a 
Vol. IV, No. 5.] Notes on the Geography of Old Bengal. 283 
N.S. 
altogether abandoned. In the reign of ’Ala-ud-din Husain Shah, 
erous coins. During the rule of Husaini Pie uda, a 
name which began to be more comm akhnauti, flourished 
tly. Based on account of Portuguese travellers, who visited 
rauda first about 1535 A.D, Manuel de Faria y Souza wrote:— 
“The principal city Gouro ‘seated on the bank of the Ganges, 
“ three leagues in length, containing one million and two hundred 
“‘ thousand eae and well- fortified ; along the streets which are 
“wide and straight, rows of trees to shade the mrs which 
“ sometimes in ee numbers that some are trod to dea 
On oyrionth of a great shifting of the river course aces 
the seat of government was again changed to Tanda, sabe ec 
where the river bifurcated.2 The change was made in the time of 
Sulaiman Karani (972-980 H.). Except for a few months, in 983 
continue e the capital for nearly half a century. Gauda 
became deaddulated: and about 1588 Ralph Fitch “ passed the 
country of Gouren, where we found but few villages, but almost all 
wilderness, and saw many buffes, swine and deere, grass longer 
than a man, and very many tigers.”’ Sic transit gloria m 
Even at Tanda, the river course began to change, shiftin 
s g J 
eastwards, About 1588, Ralph Fitch noticed “Tanda standeth 
i nd added old whic 
artly in ah ge of this change, and partly from troubles in 
East Bengal, Islam Khan removed the seat of government to 
Dacca, ay Jahaigirnagar, about 1 . The river now changed 
again westwards, until it touched Agmahal uplands, and then 
Tanda came to be on its left bank,5 cut off from itssarkar. In 
Ww an 
alias Akbar-nagar) in Mansingh’s time. This change of capital 
did not last more than a quarter of a century. To check the 
poem ante of the eastern border, enpetially: t 
inroads, Nawab Shaista Khan again made Dacca the 
hedclanavtere, where the government remained until the final 


1 Portugues Asia, Stevens, 1698, vol. I, Chapter IX, pp. 415-6. 
2 Sarkar Tanda of Todarmal’s rent- roll lay west of the Ganges ; Ain-i 
Akbari, II, 129-130; J.R.A.S., 1896, 92-96. For the position of Tanda town, 
see specially the Akbar-ndma, Elliot, vi. 45. 
f 3H 
skiayith The Principal Navigations, Voyages, ¥e., reprint, Vol. V, 
on ‘4 Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Sc., reprint, Vol. V; 
1. 
5 Riy@-zus-Salatin, trans., Bib, Ind, Ed., p. 221. 
