Mathura A District Memoir Chapter-1

"THE MODERN DISTRICT; ITS CONFORMATION, EXTENT AND DIVISIONS AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE AND THEIR LANGUAGE. THE PREDOMINANT CASTES; THE JATS AND THEIR ORIGIN; THE CHAUBES; THE AHIVASIS; THE GAURUA THAKURS. THE JAINIS AND THEIR TEMPLES. THE PRINCIPAL FAMILIES; THE SETH; THE RAJA F HATHRAS; THE RAIS OF SADABAD. AGRICULTURAL CLASSIFICATION OF LAND; CANALS; FAMINES; THE DELHI ROAD AND ITS SARAES.

The modern district of Mathura is one of the five which together make up the Agra Division of the North West Provinces. It has an area of 1,453 square miles, with a population of 671,690, the vast majority of whom,viz., 611,626, are Hindus. In the year 1803, when its area was first included in British territory, part of it was administered from Agra and part from Sadabad. This arrangement continued till 1832, when the city of Mathura was recognized as the most fitting centre of local government and, superseding the village of Sadabad, gave its name to a new district, comprising eight tahsilis, viz., Aring, Sahar, and Kosi, on the right bank of the Jamuna; and on the left, Mat, Noh-jhil, Mahaban, Sadabad, and Jalesar. In 1860, Mat and Noh-jhil were united, with the former as the head-quarters of the Tahsildar; and in 1868 the revenue offices at Aring were transferred to Mathura, but the general boundaries remained unchanged.

The district, however, as thus constituted, was of a most inconvenient shape. Its outline was that of a carpenter's square, of which the two parallelograms were nearly equal in extent; the upper one lying due north and south, while the other at right angles to it stretched due eastward below. The capital, situ­ated at the interior angle of junction, was more accessible from the contiguous district of Aligarh and the independent State of Bharat-pur than from the greater part of its own territory. The Jalesar pargana was the most remote of all ; its two chief towns, Awa and Jalesar, being respectively 55 and 43 miles from the local Courts, a greater distance than separated them from the capitals of four other districts.

This, under any conditions, would have been justly considered an inconve­nience, and there were peculiar circumstances which rendered it exceptionally so. The transfer of a very large proportion of the land from the old proprietary village communities to wealthy strangers had created a wide-spread feeling of restlessness and impatience, which was certainly intensified by the remoteness of the Courts and the consequent unwillingness to have recourse to them for the settlement of a dispute in its incipient stages. Hence the frequent occur­rence of serious outrages, such as burglaries and highway robberies, which were often carried out with more or less impunity, notwithstanding the number of people that must have been privy to their commission. However willing the authorities of the different districts were to act in concert, investigation on the part of the police was greatly hampered by the readiness with which the crimi­nals could escape across the border and disperse themselves through the five districts of Mathura, Agra, Mainpuri, Eta, and Aligarh. Thus, though a local administrator is naturally jealous of any change calculated to diminish the im­portance of his charge, and Jalesar was unquestionably the richest portion of the district, still it was generally admitted by each successive Magistrate and Collector that its exchange for a tract of country with much fewer natural advan­tages would be a most politic and beneficial measure.

The matter, which had often before been under the consideration of Gov­ernment, was at last settled towards the close of the year 1874, when Jalesar was finally struck off from Mathura. At first it was attached to Agra; but six years later it was again transferred and joined on to Eta, which was then raised to the rank of a full district. No other territory had been given in compensa­tion till 1879, when 84 villages, constituting the pargana of Farrah, were taken from Agra and added on to the Mathura tahsili. The district has thus been rendered much more manageable and compact. It is now in the shape of an imperfect crescent, with its convex side to the south-west and its horns and hollow centre on the left bank of the river looking upwards to the north-east. The eastern portion is a fair specimen of the land ordinarily found in the Doab. It is abundantly watered, both by wells and rivers, and is carefully cultivated. Its luxuriant crops and fine orchards indicate the fertility of the soil and render the landscape not unpleasing to the eye; but though far the more valuable part of the district for the purposes of the farmer and the economist, it possesses few historical associations to detain the antiquary. On the other hand, the western side of the district, though comparatively poor in natural products, is rich in mythological legend, and contains in the towns of Mathura and Brinda-ban a series of the master-pieces of modern Hindu architecture. Its still greater wealth in earlier times is attested by the extraordinary merit of the few speci­mens which have survived the torrent of Muhammadan barbarism and the more slowly corroding lapse of time.

Yet, widely as the two tracts of country differ in character, there is reason to believe that their first union dates from a very early period. Thus, Varaha Mihira, writing in the latter half of the fifth century of the Christian era, seems to speak of Mathura as consisting at that time also of two very dissimilar portions For, in the 16th section of the Brihat Sanhita, he includes its eastern half, with all river lands (such as is the Doab), under the protection of the planet Budha—that is, Mercury ; and the western half, with the Bharatas and Purohits and other managers of religious ceremonies (classes which still to the present day form the mass of the population of western Mathura, and more particularly so if the Bharatas are taken to mean the Bharat-pur Jats) under the tutelage of Jiva--that is, Jupiter. The Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Thsang, may also be adduced as a witness to the same effect. He visited India in the. seventh century after Christ, and describes the circumference of the kingdom of Mathura as 5,000 li i.e., 950 miles, taking the Chinese li as not quite one-fifth of an English mile. The people, he says, are of a soft and easy nature and delight to perform meritorious works with a view to a future life. The soil is rich and fertile and specially adapted to the cultivation of grain. Cotton staffs of fine texture are also here obtainable and gold; while the mango trees are so abundant that they form complete forests-the fruit being of two varieties, a smaller kind, which turns yellow as it ripens, and a larger, which remains always green. From this description it would appear that the then kingdom of Mathura extended east of the capital along the Doab in the direction of Mainpuri; for there the mango flourishes most luxuriantly and almost every village boasts a fine grove; whereas in Western Mathura it will scarcely grow at all except under the most careful treatment. In support of this inference it may be observed that, notwithstanding the number of monasteries and stupas mentioned by the Buddhist pilgrims as existing in the kingdom of Mathura, comparatively few traces of any such buildings have been discovered in the modern district, ex­cept in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital. In Mainpuri, on the con­trary, and more especially on the side where it is nearest to Mathura, fragments of Buddhist sculpture may be seen lying in almost every village. In all pro­bability the territory of Mathura at the time of Hwen -Thsang's visit, included not only the eastern half of the modem district, but also some small part of Agra and the whole of the Shikohabad and Mustafabad parganas of Mainpuri; while the remainder of the present Mainpuri district formed a portion of the kingdom of Sankasya, which extended to the borders of Kanauj. But all local recollec­tion of this exceptional period has absolutely perished, and the mutilated effigies of Buddha and Maya are replaced on their pedestals and adored as Brahma and Devi by the ignorant villagers, whose forefathers, after long struggles, had tri­umphed in their overthrow.

In the time of the Emperor Akbar the land now included in the Mathura district formed parts of three different Sarkars, or Divisions—viz., Agra, Kol, and Sahar.

The Agra Sarkar comprised 33 mahals, four of which were Mathura, Maholi, Mangotla, and Maha-ban. Of these, the second, Maholi, (the Madhupuri of Sanskrit literature) is now quite an insignificant village and is so close to the city as almost to form one of its suburbs. The third, Mangotla or Magora, has disappeared altogether from the revenue-roll, having been divided into four pattis or shares, which are now accounted so many distinct villages. The fourth, Maha-ban, in addition to its present area, included some ten villages of what is now the Sadabad pargana and the whole of Mat; while Noh –jhil, lately united with Mat was at that time the centre of pargana Noh which was included in the Kol Sarkar.The Sadabad pargana had no independent existence till the reign of Shahjahan, when his famous minister, Sadullah Khan, founded the town which still bears his name, and subordinated to it all the sur­rounding country, including part of Khandauli, which is now in the Agra district.

The Sahar Sarkar consisted of seven mahals, or parganas, and included the territory of Bharat-pur. Its home pargana comprised a large portion of the modern Mathura district, extending from Kosi and Shergarh on the north to Aring on the south. It was not till after the dissolution of the Muhammadan power that Kosi was formed by the Jats into a separate pargana ; as also was the case with Shahpur, near the Gurganw border, which is now merged again in Kosi. About the same unsettled period a separate pargana was formed of Gobardhan. Subsequently, Sahar dropped out of the list of Sarkars, alto­gether; great part of it, including its principal town, was subject to Bharat-­pur, while the remainder came under the head of Mathura then called Islampur or Islamabad. Since the mutiny, Sahar has ceased to give a name even to a pargana ; as the head-quarters of the Tahsildar were at that time removed, for greater safety, to the large fort-like sarae at Chhata.

As might be expected from the almost total absence of the Muhammadan element in the population, the language of the people, as distinct from that of the official classes, is purely Hindi. In ordinary speech 'water' is jal ; ' land' is dharti; 'a father,' pita; ‘grandson,' nati (from the Sanskrit naptri),and 'time' is often ‘samay’.Generally speaking, the conventional Persian phrases of compliment are represented by Hindi equivalents, as for instance, ikbal by pratap and tashrlf lana by kripa krana . The number of words absolutely peculiar to the district is probably very small; for Braj Bhasha (and Western Mathura is coterminous with Braj), is the typical form of Hindi, to which other local varie­ties are assimilated as far as possible. A short list of some expression that might strike a stranger as unusual has been prepared and will be found in the Appendix. In village reckonings, the Hindustani numerals, which are of sin­gularly irregular formation and therefore difficult to remember, seldom employed in their integrity, and any sum above 20, except round numbers, is expressed by a periphrasis—thus, 75 it not pachhattar, but panch ghat assi, i.e., 80—5 ; and 97 is not suttanawe but tin ghat eau, i.e., 100-3. In pronun­ciation there are some noticeable deviations from established usage; thus, let s is substituted for sh, as in samil for shamil ; sumar for shumar : 2nd, ch takes the place of s as in Chita for Sita, and occasionally vice versa; as in charsa for church: and 3rd, in the vowels there is little or no distinction between a and i, thus we have Lakshmin for Lakshman The prevalence of this latter vulgarism explains the fact of the word Brahman being ordinarily spelt in English as Brahmin. It is still more noticeable in the adjoining district of Mainpuri; where, too, a generally becomes 0, as chalo gayo, “he went," for chala gaya-a provincialism equally common in the mouths of the Mathura peasants. It may also, as a grammatical peculiarity, be remarked that kari, the older form of the past participle of the verb karna, 'to do,' is much more popular than its modern abbreviation, ki; ne, which is now generally recognized as the sign of the agent, is sometimes used in a very perplexing way, for what it originally was, viz., the sign of the dative; and the demonstrative pronouns with the open vowel terminations, ta and wa, are always preferred to the sibilant Urdu forms is and us. As for Muhammadan proper names, they have as foreign a sound and are as much corrupted as English; for example, Wazir-ud-din, Hidayat-ullah and Taj Muhammad would be known in their own village only as Waju, Hatu and Taju, and would themselves be rather shy about claiming the longer title; while Mauja, which stands for the Arabic Mauj-ud-din, is transformed so completely that it is no longer recognized as a specially Muham­madan name and is often given to Hindus.

The merest glance at the map is sufficient proof of the almost exclusively Hindi character of the district. In the two typical parganas of Kosi and Chhata there are in all 172 villages, not one of which bears a name with the elsewhere familiar Persian termination of -abad. Less than a score of names altogether betray any admixture of a Muhammadan element, and even these are formed with some Hindi ending, as pur, nagar, or garh ; for instance, Akbar pur, Sher-nagar, and Sher-garh. All the remainder, to any one but a philo logical student, denote simply such and such a village, but have no connotation whatever, and are at once set down as utterly barbarous and unmeaning. An entire chapter further on will be devoted to their special elucidation. The Muhammadans in their time made several attempts to remodel the local nomen clature, the most conspicuous illustrations of the vain endeavour being the sub stitution of Islampur for the venerable name of Mathura and of Muminabad for Brinda-ban. The former is still occasionally heard in the law Courts when documents of the last generation have to be recited; and several others, though almost unknown in the places to which they refer, are regularly recorded in the register of the revenue officials. Thus, a village near Gobardhan is Parsoli to its inhabitants, but Muhammad-pur in the office; and it would be possible to live many years in Mathura before discovering that the extensive gardens on the opposite side of the river were not properly described as being at Hans ganj, but belonged to a place called Isa-pur. A yet more curious fact, and one which would scarcely be possible in any country but India, is this, that a name has sometimes been changed simply through the mistake of a copying clerk. Thus, a village in the Kosi pargana had always been known as Chacholi till the name was inadvertently copied in the settlement papers as Piloli and has remained so ever since. Similarly with two populous villages, now called Great and Little Bharna, in the Chhata pargana, the Bharna Khurd of the record-room is Lohra Marna on the spot; lohra being the Hindi equivalent for the more common chhota, 'little,' and Marna being the original name, which from the close resemblance in Nagari writing of m to bh has been corrupted by a clerical error into Bharna.

As in almost every part of the country where Hindus are predominant, the population consists mainly of Brahmans, Thakurs, and Baniyas; but to these three classes a fourth of equal extent, the Jats, must be added as the specially distinctive element. During part of last century the ancestors of the Jat Raja, who still governs the border State of Bharat-pur, exercised sovereign power over nearly all the western half of the district; and their influence on the country has been so great and so permanent in its results that they are justly entitled to first mention. Nothing more clearly indicated the alien character of the Jalesar; pargana than the fact that in all its 203 villages the Jats occupied only one; in Kosi and Maha-ban they hold more than half the entire number and in Chhata at least one-third.

It is said that the local traditions of Bayana and Bharat-pur point to Kandahar as the parent country of the Jats and attempts have been made to prove their ancient power and renown by identifying them with certain tribes men tioned by the later classical authors—the Xanthii of Strabo, the Xuthii of Dionysius of Samos, the Jatii of Pliny and Ptolemy—and at a more recent period with the Jats or Zaths, whom the Muhammadan found in Sindh when they first invaded that country.These are the speculations of European scholars, which, it is needless to say, have never reached the ears of the persons most interested in the discussion. But lately the subject has attracted the attention of Native enquirers also, and a novel theory was propounded in a little Sanskrit pamphlet, entitled Jatharotpati, compiled by Sastri Angad Sarmma for the gratification of Pandit Giri Prasad, himself an accomplished Sanskrit scholar, and a Jat by caste, who resided at Beswa on the Aligarh border. It is a catena of all the ancient texts mentioning the obscure tribe of the Jatharas, with whom the writer wishes to identify the modern Jats and so bring them into the ranks of the Kshatriyas. The origin of the Jatharas is related in very similar terms by all the authorities; we select the passage from the Padma Purana as being the shortest. It runs as follows :-" Of old, when the world had been bereft, by the son of Bhrigu, of all the Kshatriya race, their daughters, seeing the land thus solitary and being desirous of conceiv ing sons, laid hold of the Brahmans, and carefully cherishing the seed sown in their womb (jathara) brought forth Kshatriya sons called Jatharas."

क्षत्रशून्ये पुरा लोके भार्गवेण यदा कृते ।।
बिलोक्यक्षित्रयां धात्रीं कन्यास्तेषां सहस्रश ।।
ब्राह्मणान् जगृहुस्तस्मिन् पुत्रोत्पादनलिप्सया ।।
जठरे धारितं गर्भं संरज्य विधिवत्पुरा ।।
पुत्रान् सुषुविरे कन्या जाठरान् क्षत्रवंशजान् ।।
आग्नेय्यां दिशि कोशलकलिंडग़वंडग़ोपवंगजठरांडग़ा ।।

Now, there is no great intrinsic improbability in the hypothesis that the word Jathara has been shortened into Jat; but if the one race is really descended from the other, it is exceedingly strange that the fact should never have been so stated before. This difficulty might be met by replying that the Jats have always been, with very few exceptions, an illiterate class, who were not likely to trouble them-selves about mythological pedigrees; while the story of their parentage would not be of sufficient interest to induce outsiders to investigate it. But a more unanswerable objection is found in a passage which the Sastri himself quotes from the Brihat Sanhita (XIV., 8). This places the home of the Jatharas in the south-eastern quarter, whereas it is certain that the Jats have come from the west. Probably the leaders of Jat society would refuse to accept as their progenitors either the Jatharas of the Beswa Pandit or the Sindhian Zaths of General Cunningham; for the Bharat-pur princes affect to consider themselves as the same race with the Jadavas, and the Court bards in their panegyrics are always careful to style them Jadu-vansi.

However, all these speculations and assumptions have little basis beyond a mere similarity of name, which is often a very delusive test; and it is certain that whatever may have been the status of the Jats in remote antiquity, in historic times they were no way distinguished from other agricultural tribes, such as the Kurmis and Lodhas, till so recent a period as the beginning of last century.

Many of the largest Jat communities in the district distinctly recognize the social inferiority of the caste, by representing themselves as having been degrad ed from the rank of Thakurs on account of certain irregularities in their mar riage customs or similar reasons. Thus, the Jats of the Godha sub-division, who occupy the 18 villages of the Ayra-khera circle in the Maha-ban pargana, trace their pedigree from a certain Thakur of the very ancient Pramar- clan, who emigrated into these parts from Dhar in the Dakhin. They say that his sons, for want of more suitable alliances, married into Jat families in the neighbourhood and thus came to be reckoned as Jats themselves. Similarly the Dangri Jats of the five Madem villages in the same pargana have a tradition, the accuracy of which there seems no reason to dispute, that their ancestor, by name Kapur, was a Sissodiya Thakur from Chitor. These facts are both curious in themselves and also conclusive as showing that the Jats have no claim to pure Kshatriya descent; but they throw no light at all upon the origin of the tribe which the new immigrants found already settled in the country and with which they amalgamated: and as the name, in its present form, does not occur in any literary record whatever till quite recent days, there must always remain some doubt about the matter. The subdivisions are exceedingly numerous : one of the largest of them all being the Nohwar, who derive their name from the town of Noh and form the bulk of the population throughout the whole of the Noh‑jhil paragana.

Of Brahmans the most numerous class is the Sanadh, frequently called Sanaurhiya, and next the Gaur; but these will be found in every part of India, and claim no special investigation. The Chaubes of Mathura however, number ing in all some 6,000 persons, are a peculiar race and must not be passed over so summarily. They are still very celebrated as wrestlers and, in the Mathura Mahatmya, their learning and other virtues also are extolled in the most extra vagant terms; but either the writer was prejudiced or time has had a sadly de teriorating effect. They are now ordinarily described by their own country-men as a low and ignorant horde of rapacious mendicants. Like the Pragwalas at Allahabad, they are the recognized local cicerones; and they may always be seen with their portly forms lolling about near the most popular ghats and temples, ready to bear down upon the first pilgrim that approaches. One of their most noticeable peculiarities is that they are very reluctant to make a match with an outsider, and if by any possibility it can be managed, will always find bridegrooms for their daughters among the residents of the town. Hence the popular saving-

मथुरा की बेटी गोकुल की गाय
करम फूटै तौ अनत जाय

which may be thus roughly rendered

Mathura girls and Gokal cows
will never move while fate allows:

because, as is implied, there is no other place where they are likely to be so well off. This custom results in two other exceptional usages: first, that mar riage contracts are often made while one, or even both, of the parties most con cerned are still unborn; and secondly, that little or no regard is paid to relative age; thus a Chaube, if his friend has no available daughter to bestow upon him, will agree to wait for the first grand-daughter. Many years ago, a consider-able migration was made to Mainpuri, where the Mathuriya Chaubes now form a large and wealthy section of the community and are in every way of better repute than the parent stock.

Another Brahmanical, or rather pseudo-Brahmanical, tribe almost peculiar to the district, though found also at the town of Hathras and in Mewat, is that of the Ahivasis, a name which scarcely any one beyond the borders of Mathura is likely to have heard, unless he has had dealings with them in the way of business They are largely employed as general carriers and have almost a complete monopoly of the trade in salt, and some of them have thus acquired considerable substance. They are also the hereditary proprietors of several vil lages on the west of the Jamuna, chiefly in the pargana of Chhata, where they rather affect large brick-built houses, two or more stories in height and covering a considerable area of ground, but so faultily constructed that an uncracked wall is a noticeable phenomenon. Without exception they are utterly ignorant and illiterate, and it is popularly believed that the mother of the race was a Chamar woman, who has influenced the character of her offspring more than the Brahman father. The name is derived from ahi, the great ‘serpent’ Kaliya, whom Krishna defeated; and their first home is stated to have been the village of Sunrakh, which adjoins the Kali-mardan ghat at Brinda-ban. The Pandes of the great temple of Baladeva are all Ahivasis, and it is matter for regret that the revenues of so wealthy a shrine should be at the absolute disposal of a com munity so extremely unlikely ever to make a good use of them.

The main divisions of Thakurs in Mathura are the Jadon and the Gaurua The former, however, are not recognized as equal in rank to the Jadons of Raj putana, though their prinicipal representative, the Raja of Awa, is one of the wealthiest landed proprietors in the whole of Upper India. The origin of the latter name is obscure, but it implies impure descent and is merely the generic title which has as many subordinate branches as the original Thakur stock. Thus we have Gauruas, who call themselves-some Kachhwahas, some Jasawats, some Sissodiyas, and so on, throughout the whole series of Thakur clans. The last named are more commonly known as Bachhals from the Bachh-ban at Sehi, where their Guru always resides. According to their own traditions they emi grated from Chitor some 700 or 800 years ago, but probably at rather a later period, after Ala-ud-din's famous siege of 1303. As they gave the name of Ranera to one of their original settlements in the Mathura district, there can be little doubt that the emigration took place after the year 1202, when the Sove­reign of Chitor first assumed the title of Rana instead of the older Raval. They now occupy as many as 24 villages in the Chhata pargana, and a few of the same clan-872 souls in all are also to be found in the Bhauganw and Bewar parganas of the Mainpuri district.

The great majority of Baniyas in the district are Agarwalas. Of the Saraugis, whose ranks are recruited exclusively from the Baniya class, some few belong to that sub-division, but most of them, including Seth Raghunath Das, are of the Khandel gachchha or got. They number in all 1593 only and are not making such rapid progress here as notably in the adjoining district of Mainpuri and in some other parts of India. In this centre of orthodoxy 'the naked gods' are held in unaffected horror by the great mass of Hindus, and the submission of any well-to-do convert is generally productive of local disturbance, as has been the case more than once at Kosi. The temples of the sect are therefore few and far between, and only to be found in the neighbourhood of the large trading marts.

The principal one is that belonging to the Seth, which stands in the suburb of Kesopur. After ascending a flight of steps and entering the gate, the visitor finds himself in a square paved and cloistered court-yard with the temple opposite to him. It is a very plain solid building, arranged in three aisles, with the altar under a small dome in the centre aisle, one bay short of the end, so as to allow of a processional at the back. There are no windows, and the interior is lighted only by the three small doors in the front, one in each aisle, which is a traditional feature in Jaini architecture. What with the want of light, the lowness of the vault, and the extreme heaviness of the piers, the general effect is more that of a crypt than of a building so well raised above the ground as this really is, It is said that Jambu Swami here practised penance, and that his name is recorded in an old and almost effaced inscription on a stone slab that is still preserved under the altar. He is reputed the last of the Kevalis, or divinely inspired teachers, being the pupil of Sudharma, who was the only surviving disciple of Mahavira, the great apostle of the Digambaras, as Parsva Nath was of the Svetambara sect. When the temple was built by Mani Ram, he enshrined in it a figure of Chandra Prabhu, the second of the Tirthankaras; but a few years ago Seth Raghunath Das brought, from a ruined temple at Gwaliar, a large marble statue of Ajit Nath, which now occupies the place of honour. It is a seated figure of the conventional type, and beyond it there is nothing whatever of beauty or interest in the temple, which is as bare and unimpressive a place of worship as any Methodist meetinghouse. The site, for some unexplained reason, is called the Chaurasi, and the temple itself is most popularly known by that name. An annual fair is held here, lasting for a week, from Kartik 5 to 12: it was instituted in 1870 by Nain-Sukh, a Saraugis of Bharat-pur. In the city are two other Jain temples, both small and both dedicated to Padma Prabhu-the one in the Ghiya mandi, the other in the Chaubes' quarter. There are other temples out in the district at Kosi and Sahpau.

The Muhammadans, who number only 58,088 in a total population of 671,690, are not only numerically few but are also insignificant from their social position. A large proportion of them are the descendants of converts made by force of the sword in early days and are called Malakanas. They are almost exclusively of the Sunni persuasion, and the Shias have not a single mosque of their own, either in the city or elsewhere. In Western Mathura they nowhere form a considerable community, except at Shahpur, where they are the zamindars and constitute nearly half of the inhabitants of the town, and at Kosi, where they have been attracted by the large cattle-market, which they attend as butchers and dealers. To the east of the Jamuna they are rather more numerous and of somewhat higher stamp; the head of the Muhammadan family seated at Sadabad ranking among the leading gentry of the district. There is also, at Maha-ban, a Saiyid clan, who have been settled there for several centuries, being the descendants of Sufi Yahya of Mashhad, who recovered the fort from the Hindus in the reign of Ala-ud-din; but they are not in very affluent circumstances and, beyond their respectable pedigree, have no other claim to distinction. The head of the family, Sardar Ali, officiated for a time as a tahsildar in the Mainpuri district. The ancestral estate consists, in addition to part of the township of Maha-ban, of the village of Goharpur and Nagara Bharu; while some of his kinsmen are the proprietors of Shahpur Ghosna, where they have resided for several generations.

Though more than half the population of the district is engaged in agricul tural pursuits, the number of resident country gentlemen is exceptionally small.

Two of the largest estates are religious endowments; the one belonging to the Seth's temple at Brinda-ban, the other to the Gosain of Gokul. A third is enjoyed by absentees, the heirs of the Lala Babu, who are residents of Cal cutta; while several others of considerable value have been recently acquired by rich city merchants and traders.