Tribes in Ancient India c66.3

c66.3

The earliest definite mention of the country seems to have been made by Ptolemy. According to his description of India within the Ganges, Lārike lay to the east of Indo-Skythia along the sea-coast.¹ Lāṭadeśa in its Prākrit form Lārdeśa (the country of Lār) seems to have been a very early name for the territory of Gujrat and Northern Konkon,² and McCrindle conjectured that Lārike ‘may therefore be a formation from Lār with the Greek termination *ike* appended’.³ The name Lārdeśa probably survived the Hindu period, ‘for the sea to the west of that coast was in the early Muhammadan time called the sea of Lār, and the language spoken on its shores was called by Mas’ūdī, Lārī’.⁴