A square is one of the most prominent of the geometric symbols of the ancient world that represents the ‘Four-cornered-land’ of the Avesta and it is one of its ‘Sixteen-Good-Lands’. The ‘four-cornered’ symbol is a tantric representation of that land where Thraetaona and Azi Dahaka fought against each other. Avesta calls it Varena and Pali texts see it as a place in Kosala.
Mt Alborz or Elborz or Alborg was a part of the geographical situation of this land, and according to the Commentaries of the Avesta, this land stood between the Padashkhvârgar mountains (the Elborz) and Kirman (‘the land of snakes’) . Thraetaona was bounded to Mount Damâvand till the end of the world which means to the time of existence of that mountain which was lost in a simultaneous earthquake and the Great Flood.
The term ‘Tantra’, it seems, has been derived from the name of Thraetaona who defeated Azi Dahaka by its application which was unknown to the world before his times.
According to Pali sources, Varana was the capital of Anika-ratta, tha latter was also identifies a king in this name. But in the Pali, Anika, or Anaka refers to a ‘Bell’.
Baranasi, and Banaras or Benares, which is as same as Berenice of the Periplus, has been described in the Indian puranas as a place between the two rivers Varana and the Asi. Thus it gives the idea of a region which is connected to Kings of the kingdom of Kasi. According to Maha-Govinda Sutta, this city was first founded by King Dasaratha or Dhatarattha. It was then connected by road to Takkasila University.
Identifying the sea-route to Berenice, the Periplus says, ‘of the designated ports of the Erythraean Sea, and the market towns around it, the first is the …port of Mussel Harbour. To those sailing down from that place, on the right hand, after eighteen hundred stadia, there is Berenice.
‘On the right-hand coast next below Berenice is the country of the Berbers, the Fish-Eaters. Beyond them are the Wild Fish Eaters and the Calf Eaters. Behind them, and further inland, in the country toward the west, there lies a city called Meroe.
‘Bellow the Calf Eaters there is a little market town on the shore after sailing about four thousand stadia from Berenice, called Ptolemais of the Hunts, from which the Hunters started for the interior under the dynasty of the Ptolemies.
‘Below Ptolemais of the Hunts, at a distance of about three thousand stadia, there is Adulis, a port established by law, lying at the inner end of a bay that runs in toward the south’.