The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c6.s1.t11.7

c6.s1.t11.7

This statement of Ibn Batuta I would connect with the curious account of an Indian city in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ which is found in the story of Zobeide. According to the common edition, this lady sailed from the port of Bassora, and after twenty days anchored in the harbour of a large city in India, where on landing she found that the king and queen and all the people had been turned into stone. One person only had escaped the general transformation, and he was the king’s son, who had been brought up as a Muhammadan by his nurse, who was a Musalmâni slave. Now this legend appears to be the same as that of Raja Dilu and his brother Chota of the native histories of Sindh,* according to which Chota had become a Muhammadan, and when the city of Brâhmana was destroyed by an earthquake, on account of the wickedness of the king, Chota alone escaped. As a similar story is told of the ruin of all the chief cities in the Panjâb as well as in Sindh, the scene of the story in the ‘Arabian Nights’ may be fairly placed in Sindh; and as Debal was the only large city on the coast, and was besides the chief mart to which the Muhammadan merchants traded, it seems to me almost certain that it must be the Indian city in which Zobeide found all the people turned into stone.