southern Ráshtrakútas and the middle-age settlements of southerners or Karnátas in North India. [457] Must therefore the North Indian tribe of Ráthods be admitted to have its origin as late as the twelfth century, and further is the North Indian name Ráthod not tribal but derived from the title head of a district. Several considerations make both of these solutions unlikely if not impossible. First there is the remarkably widespread existence of the name Ráhtor, Ratha, or Ratti, and endless variations of these names, in almost all parts of the Panjáb, among all castes from the Bráhman to the Baluch, among all religions Musalmán, Sikh, Jain, and Bráhmanic. [458] No doubt the practice of a waning tribe adopting the name of a waxing tribe has always been common. No doubt also the fame of the name during the last 600 years must have tempted other classes to style themselves Ráthod. Still it is to be noted: first that (Ibbetson, page 240) the Ráthods of the Panjáb though widespread are not numerous: and second that the list of sub-caste-names has this merit that with a few exceptions the holders of the sub-name are not known by it but by some general or craft name. The evidence of these sub-caste or tribal names seems therefore to support the view that some very large section of the Panjáb population represent an important tribe or nation of whom the least mixed remnant are perhaps the Ráthis or lower class Rájputs of Kángra and Chamba (Ibbetson, pages 219 and 251) and from some connection with whom the Márwár Ráthods of the thirteenth century may have taken their name. Among other traces of northern Ráshtras in the middle ages may be mentioned the twelfth and thirteenth century Ráshtrakútas of Badaun in the North-West Provinces (Kielhorn in Epigraphia Indica, I. 61 and 63) and (A.D. 1150) in the Kumárapála-Charitra (Tod's Western India, 182) the mention of Ráshtra-desa near the Sawálak hills. Among earlier and more doubtful references are the Aratrioi whom probably correctly (since at that time A.D. 247 one main Roman trade route to Central Asia passed up the Indus) the author of the Periplus (McCrindle, 120) places between Abhiria or lower Sindh and Arachosia or south-east Afghanistán that is in north Sindh or south Panjáb. Another earlier and still more doubtful reference is Pliny's (A.D. 77) Oraturæ (Hist. Nat. VI. 23) whom Vivien de St. Martin (Geog. Greque et Latine de l'Inde, 203) identifies with the Ráthods. The fact that while claiming descent from Ráma the Márwár Ráthods (Tod's Annals, II. 2 and 5) preserved the legend that their founder was Yavanaswa from the northern city of Paralipur supports the view that the tribe to which they belonged was of non-Indian or Central Asian origin, and that this is the tribe of whom traces remain in the Ráthi Rájputs of the Kángra hill country and less purely in the widely spread Ráts, Rattas, and Rátis of the Panjáb plains. The examples among Panjáb caste names Rora for Arora