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over a space of 625 miles.[1] Below the deserts are the Dari, the Suræ, then deserts again for 187 miles,[2] these deserts encircling the fertile tracts just as the sea encircles islands.[3] Below these deserts we find the Maltecoræ, Singhæ, Maroha, Rarunga, Moruni.[4] These inhabit the hills which in an unbroken

  1. DCXXV.—v.l. DCXXXV. Pliny, having given a general account of the basins of the Indus and the Ganges, proceeds to enumerate here the tribes which peopled the north of India. The names are obscure, but Lassen has identified one or two of them, and de Saint-Martin a considerable number more. The tribes first mentioned in the list occupied the country extending from the Jamunâ to the western coast about the mouth of the Narmadâ. The Cesi probably answer to the Khosas or Khasyas, a great tribe which from time immemorial has led a wandering life between Gujarât, the lower Indus, and the Jamunâ. The name of the Cetriboni would seem to be a transcript of Kêtrivani (for Kshatrivanêya). They may therefore have been a branch of the Kshatri (Khâtri), one of the impure tribes of the list of Manu (1. x. 12). The Megallæ must be identified with the Mâvelas of Sanskṛit books, a great tribe described as settled to the west of the Jamunâ. The Chrysei probably correspond to the Karoncha of the Purâṇic lists (Vishnu Pur. pp. 177, 186, note 13, and 351, &c.). The locality occupied by these and the two tribes mentioned after them must have lain to the north of the Raṇ, between the lower Indus and the chain of the Arâvali mountains.
  2. CLXXXVII.—v.l. CLXXXVIII.
  3. The Dhârs inhabit still the banks of the lower Ghara and the parts contiguous to the valley of the Indus. Hiwen Thsâng mentions, however, a land of Dara at the lower end of the gulf of Kachh, in a position which quite accords with that which Pliny assigns to them. The Suræ, Sansk. Śûra, have their name preserved in "Saur," which designates a tribe settled along the Lower Indus—the modern representatives of the Saurabhîra of the Harivaṁśa. They are placed with doubt by Lassen on the Lonî about Sindri, but Yule places the Bolingæ—Sanskṛit, Bhaulingas—there.—Ed. Ind. Ant.
  4. Moruni, &c. v.l. Moruntes, Masuæ Pagungæ, Lalii.