Bharuch is the oldest city of Gujarat. It is also the second oldest city of India having continuous inhitations, first being Kashi (Varanasi). Bharuch has a known history for about 8000 years.
BC Era
Certainly by the 6th century BC, the city was known at least by reputation, via land-sea routes reaching the Levant to the Arab and Ethiopian traders feeding goods westwards to the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Western Romans, Carthaginians, and eventually, the Eastern Roman Empires, and the Republic of Venice. It is likely even the Phonecians knew of it and so it has acted since antiquity as a link port to the luxury goods trade from the Far East and the interior of the Indian sub-continent to the civilizations of South-west Asia, the Middle-East, the Mediterranean basin including Northern Africa and Europe.
The ancient Sri Lankan chronicle, the Dipavamsa, mentions that the legendary king Vijaya stopped at Bharukaccha for three months c 500 BC.
The Theragatha, part of the Pali Canon written down in Sri Lanka in the 1st century BCE, mentions Vaddha Thera and Malitavamba Thera of Bharukaccha, as contemporaries of theBuddha, while the Therigatha of the same canon mentions Vaddhamta Theri of Bharukaccha.
It was known to the Greeks and Romans as Barygaza, and probably had a settlement of Greek traders. As one southern terminus of the Kamboja-Dvaravati Route, it is mentioned extensively as a major trading partner of the Roman world, in the 1st century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. One of the Periploi describes numerous Greek buildings and fortifications in the area, although mistakenly attributing them to Alexander the Great who never reached this far south, as well as the circulation of Indo-Greek coinage in the region:
"The metropolis of this country is Minnagara, from which much cotton cloth is brought down to Barygaza. In these places there remain even to the
