The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c6.s1.t6.8

c6.s1.t6.8

It is much to be regretted that none of the names preserved by Ptolemy can be certainly identified with this city of the Brahmans. Parabali corresponds with it in position, and partly also in name, as the first two syllables, *Parab*, are not very different from *Baram*, and the termination, *ali*, may represent *thala* of *Brah-mathala*, or *Harmatelia*. After Ptolemy’s time we know nothing of Brâhmana until the Muhammadan conquest, a period of nearly six centuries. From the native histories, however, we learn that Brahmana was the chief city of one of the four governments* into which Sindh was divided during the rule of the Rais dynasty, or from A.D. 507 to 642, and that it continued to be so until the accession of Dâhir in A.D. 680, who made it the capital of the kingdom, after the destruction of Alor by the Indus. In A.D. 641 Sindh was visited by Hwen Thsang, whose account has already been noticed. He found the kingdom divided into the four districts, which for greater distinctness I have named Upper Sindh, Middle Sindh, Lower Sindh, and Kachh. The first has already been described in my account of Alor. The second, *O-fan-cha*, I have just identified with *Brâhmanâbâd*. M. Stanislas Julien transcribes the Chinese syllables as *Avaṇḍa*, for which it is difficult to find an exact equivalent. But I have a strong suspicion that it is only a variation of the name of *Brâhmana*, which was pronounced in many different ways, as Bâhmana, Bahmana, Bâbhana, Babhana, Bambhana.† Speaking of Mansura, which we know was quite close to Brâhmanâbâd, Ibn Haukal adds that the Sindhians call it *Bâmiwân*,‡ which Edrisi alters to *Mirmân*.§ But in his list of places in Sindh, Edrisi adds after Mansura the name of *Wándán*, or *Kándán*,* which I take to be only a various reading of Bâmanwâ, or, as the Sindhians would have pronounced it, *Vámanwá*, and *Vánwá*. The Chinese syllable *fan*, which is the well-known transcript of *Brahma*, is a notable example of this very contraction, and tends to confirm the opinion that *Avanda* is but a slight variation of *Báhmanwá*, or *Bráhmanábád*.