Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/28

I know Surat intimately, from end to end, and notwithstanding the utmost ingenuity of patriotic bards and encomiasts, and the good-natured credulity of European savants, I do not think we can give Surat a fabled origin, linking her name with the glorious Souráshtra of old and making her one of the territorial galaxy which shed lustre on the arms of the valiant Rajput who swayed the destinies of, perhaps, twenty million human beings scattered over an area of more than fifty thousand square miles, and who traced his descent to the early Aryan fathers, the first discontented wanderers from the cradle land of our race. Vanity and self-love seek to identify this town of Surat with the far-famed Souráshtra which has been in existence time out of mind, and which embraced, perhaps, a hundred times the area of Surat. By some curious trickery of nomenclature, that which was known as Souráshtra is now come to be known as the peninsula of Káttywár, whilst others say that is Souráshtra on the site of which now stands Junághar, the capital of the Bábi Mahomedans. Surat may be a feeble and corrupt imitation of Souráshtra. Taking it any way, Surat was nowhere before the thirteenth century A.D.