Aapravasi Ghat World Heritage Site of Unesco defines its own geographical situation through ancient literature that finds the term ‘Aapravasi’ or Apara-vasi attached to the name of people residing in ‘Apara’ means ‘Another’ or the ‘Other’ country. Aapravasi is as same as Aparantaka of ancient literature. Historians mark this as the Ariake of Ptolemy according to whom it extended southward from the Nerbuda(ancient Narmada river). According to the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, Ariake extended from the Gulf Cambay to the north of Abhira. It may be the Aranyaka of other texts. Asoka sent Yona-Dharmarakshita in 245 B.C. to Aprantaka as a missionary. Kautilya identifies it with Konkana that includes Suparaka in Aparanta-desa. According to Kalidasaa, it was situated between the Sahya and the Sea.

Pali texts mention ‘Aparanta’ as name of a tribe; according to his source, Apra-Goyana is defined as one of the four great quarters of the ‘inhabited world’. Here Manadhata’s name is mentioned as one of its primordial kings.

Unesco’s findings that, ‘Aapravasi Ghat, as the first site chosen by the British Government in 1834 for the ‘great experiment’ in the use of indentured, rather than slave labour, is strongly associated with memories of almost half a million indentured labourers moving from India to Mauritius to work on sugar cane plantations or to be transshipped to other parts of the world’, is half truth, or constitutes ‘no truth’ at all.

If we look at the name of the Bay Trou Fanfaron, in the capital of Port-Louis, the Aapravasi Ghat’s identity as an immigration depot, the site from where modern indentured labour Diaspora emerged, disappears completely.

No doubt the ‘Depot was built in 1849 to receive indentured labourers from India, Eastern Africa, Madagascar, China and Southeast Asia’ but prior to that the land was called by this name of Trou Fanfaron of Aapravasi. Name of Fan-faron speaks of migrants’ ancient place that identifies them with the name of a tree called ‘fanafana’ and its tribe as ‘fan’. Pilgrim Fa-hian’s name is associated with this ‘fan’ tribe like some others