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NOVEMBER, 1884.]
PTOLEMY'S GEOG. BK. VII, CH. 1, $ 56.
355
advance southwards till they had overrun in suc. Sindh. That Abiria is the Ophir of Scripture cession Eastern Baktriana, the basin of the is an opinion that has been maintained by schoKophês, the basin of the Etymander with Ara. lars of eminence. khôsia, and finally the valley of the Indus and Syrastrênê represents the Sanskrit Surashtra Syrastrênê. This great horde of the Yetha was (the modern Sorath) which is the name in the divided into several tribes, whereof the most Mahabharata and the Puranas for the Peninsula powerful was that called in the Chinese annals of Gujarat. In after times it was called Valabhi. Kwei-shwang. It acquired the supremacy over Pliny (lib. VI, c. xx) in his enumeration of the other tribes, and gave its name to the king. the tribes of this part of India mentions the dom of the Yetha. They are identical with the Horatae, who have, he says, a fine city, defend. Kus hans. The great King Kanishka, who ed by marshes, wherein are kept man eating was converted to Buddhism and protected that faith crocodiles that prevent all entrance except by was a Kushan. He reigned in the first century of a single bridge. The name of this people is the Christian æra and ruled from Baktriana tono doubt a corruption of Sorah. They have an Kasmir, and from the Oxus to Surashtra. These inveterato propensity to sound the letter S as Kushans of the Panjab and the Indus are no an H. others than the Indo-Skythians of the Greeks. Ptolemy distributes into six groups the names In the Rdjatarangini they are called Saka and of the 41 places which he specifies as belonging to Turushka (Turks). Their prosperity could not the Indus valley and its neighbourhood. The have been of very long duration, for the towns of the second group indicate by their relative author of the Periplús, who wrote about half a positions that they were successive stages on the century after Kanishka's time mentions that
great caravan route which ran parallel with the " Minnagar the metropolis of Skythia was gov. western bank of the river all the way from the erned by Parthian princes" and this statement Köphês junction downward to the coast. The is confirmed by Parthiary coins being found towns of the fourth group were in like manner everywhere in this part of the country. Max Buccessive stages on another caravan route, that Müller, in noticing that the presence of Turanian which on the eastern side of the river traversed tribes in India as recorded by Chinese historians the country from the great confluence with the is fully confirmed by coins and inscriptions and combined rivers of the Panjab downward to the the traditional history of the country such as it Delta. The towns of the first group (5 in number) is, adds that nothing attests the presence of belonged to the upper part of the valley, and were these tribes more clearly than the blank in the situated near the Köphês junction. They are Brahmanical literature of India froin the first mentioned in a list by themselves, as they did not century before to the 3rd after our æra. He lie on the great line of communication above proposes therefore to divide Sanskrit literature mentioned. The third group consists of the two into two-the one which he would call the towns which were the chief marts of commerce ancient and natural) before, and the other (which in the Delta. The towns of the fifth group (7 in he would call the modern and artificial) after the number) lay at distances more or less considerable Turanian invasion. In his Indo-Skythia Ptolemy from the eastern side of the Delta. The towns includes Patalên ê, Abiria and Syras. of the sixth group were included in the territory of trên 8. The name does not occur in Roman the Khatriaioi, which extended on both sides authore.
of the river from its confluence with the Panjab Patalê nê, so called from its capital Patala, rivers as far as the Delta. None of them can was the delta at the mouth of the Indus. It was now be identified (See Etude, pp. 234 sqq.) not quite so large as the Egyptian delta with which and of the first group-Artoarta, Sa bana, the classical writers frequently compare it. Before | Kodrana cannot be identified. its conquest by the Skythians it had been subject | Andrapana:-Cunningham (p. 86) thinks to the Greco-Baktrian kings. Its reduction to this is probably Draband, or Deráband, near Deratheir authority is attributed by Strabo (lib. XI, c. Ismail Khân. xii, 1) to Menander or to Dêmetrios, the son of Banagara (for Bana-nagara):-Banna or Eutlıydêmos.
Banu is often cited as the name of a town and Abiria:-The country of the Abhira B (the a district that lay on the line of communicaAhirs of common speech) lay to the east of the tion between Kabul and the Indus. It was visited Indus, above where it bifurcates to form the delta. both by Fa-Hian and Hiuen-Tsiang. The former In Sanskrit works their name is employed to de- calls the country Po-na, i.e., Bana. The latter signate generally the pastoral tribes that inhabit calls it Fa-la-na, whence Cunningham conjec. the lower districts of the North-West as far as tures that the original name was Varana or Barna
