Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c10.6

c10.6

⁴ On the strength of Ibn Batūta’s reference to ‘Sudkawan (Sātgāon) and Bengala’ and to ‘Lakhnauti and Bengala’, it has been suggested that in these two early cases Bengala refers to the city and not to the country. There can be no doubt however that the names refer to provinces. According to Muslim authors both Rāl (Rādha) and Barind (Varendra) formed parts of Lakhnauti (Raychaudhuri, *Stud. Ind. Ant.*, p. 191). Similarly Bengala no doubt means the province of South-Eastern Bengal, sometimes also called Sonārgāon after its chief city. Orissa was usually called Jājnagar by Muslim authors. Such reference to Bihār, Lakhnauti, Bang and Jājnagar (*I. H. Q.*, *op. cit.*, p. 235) would, if we follow the said line of argument, suggest the existence also of a city called Bang. But this was never the case. Some later Muslim writers refer to East Bengal as *Bang* and to the whole of Bengal as *Bangāl*.