Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c14.9

c14.9

Commenting on the passages quoted from Elliot’s and Dowson’s work in his *Studies in Indo-Muslim History*, Hodivala says, “Dowson notes that Sanknāt is also written Sankāt and Saknāt and he asks if it is not Jagannāth. But Minhāj states a few lines lower down that Lakhmaṇa himself fled to Sanknāt and Bang and that ‘his sons are to this day rulers in the territory of Bang’. Now Vaṅga or Baṅga is the specific name of Eastern Bengal and we possess epigraphic evidence of Lakṣmaṇasena’s descendants having ruled for at least three generations (sic.) at Vikrampur near Sonārgāon in Dacca. Sanknāt may be a mistake for Sonārgāon or Songāon. A still nearer phonetic approach (sic.) would be Satgāon (sic. Sātgāon) and it is possible that Minhāj who knew little or nothing of Bengal geography has confused the two names. Hooghly district in which Satgāon (sic.) lay was under Hindu rule for long after the Muhammadan conquest of Lakhnautī.”¹ Unfortunately these suggestions about the location of Saknāt-Sankāt-Sanknāt of the *Tabaqāt-i-Nāṣirī* are equally untenable, although Hodivala is right in his criticism of the Jagannāth theory. Minhājuddīn stayed at Lakhnautī for over two years in 1242-45 A.D.² and could hardly have been as ignorant of the geography of Bengal as Hodivala takes him to have been. Sonārgāon was not a country and, since it was a city in Bang, it is certainly absurd to speak of one’s flight towards Sonārgāon and Bang. The arguments against the identification of Saknāt-Sankāt-Sanknāt with Jagannāth or Purī, offered by Hodivala himself, are equally applicable against its identification with Sātgāon which lay to the south of Nadīā unlike the Vikra-mapura region lying to its east.