1920. | Numismatic Supplement No. XXXIV. 203 
‘‘a very great city inhabited by Moors,” which was called 
‘Bengala’ and had a very good harbour. (Hakluyt Society’s 
Edition, 178). Ludovico Varthema (1503-1508 A.C.) informs 
us that this ‘ Bengala’ was seven hundred miles distant from 
Tarnassari [Tenasserim]. It was one of the best cities he had 
seen, and its Sultan was a Moor who maintained ‘ two hundred 
tends e S4 auro 
the seat royall and Bengala are fair cities. Of this the Gulfe, 
sometimes called Gangeticus, now beareth name Golfo di 
(Voyages, V. 508). There is a reference to the city in 
Mandelslo also, though he himself was never in those parts 
himself. “En tirant vers le septentrional on trouve le 
royaume de Bengala, qui donne le nom a golfe que les 
anciens appellent Sinus Glangeticu ; ouve plusieurs 
ment that Dhakka was ‘ originally’ called ‘ Bengalah’ (B.M.C. Introd. 
liv). On turning for light to the authority cited (Arch. peers. XV. 
127), I found that it was grounded on nothing more than Cunningham’s 
given below: ‘‘ He [J. Taylor] thinks, apparently with good reason, 
that it [Dhakka] may be ‘ the city of Bengala’ mentioned by European 
travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Vhat tends to 
confirm this opinion of the identity of Dhakka and Bengala is, he says, the 
circumstance that ‘ only one of them is mentioned by the same traveller. 
Methold in enumerating the principal cities of Bengal, for instance, men- 
; ‘oh a 
de Wiequefort’s much-doctored 
English translation of 
i mention in it 
e 
own that Mandelslo’s work is ‘‘a faked 
book which has for long enjoyed an estimation wholly undeserved. 
J.R.A.S., 1915, pp. 245-254. 
