Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/42

 XXXU

INTRODUCTION,

sucessful labours, his favourite resting-place during the rainymonths, and the recruiting-ground from which some of the chief

most

were drawn in. It long remained one of the principal seats of Buddhist learning, and six centuries after the foundation of the religion, contributed two of the great schools of doctors which attended the famous synod convened by the Scythian conqueror Kanishka at Cashmere. After a long blank, broken only by a few of the ridiculous and uninteresting fables with which a religious zeal embellished its claims, the next information is to be gained from the pages of Ptolemy, Avhose scanty contents are as important as they are He divides the country between three difficult to interpret; kingdoms that of the Tanganoi, whose southern limit was the Go^ra the Maraemdai, whose rule stretched through central Oudh deep into the heart of Bengal and the Amanichai or Manichai, in a narrow strip along the backs of the Ganges. South of these, and with a territory reaching from Allahabad to Gwalior, was Sandrabatis. The towns in Oudh proper were Heorta, Eappha, Baraita, Sapolas, and perhaps Taona. The most northern of the people are easily identified as the T^ngana, who brought the heroes of the Mahabharatha a tribute of horses and It is singular to find them here on the sole gold from the hills. occasion when authentic history records their name, and they must have been a mountain tribe, ethnically perhaps connected with the aboriginal Gonds and Tharus. The only trace of their

among

his

immediate

disciples

—





existence now surviving is the name of the small ponies of southern Nepal, which are called Tanghans in the same way as a horse The Maraemdai are of Arabian blood is known as an Arab. well known as a trans-Indus people. They may have conquered the territory ascribed to them in the first century B. C. at the time of the great Scythian invasion, and that they should be found here may point to the existence of a Scythian dynasty at Patna before the glories of the greater Guptas. Of the Amanichai (or Manichai) nothing is known ; but it is more probable that the town of Manikpur, which coincides with the position which the geographer assigns them, should owe its name to them than to the ubiquitous Manik Chand of Kanauj, whose date, at the end of the twelfth century, is far too late for many of the remains now to be found there. The probable conjecture that Sandrabatis is the Greek version of Chandravati is strengthened by the fact that the Sombansis (or Chhattris) of the lunar race, who now hold a diminished raj in Partabgarh, but were even in modern times of vastly greater importance than they are at present, cherish traditions of a great kingdom which their ancestors once ruled from