________________
876
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1 884.
and then the Khrysoanas in about 161° 1° 20' and the other river is the Palandas.
Nearly all the rivers in the foregoing table have already been noticed, and we need here do little more than remind the reader how they have been identified. The two which flow from Bêpyrrhos into the Ganges are the Kausiki and the Tista. The Bê synga is the Bassein River or Western branch of the Irawadi. The Sêros enters the sea further eastward than any of the other rivers, probably in Champê, the Zaba of Ptolemy, while Lassen identifies it with the Mekong. The Daonas is no doubt the Brahmaputra, though Ptolemy, taking the estuary of the Mekong or Kamboja river to be its mouth, represents it as falling into the Great Galf. It was very probably also, to judge from the close resemblance of the names when the first two letters are transposed, the Oidanes of Artemidoros, who, according to Strabo (lib. XV, o. i, 72), describes it as a river that bred crocodiles and dolphins, and that flowed into the Ganges. Ourtius (lib. VIII, c. 9) mentions a river called the Dyardanes that bred the same creatures, and that was not so often heard of as the Ganges, because of its flowing through the remotest parts of India. This must have been the same river as the Oidanes or Doanas, and therefore the Brahmaputra. The Dôrias is a river that entered the Chinese Sea between the Mekong Estuary and the Sêros. The Sobanas is perhaps the river Meinam on which Bangkok, the Siamese capital, stands. The Attabas is very probably the Tavoy river which, though its course is comparatively very short, is more than a mile wide at its mouth, and would therefore be reckoned a stream of importance. The similarity of the names favours this identification. The Khrysoane is the eastern or Rangun arm of the Irawadi. The Palandas is probably the Salyaen River.
Ptolomy now proceeds to describe the interior of Transgangetic India, and begins with the tribes or nations that were located along the banks of the Ganges on its eastern side.
13. The regions of this Division lying along the course of the Ganges on its eastern side and furthest to the north are inhabited by the Ganga noi, through whose dominions flows the river Sarabos, and who have the following towns :Sapolos........................... 139° 20' 35° Storna ............................ 138° 40' 34° 40' Heorta ........... ........ 138° 30' 34° Rhappha ........................ 137° 40' 33° 40
Ganganoi should undoubtedly be read Tanganoi, as Tangana was the name given in
the heroic ages to one of the great races who occupied the regions along the eastern banks of the upper Ganges. Their territory probably stretched from the Råmganga river to the upper Sarayd, which is the Sarabos of Ptolemy, Their situation cannot be more precisely defined, as none of their towns named in the table can with certainty be recognized. "Concerning the people themselves," says Saint-Martin(Etude, pp. 327,328) "we are better informed. They are represented in the Mahabharata as placed between the Kirata and the Kulinda in the highlands which protected the plaing of Kôsala on the north. They were one of the barbarops tribes, which the Brahmanio Åryans, in pushing their conquests to the east of the Ganges and Jamna, drove back into the Himilayas or towards the Vindhyas. It is principally in the Vindhya regions that the descendants of the Tangana of classic times are now to be found. One of the Rajput tribes, well-known in the present day under the name of Tank or Tonk is settled in Robilkhand, the very district where the Mahabhdrata locates the Tangana and Ptolemy his Tanganoi. These Tank Rajputs extend westward to a part of the Dodb, and even as far as Gujarat, but it is in the race of the Dangnyas, spread over the entire length of the Vindhya Mountains and the adjacent territory from the southern borders of the ancient Magadha to the heart of Malwa to the north of the lower Narmada, it is in this numerous race, subdivided into clans without number, and which is called according to the districts inhabited Dhangis, Dhangars, Donga, &c. that we must search for the point of departure of the family and its primordial type. This type, which the mixture of Aryan blood has modified and ennobled in the tribes called Rajput, preserves its aboriginal type in the mass of mountain tribes, and this type is purely Mongolian, a living commentary on the appellation of Mlechha, or Barbarian, which the ancient Brahmanic books apply to the Tangana." (Conf. Brih. Sarh. ix, 17; x, 12; xiv, 12, 29; XVI, 6; XVII, 25; XXXI, 15 Ramdyana iv, 44, 20).
The towns, we have said, cannot be identified with certainty, but we may quote Wilford's views as to what places now represent them. He says (Asiat. Research. vol. XIV, p. 457): “The Bån or Saraban river was formerly the bed of the Ganges and the present bed to the eastward was also once the Ban or Saraban river. This Ptolemy mistook for the R&maganga, called also the B&n, Saraban and Saravati river, for the four towns which he placey on its banks, are either on the old or the new bed of the Ganges. Storna and spolo are Hastnaura, or Hastina-nagara on the old bed, and Sabal, now in ruins, on the eastern bank of
