2S6 H. Blochmann — History and Geography of Bengal. — No. III. [No. 3, 



of U'mardan being Amarakantak, the highest point and watershed of the 

 eastern parts of the Central Provinces. That rocky, wild, and inaccessible 

 region is scarcely a fit place for the capital of what must have been a large 

 state.* 



As the border land to the west of Jajnagar Major Raverty mentions 

 Garka-Katanga ; and then he says (p. 587), quoting the Mddan-i-Aklibdr 

 i Ahmadi, that " on the N. it is close to the Bhatah territory [the Bhati of 

 the A'in i Akbari], and S. is close to the Dakhan." But this is an extraordi- 

 nary confusion of names, partly due to the author of the lla'dan, especial- 

 ly if he wrote Bhatah with a long a. He means Bhat'h, or Bhat-ghora, the 

 mountainous tract south of Allahabad, whilst Bhati is the name of the Sun- 

 darban region along the Bay of Bengal. The Tabaqat is, indeed, the oldest 

 work in which Bhatghora is mentioned. The district was plundered by 

 Qamaruddin Timur Khan, who had also been fighting with the aboriginal 

 tribe of the Muasis.f In Major Raverty's quotation from the Jami'-utta- 

 wdrikli (a modern compilation without value), the Bhati-Sundarban is placed 

 West of Bengal ; % and in the quotation a little further on (which like the 

 preceding is taken from the Ain i Akbari), — " In the sarkar of Mangir, 

 " from the river Gang to the Koh i Sangin [the Stony Mountains], they 

 " have drawn a wall, and account it the boundary of Bengal", a wrong izafat 

 spoils the sense : Abul Fazl says that in Sirkar Munger, from the Ganges 

 to the mountains [Rajmahall Hills], they have drawn a stone wall, &c. He 

 means the stone wall near Gadhi or Garhi (Teliagarhi) . § 



We now turn to the middle period of the Muhammadan history of 

 Bengal, for the elucidation of which a few new and interesting particulars 

 have come to hand. They throw further light on the reigns of Raja Kans 

 and Mahmiid Shah I. 



Ita'ja' Ka'ns. 

 (A. H. 808 to 817 ; A. D. 1405 to 1414.) 



It was mentioned before that Mr. Westmacott identified Raja Kans 

 with the well known, but hitherto legendary, Raja, or Hakim, Ganesh of 

 Dinajpur. I look upon this identification as open to doubt. ' Ganesh ' is 

 a very common name, and the god with the elephant's trunk is so generally 



* The name of Hill Gundamardan, in Long. 83 Q and Lat. 20° 55', in Borasambhar, 

 has the same ending as U'mardan. 



f Vide Tabaqat, Ed. Bibl. Indica, p. 247 ; Beanies, Elliot's Paces of the N". "W. 

 Provinces, II, 164 ; J. A. S. B., 1874, Pt. I, p. 240, note. 



% Regarding the ' Manik,' vide J. A. S. B., 1874, Pt. I, p. 204. 



§ Major Paverty, on p. 592, mentions the Afghan Zamindar of Birbhum and Jdt- 

 nagar — the italics, I daresay, imply a reference to Jajnagar. The Zamindar' s family, 

 the descendants of a real Pa^han for once, are well-known ; but Jdtnagar is a mistake 

 of ' Pajnagar', 



