SIND, a province of British India, consists of the lower valley and delta of the Indus, lying I etween lat. 23° and 28° 40' N., and long. 66° 50' and 71° E. Its area, including the Native State of Khairpur, is 54,123 square miles, and its popu lation in 1881 was 2,537,976. It is bounded on the west by Baluchistan; on its nortla is Baluch istan, the Panjab, and Bakhawulpur • on the east it has the Rajputana States of Jeys'ulmir and Jodhpur, and on the south the Arabian Sea and Runn of Cutch. Its sea-coast is thit of the delta of the Indus, and extends about 125 miles between Cape Monze on the W. and the ICoree mouth, which is the S.E. entrance and the boundary of Sind. The delta shore is low, fiat, and swampy throughout ; but west of Ktirachee is a high ratwe of mountains terminating in Ras Muari called R7ts Mouari and Cape Monze. The contrasts presented by this province are striking. In the central tracts liable to inundation are picturesque-looking villages, with, in the cold season, waving fields, beautiful small lakes, and the land throughout its length and breadth partitioned by numerous canals and irrigation channels ; but outside of the fertilized tracts are bare mountains and sandy deserts. Eastward, Sind is bounded by some of the most desert portions of Bahawulpur, Jeysul mir, and Bahnir, a dependency of Jodhpur ; and the eastern portions of Sind itself, for front ten to sixty miles within the frontier, are desert wastes. Northwards and westwards are rugged ranges of inhospitable stone-heaps, varying in height from 2000 to 5000 feet, where inhabitants, animal life, vegetation, and water are altogether wanting, and divide the province from the territories of the many Baluch clans that compose the State of Kalat. The more habitable part of Sind is a long narrow tract of country yearly fertilized by the inundation of the Indus, with shifting sand-heaps on the east, and bare stony- mountains on the west. In the delta of the Indus expansive lakes abound. From the easternmost mouth of the Indus to the Kurachee harbour, nearly the whole coast is a network of channels and marine lagoons, and of sand-banks and mud-banks, more or less covered by each advancing tide. During
December and the two succeeding months, the cold at night is often severe, being frequently 82° Fahrenheit at daybreak, while at noon it often mounts to 75° or 86° in the shade.
To the Western Arabs, all eastwards of the Persian Gulf was known as Hind ; but they distinguished the two regions on and beyond the Indus river by the term Hind-wa-Sind. The name of Sind is of great antiquity, and is men tioned both by Pliny and Arrian ; the one writes it Sindus and the other Sind. Ancient oriental geographers divide the country into two districts, Lar and Siro, a town called Halah, lying a little north of Hyderabad, forming the point where the Lar and Siro frontiers unite.
In the 7th century it was described as com prising four principalities, viz. Upper, Middle, and Lower Sind, and Cutch, their native names being Siro, head or upper, Vichalo or midland, and Lar or lower.
The district of Lar or Lower Sind, the ancient Pitasila, is the delta of the Indus from Hyderabad to the sea..
In the time of .Alexander, the only places mentioned are Sindomana, supposed to be the modern Schwan, and a city of 13rahmans, named by Diodorus, Harmatelia, which seems to have been the Brahmana city destroyed by an earthquake, A.D. 757. .At the present day the principal places in Middle Sind are Sehwan, IIala, Hyderabad, and Omarkot. Hyderabad is supposed to be the ancient Patala and the Nerunkot of the Middle Ages.
Ptolemy has preserved the names of several places, as Barbara, Sousikana, Bonis, and Kolaka, of which the first is probably the same as the Barbarike emporium of the Periplus, and per haps also the same as the Baree of Justin. In the time of the author of the Periplus, tlie capital of Lower Sind was Minnagam, which the foreign merchants reached by ascending the river from Barbarike. In the middle of the 7th century, Iliwen Thsang mentions only Pitasila or I 'a tala.