Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c10.48

c10.48

As we have seen, the most important point in regard to the supposed existence of a ‘city of Bengala’ is that no such name of a great city is found in any of the numerous works of medieval Bengali literature. This question, usually ignored, has to be answered. Our answer to this question fully tallies with that of Hodivala who reached the same conclusion after throughly ransacking the available Muslim sources. In an attempt to locate the Mughal mint-town of Bangāla in Akbar’s empire, he says, ‘Briefly, there would appear to be *fairly good grounds* for thinking that *Bangāla* was not the real or fixed name of any town or city, but an alternative or honorific designation by which the *capital of the province at the time being* was known. Thus the *Bangāla* of Mun’im Khān’s time *might have been* Gaur, and it is not impossible that during the subsequent twenty years the name was sometimes applied to Tānda. The *Bangāla* of the coins of the 39th and following years of Akbar’s reign would, by parity of reasoning, be Akbarnagar.’”¹