201 
1892.] H. G. Raverty —The Mihran of Sind and its Tributaries. 
notice the fact of its appearance in the printed text, and shall not follow 
it. The statement, that Muhammad, son of Kasim named Bahman-no, 
“ Al-Mansuriyat,” shakes my faith in Bu-Rihan’s accounts considerably, 
gays that Jhotah or Oli hotah, and his Musalman wife, reached the town of Siw-istan, 
that is the town or chief town of the Siw-istan district, and which, in his day—about 
1035-40 H. (1625-1631 A. D.)—was called Sihwan. 
Just thirty years before this, Abu-1-Fazl, in his A’in-i-Akbari, described Bahman- 
abad, but his master’s Hindu proclivities led him to alter or mistake the name for 
Brahman-abad, he not perceiving how strange a Sindi—Sanskrit—proper name ap¬ 
peared with a Persian termination. He says : “ In early times Brahman-abad was 
the seat of government. It was a large city, and its fortifications had fourteen 
hundred towers, and the distance between each was one tandb. To this day, of the 
towers and walls, numerous indications remain. After Brahman-abad Alor became 
the capital.” The tandb measure consisted then of sixty ildhi gaz, each of about 
thirty inches, bat, we cannot calculate the extent of the walls, because we do not 
know the diameter of the towers. I have elsewhere mentioned the terrible error 
he makes in mistaking Bakliar for the site of Mansuriyah ; and he seems to have 
been totally ignorant that Mansuriyah lay close to Bahman-abad. 
Mr. A. H. Bellasis, of the Bombay Civil Service, who was the discoverer of the 
ruins of this ancient city in 1854, identified the great mound—the tall, but not 
“Thul” nor “Tul”—'with Bahman-abad itself, and I think correctly so. He says 
in his account of it: “ On first entering Brahmanabad [he, too, calls it by the Brah¬ 
man name], so extensive and so complete are its ruins, that you feel lost in con¬ 
templating its utter desolation. * * * After a little examination, the most prominent 
object that presents itself is the ruin of a high tower of brick-work standing isolated 
on a large heap of ruins.” This is the same as is referred to by the author of the 
Tarikh-i-Tahiri, upwards of two centuries before. He supposed this to have been 
the citadel, but Thomas objected to this, “because the local coins consisted exclu¬ 
sively of specimens of ’Arab governors of Sind, with the name of Mansur on the 
margin, and because not a single piece could be attributed to any Hindu Rajah of 
Sind.” It must be recollected, however, that the Musalmans had been the rulers of 
Sind for more than two centuries before the destruction of this city. 
While calling the ruined city “ Brahmanabad,” Mr. Bellasis also calls it 
“ Bambra-ke-Thul,” and adds that “ Bambra is a name frequently applied to old 
ruined cities [not to this one only] in Sind,” and that “ Thul ” means a tower or 
bastion. Here he is in error : the word is the ’Arabic word tall, a heap, mound, or 
hillock; and this word is in common use—“ Tall-al-Kabir ” of Egyptian fame for 
example. 
With Bellasis’s account before him, apparently, Cunningham (“ Ancient India,” 
p. 262) makes out Hwen Thsang’s chief city of middle Sind “ O-fan-cha,” to have 
been called “ Bambhra-lca-Tul, or the Ruined Tower ” [“ O-fan-cha ” is the Chinese 
for “ruined tower” perhaps], or simply Banbhar, which according to tradition, was 
the site of Brahmanwas or Brahmanabad.” Here it will be noticed how Bellasis’s 
words and meaning have been changed. The latter says Bambra —not “Bambhar” 
nor “Bambhra”—is frequently applied to old ruined cities in Sind, not to “Brah¬ 
manabad ” alone. 
Cunningham continues : “In the middle ages, under Hindu rule, the great cities 
