name of a town as well as of a coast tract, while the name of Barda is applied solely to a range of hills. On the other hand Balaba the coast and town meets all requirements. [↑]

[189] Reigned a.d. 754–775. [↑]

[190] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, II. 246 and Frag. Arabes 3, 120, 212; Weil’s Geschichte der Chalifen, II. 115. [↑]

[191] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 444. [↑]

[192] Sir Henry Elliot (History of India, I. 445) identifies Kandhár with Kandadár in north-west Káthiáváḍ. [↑]

[193] Sachau’s Original Text, 205. [↑]

[194] Sachau’s Original Text, 17–94. [↑]

[195] Details above in Dr. Bhagvánlál’s History, 96 note 3. [↑]

[196] Elliot’s History of India, I. 7. [↑]

[197] Elliot’s History of India, I. 22, 24, 25. [↑]

[198] Elliot’s History of India, I. 34. [↑]

[199] Elliot’s History of India, I. 86. [↑]

[200] Al Masúdi Les Prairies D’Or, II. chapter 18 page 85. [↑]

[201] Giving an account of the diviners and jugglers of India Abu Zaid says: These observations are especially applicable to Kanauj, a large country forming the empire of Jurz. Abu Zaid in Elliot’s History of India, I. 10. References given in the History of Bhínmál show that the Gurjjara power spread not only to Kanauj but to Bengal. [↑]

[202] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot’s History of India, I. 13. [↑]

[203] Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India), I. 25. [↑]

[204] Ibni Haukal in Elliot (History of India), I. 34. [↑]

[205] Al Bírúni in Elliot (History of India), I. 67. [↑]

[206] Al Bírúni in Elliot (History of India), I. 59. [↑]

[207] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 76. [↑]

[208] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 86. [↑]

[209] The merchant Sulaimán (851 a.d.) in Elliot’s History of India, I. 5. [↑]

[210] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot (History of India), I. 13. [↑]

[211] Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India), I. 23. [↑]

[212] Al Masúdi in Elliot (History of India), I. 25. [↑]

[213] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot’s History of India, I. 14. [↑]

[214] Al Masúdi in History of India by Sir Henry Elliot, I. 25. [↑]

[215] Lane’s Notes on his Translation of the Alf Leilah, III. 80. [↑]

[216] Al Masúdi’s Murúj (Arabic Text Cairo Edition, I. 221). [↑]

[217] The merchant Sulaimán (Elliot’s History of India), I. 4 and 5. [↑]

[218] See page 519 note 8. [↑]

[219] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 11. [↑]

[220] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot’s History of India, I. 14. [↑]

[221] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot’s History of India, I. 15. [↑]

[222] Al Masúdi (Elliot’s History of India), I. 23. [↑]

[223] Barbier De Meynard’s Arabic Text of Les Prairies D’Or, III. 47–48. [↑]

[224] Barbier De Meynard’s Arabic Text of Les Prairies D’Or, I. 239. [↑]

[225] Barbier De Meynard’s Arabic Text of Les Prairies D’Or, I. 253. [↑]

[226] Barbier De Meynard’s Arabic Text of Les Prairies D’Or, I. 384. [↑]

[227] Ibni Haukal (Ashkál-ul-Bilád) and Elliot’s History of India, I. 39. [↑]

[228] Elliot’s History of India, III. 33. [↑]

[229] Mámhal is by some numbered among the cities of India. Al Idrísi in Elliot, I. 84. [↑]

[230] Al Idrísi in Elliot, I. 79. [↑]

[231] Al Idrísi in Elliot, I. 85. [↑]

[232] Al Idrísi in Elliot’s History of India, I. 85. [↑]

[233] Al Idrísi in Elliot’s History of India, I. 85. [↑]

[234] Rashíd-ud-dín in Elliot’s History of India, I. 67–68. [↑]

[235] Ibni Haukal (a.d. 968) in Elliot, I. 39. [↑]

[236] Al Idrísi (a.d. 968) in Elliot, I. 84 and 87. [↑]

[237] Al Idrísi speaking of Cambay in Elliot’s History of India, I. 84. [↑]

[238] Al Idrísi in Elliot, I. 85. [↑]

[239] Al Idrísi in Elliot, I. 88. [↑]

[240] Al Masúdi in Elliot’s History of India, I. 9. [↑]

[241] Ibni Haukal in Elliot, I. 35. [↑]

[242] Ibni Haukal in Elliot, I. 39. [↑]

[243] Al Idrísi in Elliot’s History of India, I. 88. [↑]

[244] Rashíd-ud-dín (a.d. 1310) in Elliot’s History of India, I. 67. The passage seems to be a quotation from Al Bírúni (a.d. 1031). [↑]

[245] Ibni Haukal in Elliot’s History of India, I. 34–38, also Al Kazwíni, I. 97. [↑]

[246] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 29. [↑]

[247] The merchant Sulaimán in Elliot’s History of India, I. 7. [↑]

[248] The merchant Sulaimán in Elliot’s History of India, I. 6. [↑]

[249] The merchant Sulaimán in Elliot’s History of India, I. 7. [↑]

[250] Abu Zaid in Elliot’s History of India, I. 10. [↑]

[251] Abu Zaid in Elliot’s History of India, I. 9–10. [↑]

[252] Abu Zaid in Elliot’s History of India, I. 11. [↑]

[253] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot, I. 17. [↑]

[254] See Elliot, I. 76, where Al Idrísi calls the first class ‘Sákariá’ the word being a transliteration of the Arabic Thákariyah or Thákurs. [↑]

[255] The Arabic plural of the word Barahman. [↑]

[256] Ibni Khurdádbah in Elliot’s History of India, I. 13–17. [↑]

[257] Text Les Prairies D’Or, I. 149–154 and Elliot’s History of India, I. 19. [↑]

[258] Arabic Text Les Prairies D’Or, I. 149–154, and Elliot’s History of India, I. 20. [↑]

[259] Al Masúdi’s Prairies D’Or, I. 169, and Elliot’s History of India, I. 20. [↑]

[260] Rashíd-ud-dín from Al Bírúni in Elliot’s History of India, I. 67–68. [↑]

[261] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 76. [↑]

[262] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 85. [↑]

[263] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 87. [↑]

[264] Sir Henry Elliot’s History of India, I. 88. [↑]

[265] Al Idrísi in Elliot (History of India), I. 88. [↑]

APPENDIX VI.

WESTERN INDIA AS KNOWN TO THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.[1]

Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans. Hêrodotos and Hekataios, the earliest Greek writers who make mention of India, give no information in regard to Western India in particular.

Ktêsias.Ktêsias (c. 400 b.c.) learnt in Persia that a race of Pygmies lived in India in the neighbourhood of the silver mines, which Lassen places near Udaipur (Mewar). From the description of these Pygmies (Phôtios. Bibl. LXXII. 11–12) it is evident that they represent the Bhíls. Ktêsias also mentions (Phôtios. Bibl. LXXII. 8) that there is a place in an uninhabited region fifteen days from Mount Sardous, where they venerate the sun and moon and where for thirty-five days in each year the sun remits his heat for the comfort of his worshippers. This place must apparently have been somewhere in Mârwâr, and perhaps Mount Âbu is the place referred to.

Alexander.Alexander (b.c. 326–25) did not reach Gujarát, and his companions have nothing to tell of this part of the country. It is otherwise with

Megasthenês.Megasthenês (c. 300 b.c.) who resided with Candragupta as the ambassador of Seleukos Nikator and wrote an account of India in four books, of which considerable fragments are preserved, chiefly by Strabo, Pliny, and Arrian. His general account of the manners of the Indians relates chiefly to those of northern India, of whom he had personal knowledge. But he also gave a geographical description of India, for Arrian informs us (Ind. VII) that he gave the total number of Indian tribes as 118, and Pliny (VI. 17ff) does in fact enumerate about 90, to whom may be added some seven or eight more mentioned by Arrian. It is true that Pliny does not distinctly state that he takes his geographical details from Megasthenês, and that he quotes Seneca as having written a book on India. But Seneca also (Pliny, VI. 17) gave the number of the tribes as 118 in which he must have followed Megasthenês. Further, Pliny says (ibid.) that accounts of the military forces of each nation were given by writers such as Megasthenês and Dionysius who stayed with Indian kings: and as he does not mention Dionysius in his list of authorities for his Book VI., it follows that it was from Megasthenês that he drew his accounts of the forces of the Gangaridæ, Modogalinga, Andaræ, Prasi, Megallæ, Asmagi, Oratæ, Suarataratæ, Automula, Charmæ, and Pandæ (VI. 19), names which, as will be shown below, betray a knowledge of all parts of India. It is a fair inference that the remaining names mentioned by Pliny were taken by him from Megasthenês, perhaps through the medium of Seneca’s work. The corruption of Pliny’s text
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Megasthenês. and the fact that Megasthenês learnt the tribal names in their Prakrit forms, make it extremely difficult to identify many of the races referred to.

That part of Pliny’s account of India which may with some certainty be traced back to Megasthenês begins with a statement of the stages of the royal road from the Hypasis (Biás) to Palibothra (Patna) (Nat. Hist. VI. 17). The next chapter gives an account of the Ganges and its tributaries and mentions the Gangaridæ of Kalinga with their capital Pertalis as the most distant nation on its banks. In the 19th chapter, after an account of the forces of the Gangaridæ, Pliny gives a list of thirteen tribes, of which the only ones that can be said to be satisfactorily identified are Modogalinga (the three Calingas: Caldwell Drav. Gr.), Molindæ (compare Mount Mâlindya of Varâha Mihira Br. S. XIV.), and Thalutæ (McCrindle reads Taluctæ and identifies with the Tâmraliptakas of Tamluk on the lower Ganges). He next mentions the Andaræ (Andhras of Telingana) with thirty cities 100,000 foot 2000 horse and 1000 elephants. He then digresses to speak of the Dardæ (Dards of the Upper Indus) as rich in gold and the Setæ (of Mêwâr, Lassen) in silver, and next introduces the Prasi (Prâcyas) of Palibothra (Pâṭaliputra) as the most famous and powerful of all the tribes, having 600,000 foot 30,000 horse and 8000 elephants. Inland from these he names the Monædes (Muṇḍa of Singbhúm) and Suari (Śavaras of Central India) among whom is Mount Maleus (Mahendra Male?). Then after some account of the Iomanes (Yamunâ) running between Methora (Mathurâ) and Chrysobora (McCrindle reads Carisobora, Arrian Ind. VIII. Kleisobora = Kṛishṇapura?) he turns to the Indus, of some of whose nineteen tributaries he gives some account in chapter 20. He then digresses to give an account of the coast of India, starting from the mouth of the Ganges, whence to Point Calingon (Point Godâvari) and the city of Dandaguda (Cunningham’s Râja Mahendri, but more probably the Dhanakaṭaka or Dhenukâkaṭa of the Western cave inscriptions) he reckons 625 miles. The distance thence to Tropina (Tirupanatara near Kochin according to Burgess) is 1225 miles. Next at a distance of 750 miles is the cape of Perimula, where is the most famous mart of India. Further on in the same chapter is mentioned a city named Automula on the sea shore among the Arabastræ (or Salabastræ and Oratæ, McCrindle) a noble mart where five rivers together flow into the sea. There can hardly be a doubt that the two places are the same, the two names being taken from different authorities, and that the place meant is Chemula or Cheul (Ptolemy’s Simulla) the five rivers being those that flow into Bombay Harbour northward of Cheul. The distance from Perimula to the Island of Patala in the Indus is 620 miles. Pliny next enumerates as hill tribes between the Indus and Jamna, shut in a ring of mountains and deserts for a space of 625 miles, the Cæsi (the Kekiọi of Arr. Ind. IV. and Kêkayas of the Purâṇas, about the head waters of the Sutlej), the Cetriboni of the woods (… Vana?), the Megallæ (Mêkalas) with 500 elephants and unknown numbers of horse and foot, the Chrysei (Karûsha) Parasangæ (Pâraśava, corrupted by the likeness of its first three syllables to the word παρασαγγα, the Asmagi (Aśmaka of Varâha Mihira) with 30,000 foot 300 elephants and 800 horse. These are shut in by the Indus and surrounded by a circle of mountains and deserts for 625 miles. Next come the Dari and Suræ and then deserts again for 187 miles. Whether these are or are not correctly identified with the Dhars and Saurs of Sindh, they must be placed somewhere to the north of the Ran. Below them come five kingless tribes living in the hills along the sea-coast—the
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Megasthenês. Maltecoræ, Singhæ, Marohæ, Rarungæ, and Moruni—none of whom are satisfactorily identified, but who may be placed in Kachh. Next follow the Nareæ, enclosed by Mount Capitalia (Âbu) the highest mountain in India, on the other side of which are mines of gold and silver. The identification of Capitalia with Âbu is probable enough, but the name given to the mountain must be connected with the Kapishṭhala of the Purâṇas, who have given their name to one of the recensions of the Yajur Veda, though Kaithal, their modern representative, lies far away from Âbu in the Karnâl district of the Panjâb, and Arrian places his καμβισθολοι (Ind. IV) about the head waters of the Hydraôtês (Râvî). After Capitalia and the Nareæ come the Oratæ with but ten elephants but numerous infantry. These must be the Aparântakas of the inscriptions and purâṇas, Megasthenês having learnt the name in a Prâkṛit form (Avarâta, Orâta). The name of the next tribe, who have no elephants but horse and foot only, is commonly read Suarataratæ (Nobbe) but the preferable reading is Varetatæ (McCrindle) which when corrected to Varelatæ represents Varalatta, the sixth of the seven Konkans in the purâṇic lists (Wilson As. Res. XV. 47), which occupied the centre of the Thána district and the country of the wild tribe of the Varlîs. Next are the Odonbæores, whose name is connected with the udumbara Ficus glomerata tree, and who are not the Audumbari Sâlvas of Pâṇini (IV. i. 173) but must be placed in Southern Thána. Next come the Arabastræ Oratæ (so read for Arabastræ Thorace of Nobbe, and Salabastræ Horatæ of McCrindle) or Arabastra division of the Oratæ or Koṅkaṇîs. Arabastra may be connected with the Ârava of Varâha-Mihira’s South-Western Division (Br. S. XIV. 17) where they are mentioned along with Barbara (the seventh or northernmost Koṅkaṇ). This tribe had a fine city in a marsh infested by crocodiles and also the great mart of Automula (Cheul) at the confluence of five rivers, and the king had 1600 elephants 150,000 foot and 5000 horse, and must therefore have held a large part of the Dakhan as well as of the sea coast. Next to this kingdom is that of the Charmæ, whose forces are small, and next to them the Pandæ (Pâṇḍya of Travancor) with 300 cities 150,000 foot and 500 elephants. Next follows a list of thirteen tribes, some of which St. Martin has identified with modern Râjput tribes about the Indus, because the last name of the thirteen is Orostræ, “who reach to the island of Patala,” and may be confidently identified with the Saurâshṭra of Kâthiâvâḍa. We must however assume that Megasthenês after naming the tribes of the west coast enumerates the inland tribes of the Dakhan until he arrives at the point from which he started. But the only identification that seems plausible is that of the Derangæ with the Telingas or Telugus. Next to the Orostræ follows a list of tribes on the east of the Indus from south to north—the Mathoæ (compare Mânthava, a Bâhîka town Pân. IV. ii. 117), Bolingæ (Bhâulingi, a Sâlva tribe Pân. IV. i. 173), Gallitalutæ (perhaps a corruption of Tâilakhali, another Sâlva tribe, ib.), Dimuri, Megari, Ardabæ, Mesæ (Matsya of Jaipur?), Abi, Suri, (v. 1. Abhis Uri), Silæ, and then deserts for 250 miles. Next come three more tribes and then again deserts, then four or five (according to the reading) more tribes, and the Asini whose capital is Bucephala (Jalâlpur) (Cunningham Anc. Geog. 177). Megasthenês then gives two mountain tribes and ten beyond the Indus including the Orsi (Uraśâ) Taxilæ (Takshaśilâ) and Peucolitæ (people of Pushkâlavatî). Of the work of Dêïmachos, who went on an embassy to Allitrochadês (Bindusâra) son of Candragupta, nothing is known except that it was in two books and was reckoned the most untrustworthy of all accounts of India (Strabo, II. i. 9).

Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Ptolemy II. Ptolemy II.Ptolemy II. Philadelphos (died 247 b.c.) interested himself in the trade with India and opened a caravan road from Koptos on the Nile to Berenikê on the Red Sea (Strabo, XVII. i. 45) and for centuries the Indian trade resorted either to this port or to the neighbouring Myos Hormos. He also sent to India (apparently to Aśoka) an envoy named Dionysius, who is said by Pliny (VI. 17) to have written an account of things Indian of which no certain fragments appear to remain. But we know from the fragments of

Agatharkhides.Agatharkhides (born c. 250 a.d.) who wrote in old age an account of the Red Sea of which we have considerable extracts in Diodôros (III. 12–48) and Phôtios (Müller’s Geogr. Gr. Min. I. 111ff), states that in his time the Indian trade with Potana (Patala) was in the hands of the Sabæans of Yemen. (Müller, I. 191.) In fact it was not until the voyages of Eudoxos (see below) that any direct trade sprang up between India and Egypt. The mention of Patala as the mart resorted to by the Arabs shows that we are still in Pliny’s first period (see below).

The Baktrian Greeks.The Baktrian Greeks extended their power into India after the fall of the Mâurya empire (c. 180 b.c.) their leader being Dêmêtrios son of Euthydêmos, whose conquests are referred to by Justin (XLI. 6) and Strabo (XI. ii. 1). But the most extensive conquests to the east and south were made by Menandros (c. 110 b.c.) who advanced to the Jumna and conquered the whole coast from Pattalênê (lower Sindh) to the kingdoms of Saraostos (Surâshṭra) and Sigertis (Pliny’s Sigerus?) (Strabo, XI. ii. 1). These statements of Strabo are confirmed by the author of the Periplus (c. 250 a.d.) who says that in his time drakhmai with Greek inscriptions of Menandros and Apollodotos were still current at Barygaza (Per. 47). Apollodotos is now generally thought to have been the successor of Menandros (C. 100 b.c.) (Brit. Museum Cat. of Bactrian Coins page xxxiii.). Plutarch (Reip. Ger. Princ.) tells us that Menandros’ rule was so mild, that on his death his towns disputed the possession of his ashes and finally divided them.

Eudoxos of Cyzicus.Eudoxos of Cyzicus (c. 117 b.c.) made in company with others two very successful voyages to India, in the first of which the company were guided by an Indian who had been shipwrecked on the Egyptian coast. Strabo (II. iii. 4), in quoting the story of his doings from Poseidônios, lays more stress upon his attempt to circumnavigate Africa than upon these two Indian voyages, but they are of very great importance as the beginnings of the direct trade with India.

Eratosthenês.The Geographers down to Ptolemy drew their knowledge of India almost entirely from the works of Megasthenês and of the companions of Alexander. Among them Eratosthenês (c. 275–194 b.c.), the founder of scientific geography, deserves mention as having first given wide currency to the notion that the width of India from west to east was greater than its length from north to south, an error which lies at the root of Ptolemy’s distortion of the map. Eratosthenês’ critic Hipparkhos (c. 130 b.c.) on this point followed the more correct account of Megasthenês, and is otherwise notable as the first to make use of astronomy for the determination of the geographical position of places.

Strabo.Strabo (c. 63 b.c.–23 a.d.) drew his knowledge of India, like his predecessors, chiefly from Megasthenês and from Alexander’s followers, but adds (XV. i. 72) on the authority of Nikolaos of Damascus (tutor to the children of Antony and Cleopatra, and envoy of Herod) (an account of three Indian envoys from a certain king Pôros to Augustus (ob. a.d. 14),
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Strabo. who brought presents consisting of an armless man, snakes, a huge turtle and a large partridge, with a letter in Greek written on parchment offering free passage and traffic through his dominions to the emperor’s subjects. With these envoys came a certain Zarmanokhêgas (Śramaṇâcârya, Lassen) from Bargosê (Broach, the earliest mention of the name) who afterwards burnt himself at Athens, “according to the ancestral custom of the Indians.” The fact that the embassy came from Broach and passed through Antioch shows that they took the route by the Persian Gulf, which long remained one of the chief lines of trade (Per. chap. 36). If the embassy was not a purely commercial speculation on the part of merchants of Broach, it is hard to see how king Pôros, who had 600 under-kings, can be other than the Indo-Skythian Kozolakadaphes, who held Pôros’ old kingdom as well as much other territory in North-West India. This if correct would show that as early as the beginning of our era the Indo-Skythian power reached as far south as Broach. The fact that the embassy took the Persian Gulf route and that their object was to open commercial relations with the Roman empire seems to show that at this period there was no direct trade between Broach and the Egyptian ports of the Red Sea. Strabo however mentions that in his time Arabian and Indian wares were carried on camels from Myos Hormos (near Râs Abu Somer) on the Red Sea to Koptos on the Nile (XVII. i. 45 and XVI. iv. 24) and dilates upon the increase of the Indian trade since the days of the Ptolemies when not so many as twenty ships dared pass through the Red Sea “to peer out of the Straits,” whereas in his time whole fleets of as many as 120 vessels voyaged to India and the headlands of Ethiopia from Myos Hormos (II. v. 12 and XV. i. 13). It would seem that we have here to do with Pliny’s second period of Indian trade, when Sigerus (probably Janjira) was the goal of the Egyptian shipmasters (see below). Strabo learnt these particulars during his stay in Egypt with Aelius Gallus, but they were unknown to his contemporary Diodôros who drew his account of India entirely from Megasthenês (Diod. II. 31–42) and had no knowledge of the East beyond the stories told by Jamboulos a person of uncertain date of an island in the Indian Archipelago (Bali, according to Lassen) (Diod. II. 57–60). Pomponius Mela (a.d. 43) also had no recent information as regards India.

Pliny.Pliny (a.d. 23–79) who published his Natural History in a.d. 77 gives a fairly full account of India, chiefly drawn from Megasthenês (see above). He also gives two valuable pieces of contemporary information:

(i) An account of Ceylon (Taprobanê) to which a freedman of Annius Plocamus, farmer of the Red Sea tribute, was carried by stress of weather in the reign of Claudius (a.d. 41–54). On his return the king sent to the emperor four envoys, headed by one Rachias (VI. 22).

(ii) An account of the voyage from Alexandria to India by a course which had only lately been made known (VI. 23). Pliny divides the history of navigation from the time of Nearchus to his own age into three periods:

• (a) the period of sailing from Syagrus (Râs Fartak) in Arabia to Patalê (Indus delta) by the south-west wind called Hippalus, 1332 miles;
• (b) the period of sailing from Syagrus (Râs Fartak) to Sigerus (Ptol. Milizêgyris, Peripl. Melizeigara, probably Janjíra, and perhaps the same as Strabo’s Sigertis);
• (c) the modern period, when traffic went on from Alexandria to Koptos up the Nile, and thence by camels across the desert to Berenice (in Foul Bay), 257 miles. Thence the merchants start in the middle of
  Appendix VI.
  Early Greeks and Romans.
  Pliny. summer before the rising of the dogstar and in thirty days reach Okelis (Ghalla) or Cane (Hisn Ghorab), the former port being most frequented by the Indian trade. From Okelis it is a forty days’ voyage to Muziris (Muyyiri, Kranganur) which is dangerous on account of the neighbouring pirates of Nitrias (Mangalor) and inconvenient by reason of the distance of the roads from the shore. Another better port is Becare (Kallaḍa, Yule) belonging to the tribe Neacyndon (Ptol. Melkynda, Peripl. Nelkynda) of the kingdom of Pandion (Pâṇḍya) whose capital is Modura (Madura). Here pepper is brought in canoes from Cottonara (Kaḍattanâḍu). The ships return to the Red Sea in December or January.

It is clear that the modern improvement in navigation on which Pliny lays so much stress consisted, not in making use of the monsoon wind, but in striking straight across the Indian ocean to the Malabar coast. The fact that the ships which took this course carried a guard of archers in Pliny’s time, but not in that of the Periplus, is another indication that the direct route to Malabar was new and unfamiliar in the first century a.d. The name Hippalus given to the monsoon wind will be discussed below in dealing with the Periplus.

Dionysios Periégétés.Dionysios Periégétés who has lately been proved to have written under Hadrian (a.d. 117–138) (Christ’s Griech. Litteratur Gesch., page 507) gives a very superficial description of India but has a valuable notice of the Southern Skythians who live along the river Indus to the east of the Gedrôsoi (I. 1087–88).

Klaudios Ptolemaios.Klaudios Ptolemaios of Alexandria lived according to Suidas under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d. 161–180). He compiled his account of India as part of a geographical description of the then known world, and drew much of his materials from Marinos of Tyre, whose work is lost, but who must have written about a.d. 130. Ptolemy (or Marinos before him) had a very wide knowledge of India, drawn partly from the relations of shipmasters and traders and partly from Indian lists similar to those of the Purâṇas but drawn up in Prâkṛit. He seems to have made little if any use of Megasthenês and the companions of Alexander. But his map of India is distorted by the erroneous idea, which he took from Eratosthenês, that the width of India from west to east greatly exceeded its length from north to south. Ptolemy begins his description of India with the first chapter of his seventh book, which deals with India within the Ganges. He gives first the names of rivers, countries, towns, and capes along the whole coast of India from the westernmost mouth of the Indus to the easternmost mouth of the Ganges. He next mentions in detail the mountains and the rivers with their tributaries, and then proceeds to enumerate the various nations of India and the cities belonging to each, beginning with the north-west and working southwards: and he finally gives a list of the islands lying off the coast. In dealing with his account of western India it will be convenient to notice together the cities of each nation which he mentions separately under the heads of coast and inland towns.

He gives the name of Indo-Skythia to the whole country on both sides of the lower course of the Indus from its junction with the Koa (Kábul river), and gives its three divisions as Patalênê (lower Sindh) Abiria (read Sabiria, that is Sauvîra or upper Sindh and Multân) and Surastrênê (Surâshṭra or Kâthiâvâḍa). We have seen that Dionysios knew the southern Skythians of the Indus, and we shall meet with them again in the Periplus (chapter 38ff).

Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Klaudios Ptolemaios. He enumerates seven mouths of the Indus, but the river is so constantly changing its course that it is hopeless to expect to identify all the names given by him (Sagapa, Sinthôn, Khariphron, Sapara, Sabalaessa, and Lônibare) with the existing channels. Only it may be noted that Sinthôn preserves the Indian name of the river (Sindhu) and that the easternmost mouth (Lônibare) probably represents both the present Korî or Launî and the Lûnî river of Mârwâr, a fact which goes some way to explain why Ptolemy had no idea of the existence of Kachh, though he knows the Ran as the gulf of Kanthi. Hence he misplaces Surastrênê (Surâshṭra or Kâthiâvâḍa) in the Indus delta instead of south of the Ran. Ptolemy enumerates a group of five towns in the north-western part of Indo-Skythia (Kohat, Bannu, and Dera Ismail Khân) of which Cunningham (Anc. Geog. pages 84ff) has identified Banagara with Bannu, and Andrapana with Daraban, while the sites of Artoarta, Sabana, and Kodrana are unknown. Ptolemy next gives a list of twelve towns along the western bank of the Indus to the sea. Of these Embolima has been identified by Cunningham (Anc. Geog. page 52) with Amb sixty miles above Attok, and Pasipêda is identified by St. Martin with the Besmaid of the Arab geographers and placed near Mithankot at the junction of the Chenab with the Indus. Sousikana, which comes next in the list to Pasipêḍa, is generally thought to be a corruption of Mousikanos, and is placed by the latest authority (General Haig, The Indus Delta Country, page 130) in Bahâwalpur, though Cunningham (Anc. Geog. page 257) puts it at Alor, which is somewhat more in accordance with Ptolemy’s distances. Kôlaka the most southerly town of the list, cannot well be the Krôkala of Arrian (Karâchi) as McCrindle supposes, for Ptolemy puts it nearly a degree north of the western mouth of the Indus.

The two great towns of the delta which Ptolemy next mentions, are placed by General Haig, Patala at a point thirty-five miles south-east of Haidarâbâd (op. cit. page 19) and Barbarei near Shâh Bandar (op. cit. page 31). Barbarei is mentioned again in the Periplus (chapter 38) under the name of Barbarikon. Ptolemy gives the names of nine towns on the left bank of the Indus from the confluence to the sea, but very few of them can be satisfactorily identified. Panasa can only be Osanpur (St. Martin) on Fluellen’s principles. Boudaia must represent the Budhîya of the Arabs, though it is on the wrong side of the river (see Haig, op. cit. page 57ff). Naagramma may with Yule be placed at Naushahro. Kamigara cannot be Aror (McCrindle), if that place represents Sousikana. Binagara is commonly thought to be a corrupt reading of Minnagara (compare Periplus chapter 38). Haig (op. cit. page 32 note 47) refers to the Tuhfatu’l Kirâm as mentioning a Minnagar in pargana Shâhdâdpur (north-east of Haidarâbâd). Parabali, Sydros, and Epitausa have not been identified, but must be looked for either in Haidarâbâd or in Thar and Pârkar. Xoana may with Yule be identified with Siwana in the bend of the Lûnî and gives another indication that Ptolemy confounded the Lûnî with the eastern mouth of the Indus.

On the coast of Surastrênê (Kâthiâvâḍa) Ptolemy mentions, first, the island of Barakê (Dvârakâ Bêt): then the city Bardaxêma which must be Porbandar (Yule), in front of the Barada hills: then the village of Surastra, which perhaps represents Verâval, though it is placed too far north. Surastra cannot well be Junâgad (Lassen) which is not on the coast and in Ptolemy’s time was not a village, but a city, though it is certainly strange that Ptolemy does not anywhere mention it. Further south Ptolemy places the mart of Monoglôsson (Mangrol). The eastern
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Klaudios Ptolemaios. boundary of the coast of Indo-Skythia seems to have been the mouth of the Môphis (Mahî). Ptolemy’s account of Indo-Skythia may be completed by mentioning the list of places, which he puts to the east of the Indus (i. e. the Lûnî) and at some distance from it.

These are: Xodrakê, which has not been identified, but which must be placed somewhere in Mewâr, perhaps at the old city of Pûr, seventy-two miles north-east of Udaipur, or possibly at the old city of Ahar, two miles from Udaipur itself (Tod’s Râjasthân, I. 677–78).

Sarbana, which is marked in Ptolemy’s map at the head-waters of the Mahî in the Apokopa mountains (Aravallis), must be identified with Sarwan about ten miles north-west of Ratlâm. There is also a place called Sarwanio close to Nimach, which Ptolemy may have confused with Sarwan.

Auxoamis, which St. Martin identifies with Sûmî, and Yule with Ajmir, but neither place suits the distance and direction from Sarwan. If Ptolemy, as above suggested, confused Sarwan and Sarwanio, Auxoamis may be Ahar near Udaipur, Pûr being then Xodrakê: otherwise Auxoamis may be Ídar. The question can only be settled by more exact knowledge of the age of Ahar and of Ídar. Orbadarou may provisionally with Yule be placed at Âbu.

Asinda must be looked for near Sidhpur, though it cannot with St. Martin be identified with that place. Perhaps Vadnagar (formerly Ânandapura and a very old town) may be its modern representative.

Theophila may be Devaliya (Yule) or Thân (Burgess) in north-east Kâthiâvâḍa.

Astakapra is admitted to be Hastakavapra or Hâthab near Bhâvnagar (Bühler).

Larikê is described by Ptolemy next after Indo-Skythia on his way down the West Coast. The northern limit of its coast was the mouth of the river Môphis (Mahî). Its name is the Lâṭa of purâṇas and inscriptions. Ptolemy mentions as on its coast the village of Pakidarê, which may be a misreading for Kâpidarê and represent Kâvî (Kâpikâ of inscriptions) a holy place just south of the Mahî. Next comes Cape Maleô, which Ptolemy both in his text and in his map includes in Larikê, though there is no prominent headland in a suitable position on the east side of the Gulf of Cambay. As he puts it 2¼ degrees west of Broach, it may probably be identified with Gopnâth Point in Kâthiâvâḍa on the other side of the gulf (the Pâpikê of the Periplus), his name for it surviving in the neighbouring shoals known as the Malai banks. It is in agreement with this that Ptolemy puts the mouth of the river Namados (Narmadâ) to the north of Cape Maleô. South of the river is Kamanê which may be identified with the Kamanijja or Karmaṇêya of inscriptions, that is with Kamlej on the Taptî above Surat. It has been supposed to be the Kammôni of the Periplus (chapter 43), which was the village opposite to the reef called Hêrônê on the right (east) of the gulf of Barygaza: but it is perhaps best to separate the two and to identify Kammôni with Kim, north of Olpâd. The next town mentioned is Nousaripa, which should probably be read Nousarika, being the Navasârikâ of inscriptions and the modern Nausârî. The most southerly town of Larikê is Poulipoula, which has been identified with Phulpâdâ or old Surat, but is too far south. Bilimora is perhaps the most likely position for it, though the names do not correspond (unless Pouli is the Dravidian Puli or poli = a tiger, afterwards replaced by Bili = a cat). Ptolemy begins his list of the inland cities of Larikê with Agrinagara, which may with Yule be identified with
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Klaudios Ptolemaios. Âgar, thirty-five miles north-east of Ujjain, and the Âkara of inscriptions. The next town is Siripalla, which has not been identified, but should be looked for about thirty miles to the south-east of Agar, not far from Shâhjahânpur. The modern name would probably be Shirol. Bammogoura must be identified, not with Pawangad (Yule), but with Hiuen Tsiang’s “city of the Brâhmans” (Beal, Si-yu-ki, II. 262), 200 li (about 33 miles) to the north-west of the capital of Mâlava in his time. The distance and direction bring us nearly to Jaora. Sazantion and Zerogerei have not been satisfactorily identified but may provisionally be placed at Ratlâm and Badnawar respectively, or Zêrogerei may be Dhâr as Yule suggested. Ozênê the capital of Tiastanês is Ujjain the capital of the Kshatrapa Cashṭana who reigned c. 130 a.d. His kingdom included Western Mâlwâ, West Khándesh, and the whole of Gujarát south of the Mahî. His grandson Rudradâman (a.d. 150) tells us in his Girnâr inscription (I. A. VII. 259) that his own kingdom included also Mârwâr Sindh and the lower Panjâb. Next to Ujjain Ptolemy mentions Minnagara, which must have been somewhere near Mânpur. Then we come to Tiatoura or Chândor (Yule) on the ridge which separates Khándesh from the valley of the Godâvari, and finally on that river itself Nasika the modern Nâsik. It is very doubtful whether Nâsik at any time formed part of the dominions of Cashṭana, since we know from the inscriptions in the Nâsik caves that the Kshatrapas were driven out of that part of the country by Gautamîputra Śâtakarṇi, the father of Ptolemy’s contemporary Pulumâyi. Ptolemy probably found Nâsik mentioned in one of his lists as on a road leading from Ujjain southwards and he concluded that they belonged to the same kingdom.

Ariakê of the Sadinoi included the coast of the Konkan as far south as Baltipatna (near Mahâd) and the Deccan between the Godâvari and the Kṛishṇa. The name occurs in Varâha Mihira’s Bṛihat Saṁhitâ XIV. in the form Âryaka. The tribal name Sadinoi is less easy to explain. The suggested connection with the word Sâdhana as meaning an agent (Lassen) and its application to the Kshatrapas of Gujarát, are not tenable. The only authority for this meaning of Sâdhana is Wilson’s Sanskrit Dictionary, and at this time it is certain that Ariakê belonged, not to the Kshatrapas of Gujarát, but to the Śâtakarṇis of Paithan on the Godâvari. Bhândârkar’s identification of the Sadinoi with Varâha Mihira’s Śântikas seems also somewhat unsatisfactory. Ptolemy’s name may possibly be a corruption of Śâtakarṇi or Śâtavâhana. The coast towns of this region were Soupara (Supârâ near Bassein), south of which Ptolemy places the river Goaris (Vaitaraṇî), Dounga (perhaps Dugáḍ ten miles north of Bhiwndi) south of which is the Bênda river (Bhiwndî Creek), Simylla, a mart and a cape, the Automula and Perimula of Pliny and the modern Cheul (Chemula); Milizêgyris an island, the same as the Melizêigara of the Periplus and (probably) as the Sigerus of Pliny and the modern Janjîra; Hippokoura, either Ghodegâon or Kuḍâ (Yule) in Kolâbâ district; Baltipatna, probably the Palaipatmai of the Periplus and the same as Pâl near Mahâd.

The inland dominions of the Sadinoi were much more extensive than their coast line. Ptolemy gives two lists of cities, one of those lying to the west (i. e. north) of the Bênda, whose course in the Deccan represents the Bhîmâ river, and the other of those between the Bênda and the Pseudostomos (here the Mâlprabhâ and Kṛishṇa or possibly the Tungabhadra with its tributaries). The most easterly towns in the first list, Malippala and Sarisabis, are not satisfactorily identified, but must be looked for in the Nizâm’s country to the south-east of Haidarâbâd. Next comes Tagara mentioned in the Periplus (chapter 51) as ten days east from Paithan, and
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Klaudios Ptolemaios. therefore about the latitude of Kulbarga, with which it is identified by Yule. The distance and direction make its identification with Deogir (Wilford and others), Junnar (Bhagwanlâl), or Kolhâpur (Fleet) impossible. The best suggestion hitherto made is that it is Dârur or Dhârur (Bhândârkar), but Dârur in the Bhîr district is too far north, so Dhârur fifty miles west of Haidarâbâd must be taken as the most likely site. Next to Tagara Ptolemy mentions Baithana, which is the Paithana of the Periplus and the modern Paithan on the Godâvari. It is called by our author the capital of Siroptolemaios, who is the Śrî-Pulumâyi of the Nâsik cave inscriptions. Next to Baithana comes Deopali, which may safely be identified with the modern Deoli in the suburbs of Ahmadnagar. Gamaliba, the next stage, must be placed somewhere on the line between Ahmednagar and Junnar, which latter ancient town is to be identified with Ptolemy’s Omênogara, although this name is not easy to explain.

The second list of towns in Ariakê begins with Nagarouris (Nagarapurî) which probably represents Poona which even then must have been a place of importance, being at the head of the great road down the Bhorghat. Tabasô (compare Varâha Mihira’s Tâpasâśrâmâḥ and Ptolemy’s own Tabasoi) may be the holy city of Pandharpur. Indê has retained its ancient name (Indî in the north of the Bîjâpur district). Next follows Tiripangalida (Tîkota in the Kurundwâd State ?) and then Hippokoura, the capital of Baleokuros. Dr. Bhândârkar has identified this king with the Vilivâyakûra of coins found in the Kolhápur state. His capital may possibly be Hippargi in the Sindgi taluka of the Bîjâpur district. Soubouttou, the next town on Ptolemy’s list, is not identifiable, but the name which follows, Sirimalaga, must be Sirnâl in the Bîjâpur taluka of the same district.

Kalligeris may be identified not with Kaṇhagiri (McCrindle) but with Galgali at the crossing of the Kṛishṇa, and Modogoulla is not Mûdgal (McCrindle) but Mudhol on the Ghâtprabhâ. Petirgala should probably read Penengala, and would then represent the old town of Panangala or Hongal in the Dhârvâḍ district. The last name on the list is Banaouasei, which is Vanavâsî, about ten miles from Sirsi in Kanara, a very old town where a separate branch of the Śâtakarṇis once ruled.

The Pirate Coast is the next division of Western India described by Ptolemy, who mentions five sea-ports but only two inland cities. It is clear that the pirates were hemmed in on the land side by the dominions of the Śâtakarṇis, and that they held but little territory above the ghâts, though their capital Mousopallê was in that region. The places on the coast from north to south were Mandagara, the Mandagara of the Periplus (chapter 53) which has been satisfactorily identified with Mandangaḍ to the south of the Bânkot creek.

Byzantion, which, as Dr. Bhândârkar first pointed out, is the Vaijayantî of inscriptions may be placed either at Chiplun or at Dábhol at the mouth of the Vâsishṭhî river. Chiplun is the only town of great antiquity in this part of the Koṅkaṇ, and if it is not Vaijayantî Ptolemy has passed over it altogether. The similarity of the names has suggested the identification of Byzantion with Jaygaḍ (Bhândârkar) or Vijayadrug (Vincent), but both these places are comparatively modern. There are indeed no very ancient towns in the Koṅkaṇ between Saṅgamêshvar and the Sâvantvâḍi border.

Khersonêsos is generally admitted to be the peninsula of Goa.

Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Klaudios Ptolemaios. Armagara is placed a little to the north of the river Nanagouna and may be represented by Cape Ramas in Portuguese territory.

The river Nanagouna here is generally supposed to be the Kâlînadî, though in its upper course it seems to represent the Taptî, and a confusion with the Nânâ pass led Ptolemy to bring it into connection with the rivers Goaris and Bênda (Campbell).

Nitra, the southernmost mart on the pirate coast, is the Nitrias of Pliny, and has been satisfactorily identified by Yule with Mangalor on the Nêtravatî.

The inland cities of the Pirates are Olokhoira and Mousopallê the capital, both of which must be sought for in the rugged country about the sources of the Kṛishṇa and may provisionally be identified with the ancient towns of Karâḍ and Karvîr (Kolhápur) respectively. To complete Ptolemy’s account of this coast it is only necessary to mention the islands of Heptanêsia (Burnt Islands ?) Trikadiba and Peperinê. We are not here concerned with his account of the rest of India.

Bardesanês.Bardesanês met at Babylon certain envoys sent from India to the emperor Antoninus Pius (a.d. 154–181) and received from Damadamis and Sandanês, who were of their number, accounts of the customs of the Brâhmans and of a rock temple containing a statue of Śiva in the Ardhanârî form. Lassen (III. 62 and 348) connects Sandanês with the Sadinoi and places the temple in Western India, but neither of these conclusions is necessary. The object of the embassy is unknown.

Periplus.The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, formerly though wrongly attributed to Arrian (150 a.d.), is an account of the Egyptian trade with East Africa and India, written by a merchant of Alexandria for the use of his fellows. It is preserved in a single manuscript which in some places is very corrupt. The age of this work has been much disputed: the chief views as to this matter are,

• (i) that the Periplus was written before Pliny and made use of by him (Vincent, Schwanbeck, and Glaser). The arguments of Vincent and Schwanbeck are refuted by Müller (Geogr. Gr. Min. I. xcviii.) Glaser’s case is (Ausland 1891, page 45) that the Malikhas of the Periplus is Malchos III. of Nabathæa (a.d. 49–71), that the Periplus knows Meroê as capital of Ethiopia, while at the time of Nero’s expedition to East Africa (a.d. 68), it had almost vanished, and lastly that the author of the Periplus is Basilis or Basilês, whom Pliny names as an authority for his Book VI. It may be replied that Malikhas is the title Malik and may have been applied to any Arab Sheikh (Reinaud): that the Periplus does not with certainty mention Meroê at all: and that Basilis whether or not a contemporary of Ptolemy Philadelphos was at any rate earlier than Agatharkhidês (c. 200 b.c.), who quotes him (Geog. Gr. Min. I. 156);
• (ii) that the Periplus was written at the same time as Pliny’s work, but neither used the other (Salmasius). This view is refuted by Müller (op. cit. page 155);
• (iii) that the Periplus was written after 161 a.d. (Dodwell); Müller has shown (ibid.) that Dodwell’s arguments are inconclusive;
• (iv) the received view that the Periplus was written between a.d. 80 and a.d. 89 (Müller);
• (v) that the Periplus was written about the middle of the third century (Reinaud Mém. de l’Ac. des Inscr. XXIV. Pt. ii. translated in I. A. VIII. pages 330ff).

Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Periplus. The only choice lies between the view of Müller and that of Reinaud. Müller argues for a date between a.d. 80 and a.d. 89, because the Periplus knows no more than Pliny of India beyond the Ganges, whereas Ptolemy’s knowledge is much greater: because the Periplus calls Ceylon Palaisimoundou, which is to Ptolemy (VII. iv. 1) an old name: because the Nabathæan kingdom, which was destroyed a.d. 105, was still in existence at the time of the Periplus: because the Periplus account of Hippalos shows it to be later than Pliny: and because the Periplus mentions king Zôskalês, who must be the Za Hakalê of the Abyssinian lists who reigned a.d. 77–89. It may be replied that the Periplus is not a geography of Eastern Asia, but a guide book for traders with certain ports only: that Ptolemy must have found in his lists three names for Ceylon, Taprobanê, Palaisimoundou, and Salikê, and that he has wrongly separated Palai from Simoundou, taking it to mean “formerly” and therefore entered Simoundou as the old and Salikê as the modern name,[2] whereas all three names were in use together: that the Nabathæan king Malikhas was simply the Sheikh of the tribe (Reinaud), and points to no definite date: that the Periplus’ account of Hippalos is certainly later than Pliny: and that the Zôskalês of the Periplus is the Za Sâgal or Za Asgal of the Abyssinian lists, who reigned a.d. 246–47 (Reinaud).

It follows that Reinaud’s date for the Periplus (a.d. 250) is the only one consistent with the facts and especially with the Indian facts. As will appear below, the growth of the Hippalos legend since Pliny’s time, the rival Parthians in Sindh, the mention of Mambaros and the supplanting of Ozênê by Minnagara as his capital since Ptolemy’s time, the independence of Baktria, and the notices of Saraganês and Sandanês, are all points strongly in favour of Reinaud’s date.

In the time of the Periplus the ships carrying on the Indian trade started from Myos Hormos (near Ras Abu Somer) or Berenikê (in Foul Bay) and sailed down the Red Sea to Mouza (Musa twenty-five miles north of Mokhâ), and thence to the watering place Okêlis (Ghalla) at the Straits. They then followed the Arabian coast as far as Kanê (Hisn Ghurâb in Hadramaut) passing on the way Eudaimôn Arabia (Aden) once a great mart for Indian traders, but lately destroyed by king Elisar (Müller’s conjecture for ΚΑΙΣΑΡ of the MS.) From Kanê the routes to India diverge, some ships sailing to the Indus and on to Barygaza, and others direct to the ports of Limyrikê (Malabár Coast). There was also another route to Limyrikê, starting from Arômata (Cape Guardafui). In all three voyages the ships made use of the monsoon, starting from Egypt in July. The monsoon was called Hippalos, according to the Periplus (chapter 57), after the navigator who first discovered the direct course across the sea, and it has been inferred from Pliny’s words (VI. 23) that this pilot lived in the middle of the first century a.d. But Pliny’s own account shows that, as we should expect, the progress from a coasting to a direct voyage was a gradual one, with several intermediate stages, in all of which the monsoon was more or less made use of. There was therefore no reason for naming the wind from the pilot who merely made the last step. Further though Pliny knows Hippalus as the local name of the monsoon wind in the eastern seas, he says nothing of its having been the name of the inventor of the direct course. The inference seems to be that Hippalos the pilot is the child of a seaman’s yarn arising out of the local name of
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Periplus. the monsoon wind, and that his presence in the Periplus and not in Pliny shows that the former writer is much later than the latter.

The merchant bound for Skythia (Sindh) before he reaches land, which lies low to the northward, meets the white water from the river Sinthos (Indus) and water snakes (chapter 38). The river has seven mouths, small and marshy all but the middle one, on which is the port of Barbarikon (Shâhbandar, Haig, page 31) whence the merchants’ wares are carried up by river to the capital Minnagar (near Shâhdâdpur, Haig, page 32), which is ruled by Parthians who constantly expel one another (chapter 39). These contending Parthians must have been the remnant of the Karên Pahlavs who joined with the Kushâns to attack Ardeshir Pâpakân (Journ. As. [1866] VII. 134). The imports are clothing, flowered cottons, topazes, coral, storax, frankincense, glass vessels, silver plate, specie, and wine: and the exports costus (spice), bdellium (gum), yellow dye, spikenard, emeralds, sapphires, furs from Tibet, cottons, silk thread, and indigo. The list of imports shows that the people of Skythia were a civilised race and by no means wild nomads.

The Periplus next (chapter 40) gives an accurate account of the Ran (Eirinon) which in those days was probably below sea level (Haig, page 22, Burnes’ Travels into Bokhara, III. 309ff), and was already divided into the Great and the Little. Both were marshy shallows even out of sight of land and therefore dangerous to navigators. The Ran was then as now bounded to south and west by seven islands, and the headland Barakê (Dvârakâ) a place of special danger of whose neighbourhood ships were warned by meeting with great black water-snakes.

The next chapter (41) describes the gulf of Barygaza (gulf of Cambay) and the adjoining land, but the passage has been much mangled by the copyist of our only MS. and more still by the guesses of editors. According to the simplest correction (ἥροςτης’ Αριακησχωρα) our author says that next after Barakê (Dvârakâ) follows the gulf of Barygaza and the country towards Ariakê, being the beginning of the kingdom of Mambaros and of all India. Mambaros may possibly be a corruption of Makhatrapos or some similar Greek form of Mahâkshatrapa, the title of the so-called “Sâh Kings” who ruled here at this period (a.d. 250). According to the reading of the MS. the author goes on to say that “the inland part of this country bordering on the Ibêria (read Sabiria = Sauvîra) district of Skythia is called … (the name, perhaps Maru, has dropped out of the text), and the sea-coast Syrastrênê (Surâshṭra).” The country abounded then as now in cattle, corn, rice, cotton and coarse cotton cloth, and the people were tall and dark. The capital of the country was Minnagara whence much cotton was brought down to Barygaza. This Minnagara is perhaps the city of that name placed by Ptolemy near Mânpur in the Vindhyas, but it has with more probability been identified with Junâgad (Bhagvânlâl) which was once called Manipura (Kath. Gaz. 487). Our author states that in this part of the country were to be found old temples, ruined camps and large wells, relics (he says) of Alexander’s march, but more probably the work of Menandros and Apollodotos. This statement certainly points to Kâthiâvâḍa rather than to Mânpur. The voyage along this coast from Barbarikon to the headland of Pâpikê (Gopnâth) near Astakapra (Hâthab) and opposite to Barygaza (Broach) was one of 3000 stadia = 300 miles, which is roughly correct. The next chapter (42) describes the northern part of the gulf of Cambay as 300 stadia wide and running northward to the river Maïs (Mahî). Ships bound for Barygaza steer first northward past the island
Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Periplus. Baiônes (Peram) and then eastward towards the mouth of the Namnadios (Narmadâ) the river of Broach. The navigation (chapter 43) is difficult by reason of rocks and shoals such as Hêrônê (perhaps named from some wreck) opposite the village of Kammôni (Kim) on the eastern shore and by reason of the current on the western near Pâpikê (perhaps a sailor’s name meaning Unlucky). Hence the government sends out fishermen in long boats called Trappaga or Kotumba (Kotia) to meet the ships (chapter 44) and pilot them into Barygaza, 300 stadia up the river, by towing and taking advantage of the tides. In this connection our author gives a graphic description of the Bore in the Narbadâ (chapter 45) and of the dangers to which strange ships are exposed thereby (chapter 46).

Inland from Barygaza (that is, from the whole kingdom, which, as we have seen, bordered on Sauvîra or Multân) lay (chapter 47) the Aratrioi (Araṭṭas of the Mahâbhârata and Purâṇas, who lived in the Panjâb), the Arakhôsioi (people of eastern Afghanistan), Gandaraioi (Gandhâra of N.-W. Panjâb), Proklais (near Peshâwar), and beyond them the Baktrianoi (of Balkh) a most warlike race, governed by their own independent sovereigns. These last are probably the Kushâns who, when the Parthian empire fell to pieces in the second quarter of the third century, joined the Karên Pahlavs in attacking Ardeshir. It was from these parts, says our author, that Alexander marched into India as far as the Ganges—an interesting glimpse of the growth of the Alexander legend since the days of Arrian (a.d. 150). Our author found old drakhmai of Menandros and Apollodotos still current in Barygaza.

Eastward in the same kingdom (chapter 48) is the city of Ozênê; which was formerly the capital, whence onyxes, porcelain, muslins, and cottons are brought to Barygaza. From the country beyond Proklais came costus, bdellium, and spikenard of three kinds, the Kattybourine, the Patropapigic, and the Kabalitic (this last from Kábul).

We learn incidentally that besides the regular Egyptian trade Barygaza had commercial relations with Mouza in Arabia (chapter 21) with the East African coast (chapter 14) and with Apologos (Obollah) at the head of the Persian Gulf and with Omana on its eastern shore (chapter 36). The imports of Barygaza were wine, bronze, tin and lead, coral and gold stone (topaz ?), cloth of all sorts, variegated sashes (like the horrible Berlin wool comforters of modern days), storax, sweet clover, white glass, gum sandarac, stibium for the eyes, and gold and silver coin, and unguents. Besides, there were imported for the king costly silver plate, musical instruments (musical boxes are still favoured by Indian royalty), handsome girls for the harem (these are the famous Yavanî handmaids of the Indian drama), high-class wine, apparel and choice unguents, a list which shows that these monarchs lived in considerable luxury. The exports of Barygaza were spikenard, costus, bdellium, ivory, onyxes, porcelain, box-thorn, cottons, silk, silk thread, long pepper (chillies), and other wares from the coast ports.

From Barygaza our author rightly says (chapter 50) that the coast trends southward and the country is called Dakhinabadês (Dakshiṇâpatha): much of the inland country is waste and infested by wild beasts, while populous tribes inhabit other regions as far as the Ganges. The chief towns in Dakhinabadês (chapter 51) are Paithana (Paithan) twenty days journey south of Barygaza and Tagara (Dhârur) a very large city ten days east of Paithana. From Paithana come onyxes, and from Tagara cottons muslins and other local wares from the (east) coast.

Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Periplus. The smaller ports south of Barygaza are Akabarou (perhaps the Khabirun of Mahomedan writers and the modern Kâvêrî the river of Nâusâri) Souppara (Supârâ near Bassein) and Kalliena, which was made a mart by the elder Saraganês, but much injured when Sandanês became its master, for from his time Greek vessels visiting the port are sent under guard to Barygaza. This interesting statement is one of the clearest indications of the date of the Periplus. As Bhândârkar has shown, the elder Saraganês implies also a younger, who can be no other than Yajñaśrî Śâtakarṇi (a.d. 140), and the Periplus must be later than his time. The Sandanês of the text must have been a ruler of Gujarát and may be identified with the Kshatrapa Saṅghadâman (a.d. 224).

South of Kalliena (chapter 53) were Sêmylla (Chaul) Mandagora (Mandangaḍ) Palaipatmai (Pâl near Mahâd) Melizeigara (probably Janjîra) and Byzantion (Chiplun). The words which follow probably give another name of Byzantion “which was formerly also called Turannosboas,” the name Toparon being a misunderstanding (Müller, Geogr. Gr. Min. I. 296). South of this are the islands of Sêsekreienai (Burnt Islands), Aigidioí (Angediva), Kaineitai (Island of St. George) near the Khersonêsos (Goa), and Leukê (Laccadives ?) all pirate haunts. Next comes Limyrikê (the Tamil country) the first marts of which are Naoura (Cannanor or Tellichery, rather than Honávar, which is too far north) and Tyndis (Kaḍaluṇḍi near Bepur) and south of these Muziris (Kranganur) and Nelkynda (Kallaḍa). Tyndis and Muziris were subject to Kêprobotras (Keralaputra that is the Cera king) and Nelkynda to Pandion (the Pâṇḍya king of Madura). Muziris was a very prosperous mart trading with Ariakê (North Konkan) as well as Egypt. Nelkynda was up a river 120 stadia from the sea, ships taking in cargo at the village of Bekarê at the mouth of the river. Our author gives an interesting account of the trade at these ports and further south as well as on the east coast, but we are not concerned with this part of his work.

Markianos.Markianos of Hîrakleia about the year 400 a.d. is the leading geographer of the period following Ptolemy, but his work consisted chiefly in corrections of Ptolemy’s distances taken from an obscure geographer named Prôtagoras. He adds no new facts to Ptolemy’s account of western India.

Stephanos.Stephanos of Byzantium wrote about 450 a.d. (or at any rate later than Markianos, whom he quotes) a huge geographical dictionary of which we have an epitome by one Hermolaos. The Indian names he gives are chiefly taken from Hekataios, Arrianos, and especially from a poem called Bassarika on the exploits of Dionysos, by a certain Dionysos. But his geography is far from accurate: he calls Barakê (Dvârakâ) an island, and Barygaza (Broach) a city, of Gedrôsia. Among the cities he names are Argantê (quoted from Hekataios), Barygaza (Broach), Boukephala (Jalâlpur), Byzantion (Chiplun), Gêreia, Gorgippia, Darsania famous for woven cloths, Dionysopolis (Nysa ?), Kathia (Multân ?), Kaspapyros and Kaspeiros (Kaśmîr), Margana, Massaka (in Swât), Nysa, Palimbothra (Pâṭaliputra), Panaioura near the Indus, Patala (thirty-five miles south-east of Haidarâbâd, Sindh), Rhodoê, Rhôganê, Rhôn in Gandarikê, Saneia, Sesindion, Sinda on the great gulf (perhaps Ptolemy’s Asinda, Vaḍnagar), Sôlimna, and Taxila. He also names a number of tribes, of whom none but the Orbitai (Makrân) the Pandai (Pâṇḍya) Bôlingæ (Bhâulingi Sâlvas) and possibly the Salangoi (Sâlaṅkâyana) belong to the western coast.

Appendix VI.
Early Greeks and Romans.
Kosmas. Kosmas.Kosmas Indikopleustes, shipman and monk, who wrote his Topographia Christiana between a.d. 530 and 550, is the last of the ancient writers who shows independent knowledge of India. He says that Sindu (Sindh), is where India begins, the Indus being the boundary between it and Persia. The chief ports of India are Sindu (Debal), which exports musk and nard: Orrhotha (Surâshṭra that is Verâval) which had a king of its own: Kalliana (Kalyân) a great port exporting brass, and sîsam (blackwood) logs and cloth having a king of its own and a community of Christians under a Persian bishop: Sibor which also had a king of its own and therefore cannot be Supârâ, which is too close to Kalliana, but must be Goa, the Sindabur of the Arabs: Parti, Mangaruth (Mangalor), Salopatana, Nalopatana, and Pudopatana which are the five marts of Malê the pepper country (Malabâr), where also there are many Christians. Five days’ sail south of Malê lay Sielediba or Taprobanê (Ceylon), divided into two kingdoms in one of which is found the hyacinth-stone. The island has many temples, and a church of Persian Christians, and is much resorted to by ships from India Persia and Ethiopia dealing in silk, aloewood, cloves, sandalwood, &c. On the east coast of India is Marallo (Morava opposite Ceylon) whence conch-shells are exported: Then Kaber (Kaveripatam or Pegu. Yule’s Cathay Introd. page clxxviii.) which exports Alabandinum; further on is the clove country and furthest of all Tzinista (China) which produces the silk. In India further up the country, that is further north, are the White Ounoi or Hûṇas who have a king named Gollas (Mihirakula of inscriptions) who goes forth to war with 1000 elephants and many horsemen and tyrannises over India, exacting tribute from the people. His army is said to be so vast as once to have drunk dry the ditch surrounding a besieged city and marched in dryshod.

In his book XI. Kosmas gives some account of the wild beasts of India, but this part of his work does not require notice here.

This is the last glimpse we get of India before the Arabs cut off the old line of communication with the Empire by the conquest of Egypt (a.d. 641–2).

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[1] Contributed by Mr. A. M. T. Jackson, M.A., I.C.S. [↑]

[2] We learn from Pliny (VI. 22) that Palaisimoundou was the name of a town and a river in Ceylon, whence the name was extended to the whole island. [↑]