cows from them; she was not successful. In the Sukta of the Rig-veda in which is related the affair between Sarama and the Panis quoted above, it is clearly stated that she had to cross the river Rasa to reach the quarters of the Panis for they ask her how she had crossed the River (X. 108, 1). How have you crossed the waters of the Rasa? This gives us a valuable geographical position; for this river passing through Khorasan and Gandhara (modern Afghanistan) flowed into the Indus. We learn from the Rig Veda that the Panis had strongholds on the banks of this river, and that their sway extended over Eastern India also. We also find from the Book of Kings that the Phoenician Chief Hiram, King of Tyre from B.C. 970-936 contributed cedar and fig trees as well as workmen and gold for Solomon's palace and temple. In return Hiram received the grant of a territory in Cabul (i. Kings 1X, 14). These bear a great testimony to their greatness.

    On the authority of Herodotus the En. Britannica states:

The Phoenicians themselves retained some memory of having migrated from older seats on an eastern sea. Herodotus calls it the Red Sea, meaning probably the Persian Gulf; the tradition therefore seems to show that the Phoenicians believed that the ancestors came originally from Babylonia; by settling along the Syrian coast they developed a strangely un-Semitic love for the sea and advanced on different lines from the other Canaanites who occupied the interior. They called themselves Canaanites and their land Canaan. . . The Canaanite sailors were spoken of as the redmen on account of the sun-burnt skin.

    While Nagendranath Vasu in his " Social History of Kamrupa" gives a different interpretation of the Red sea. He says that:

The Eastern Sea to the east of Phoenicia as mentioned by the Phoenicians is no other than the eastern sea (Purva-samudra) mentioned in the Manu-Samita as the eastern boundary of Arya varta or the Aryan land; and the red sea of Herodotus is also no other than the red sea (Lohita Sagar) so called for its blood red waters, mentioned in the Ramayan and Mahabharata. This points clearly to India as being the original home of the Phoenicians. The Panis life goes to prove a long way that the Panis and the Phoenicians were the same people, following the same calling, and there was a time when their authority was established over the whole of India. Evidently they were compelled by the Vedic Aryans of Western India gradually to migrate eastward till they settled on the other side of the Karatoya on the shores of the Lohita Sagar.