Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/162

 143 over a space of 625 miles. ^ Below the deserts are the D a r i, the S u r ae, then deserts again for 1 87 miles,* these deserts encircling the fertile tracts just as the sea encircles islands.f Below these deserts we find the Maltecorse, Singhae, Marohae, Rarungte, Moruni.j: These inhabit the hills which in an unbroken IT DCXXV,—Y. 1. DCXXXV. Pliny, having given a general account of the basins of the Indus and the Uanges, proceeds to enumerate here the tribes which peopled tiie north of India. The names are obscnre, bat Lassen has identified one or two of them, and de Saint-Martin a considerable nnmber more. The tribes first mentioned in the list occupied the country extending from the Jamun& to the western coast about the mouth of the Narmadfi. The Cesi probably answer to the Khosas or Khasyas, a great tribe which from time immemorial has led a wandering life between Gujar&t, the lower Indus, and the JamunS. The name of the Cetriboni would seem to be a transcript of Ketrivani (for Kshatrivaneya). They may therefore have been a branch of the Kshatn (KhAtri), one of the impure tribes of the list of Manu (1. x. 12). The Megallsd must be identified with the Mavelas of Sansknt books, a great tribe described as settled to the west of the Jamuna. The Chrysei probably correspond to the Karoncha of the Puranic lists {Vishnu Pur. pp. 177, 186, note 13, and 351, &c.). The locality occupied by these and the two tribes mentioned after i^em must have lain to the north of the Ban, between the lower Indus and the chain of the Ar&vali mountains. t The Dhftrs inhabit still the banks of the lower Ghara and the parts contiguous to the valley of the Indus. Hiwen Thsang mentions, however, a land of Dara at the lower end of the gulf of Kachh, in a position which quite accords with that which Pliny assigns to them. The Surae, Sansk. ^lira, have their name preserved in " Saur," which designates a tribe settled along the Lower Indus — the mod^n repre- sentatives of the Saurabhira of the Harivamsa, They are placed with doubt by Lassen on the Lont about Sindri, but Yule places the Bolingao — Sanskrit, Bhaulingas — there. — Ed. hid. Ant. X Morunif &c. — v. 1. Moruntes, Masuse Pagungss, Lalii. Digitized by Google
 * CLXXXVIL—Y. 1. CLXXXVni.