Mathura A District Memoir Chapter-13

PARGANA TOPOGRAPHY

I.—PARGANA KOSI

THE pargana of Kosi is the most northern of the three on the western side of the Jamuna and borders on the district of Gurgaon. It is the smallest of the Mathura six, having an area of only 154 square miles. It yields annual reve nue of Rs. 1,52,013. Its villages, sixty-one in number, with six exceptions, are all bhaiyachari, divided into infinitesimal shares among the whole of the com munity; so that, barring a few shopkeepers and menial servants, every resident is to some extent a proprietor. In the ordinary course of events, all would be, not only members of the same caste, but also descendants of one man, the founder of the settlement ; but in many instances, in spite of the right of preemption, several of the subordinate shares have been bought up by outsiders. A fresh assessment is made privately every year; and, according to the amount of land actually under cultivation, each tenant proprietor pays his quota of the revenue at so much per bigha, and enjoys the remaining profits as his private income. The Government demand is realized through the head-men or lumberdars, of whom there are generally several in each village. As a natural result of this minute sub-division of estates, there is not a single landed proprietor in the whole pargana of any social distinction. The two wealthiest inhabitants are both traders in the town of Kosi—Chunni Lal, son of Mohan Lal, and Kushali Ram, son of Lal Ji Mall—with incomes of Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 4,943 res pectively. The former has no land at all; the other owns one small village.

Of the six zamindari villages, only two were so previous to the last settlement; viz., Pakhar-pur, the property of Kushali Ram above mentioned, and Jau, a purchase of the Lala Babu. The other four have acquired their exceptional character only within the last few years; Garhi having been bought from the Jats by Sah Kundan Lal, of Lakhnau; Majhoi and Ram-pur having been conferred, after the mutiny, on Raja Gobind Singh, of Hathras, and Chauki on Shiv Sahay Mall, of Delhi, at the same time. One mahal of Chaundras has also quite re cently been constituted into a zamindari; and two or three other villages, now in the hands of money-lending mortgagees, will probably become so before long.

The Muhammadans number only 8,093 out of a total population of 65,293, and, with the exception of a few scattered families, are almost confined to seven places, viz., Barha, Bisambhara, Dotana, Jalal-pur, Kosi, Mahroli, and Shahpur. At three of these, viz., Bisambhara, Dotana, and Jalal-pur, they even slightly out number the Hindus.

The predominant Hindu castes are Jats, Jadons and other Gaurua, i.e., spurious, Thakur tribes. There are also a considerable number of Gujars, though these latter have now in every place ceased to be proprietors. They muster stronger in the adjoining pargana of Chhata, and were ringleaders of disaffection during the mutiny. In consequence, eight of their villages—Majhoi and Ram-pur in Kosi, Basai, Husaini, Jatwari, Karahri, Khursi and Ujhani in Chhata—were confiscated and conferred on Raja Gobind Sinh. They had previously disposed of their four other Chhata villages, Chamar-garhi, Dhimri, Gulal-pur and Pir-pur, to the Lala Babu. The course of years has not reconciled the ejected community to their changed circumstances, and so recently as the 29th of September, 1872, the widowed Rani's agent, Jay Ram Sinh, was, in result of a general conspiracy, barbarously murdered at night while sleeping in the Jatwari chaupal. Six of the murderers were apprehended, and, after conviction of the crime, were sentenced to death, but one escaped from the jail before the sentence was executed.

In the year 1857, the period, during which there was no recognition of government whatever, extended from the 12th of July to the 5th of December. With the exception of the Gujars, who assembled at Sher-garh and distinctly declared themselves independent, there was little or no ill-feeling towards the British Crown expressed by any class of the population; though many persons took advantage of the favourable opportunity for paying off old scores against ill neighbors, and especially for avenging themselves on their natural enemies, the patwaris, or village accountants, and Bohras, or money-lenders. Thus there was a pitched battle between Hathana and the adjoining village of Banswa in Gurgaon; the patwaris at Barha and Bisambhara had all their papers des troyed; at Pakharpur, Ganga Dan, bohra, was plundered by the zamindars of Kadona and Sirthala; at Kotban, Dhan-raj, bohra, was only set at liberty on payment of a ransom; and at Little Bathan, Lekhraj, bohra, after seeing all his papers seized and burnt, was himself put to death. The Jats of Kamar, after plundering Moti Ram, bohra, proceeded to turn the police out of the place, and raised a flame which spread across the border into the adjoining district; but they afterwards atoned for this indiscretion by the assistance which they gave to the Deputy Collector, Imdad Ali, in suppressing the Gujars.

The trees most commonly found growing wild in the pargana are the nim and the pilu while every piece of waste ground (there are several such tracts of large extent,) is dotted with clumps of karil. The soil is not suited to the growth of the mango, and there are scarcely any considerable orchards either of that or indeed of any other fruit tree; the one at Shah-pur being the only notable exception. Of the total area of 97,301 acres, there are 71,490 of arable land; the crops most extensively grown being joar, chana and barley. The wheat sold at the Kosi market comes chiefly from across the Jamuna. The number of wells has been much increased in late years and is now put at 1,379, of which 846 are of masonry construction. The Jamuna, which forms the eastern boundary of the pargana, is crossed by ferries at Shah-pur, Khairal, and Majhoi. The new Agra Canal passes through the villages of Hathana, Kharot, Hasanpur Nagara, Kosi, Aziz-pur, Tumaula, and Dham Sinha, a length of ten miles, and is bridged at Kharot, Kosi, Aziz-pur, and Tumaula. The high road to Delhi traverses the centre of the pargana, passing through the town of Kosi and the villages of Kotban, Aziz-pur, and Dotana; and from the town of Kosi there is a first-class unmetalled road to Sher-garh, a distance of eleven miles. The Halkabandi, or Primary, schools are twelve in number, being one for every five villages, an unusually favourable average : the attendance, how-ever, is scarcely so good as in some other parts of the district ; as it is difficult to convince a purely agricultural population that tending cattle is not always the most profitable occupation in which boys can be.

In addition to the capital, there are only four places which merit special notice, viz., Bathan, Dotana, Kamar, and Shah-pur.

Kosi is a flourishing municipality and busy market town, twenty-six miles from the city of Mathura, most advantageously situated in the very centre of the pargana to which it gives a name and on the high road to Delhi. As this road was only constructed as a relief work in the famine of 1860, it avoids all the most densely inhabited quarters, and the through traveller sees little from it but mud walls and the backs of houses. The Agra Canal runs nearly parallel to it still further back, with one bridge on the road leading to Majhoi and Sher-garh, and another at Aziz-pur, a mile out of the town on the road to Mathura.

The zamindars are Jats, Shaikhs, and Brahmans; but the population, which amounts to 11,231, consists chiefly of baniyas and Muhammadan kasabs, or butchers, who are attracted to the place by its large trade in cotton and cattle. It is estimated that about 75,000 mans of cotton are collected in the curse of the year and sent on down to Calcutta.

The nakhkhas, or cattle market, is of large extent and supplied with every convenience—a fine masonry well, long ranges of feeding troughs, & c. On every beast sold the zamindars levy a toll of two anas, and the Chaudharis much; in consideration for which payment they are bound to maintain two chaukidars for watch and ward, and also to keep the place clean and in repair. Prices, of course, vary considerably, but the following may be taken as the average rates :—Well-bullocks from Rs. 30 to Rs. 60 each; cart-bullocks from Rs. 50 to 75 ; a cow from Rs. 15 to 50 ; a calf from Rs. 10 to 30 ; a buffalo from Rs. 25 to 50 ; and a male buffalo calf from Rs. 2 to 10. There are two market days every week, on Tuesday and Wednesday; and in 1868-69, when a tax of one and a quarter ana was levied on every beast sold, it yielded as much as Rs. 2,188-13-0 ; the zamindars' receipts at two anas a head and the Chaudharis' at the same rate amounted to Rs. 3,502-2-0 each. Taking Rs. 25 as an average price per head, which would be rather below than above the mark, the amount of money changing hands in the course of the year was Rs. 7,00,425. The exports of grain are put at 200,000 mans and there are in the town some 100 khattas, or cellars, ordinarily well filled with reserve stores for the consumption, not only of the residents, but also of the numerous travellers passing up and down the great thoroughfare on which the town stands, and who naturally take in at Kosi several days' supplies, both for themselves and their cattle. There is also very considerable business done in country cloth, as all the villages in the neighbourhood are purely agricultural, and supply most of their wants from the one central mart.

As the town lies in a hollow, it is liable to be flooded after a few days' con tinuance of heavy rain by a torrent which pours in upon it from Hodal. This was the case in 1873, when much damage was done to house property; and the subsequent drying up of the waters—which was a tedious process, there being no outlet for their escape—was attended with very general and serious sickness. The only remedy lies in developing the natural line of drainage, and the necessity of some such operation has forced itself upon the notice of the canal department ; but no definite steps have yet been taken in the matter.

The income of the municipality is about Rs. 12,000 per annum; but this sum is a very inadequate test of the actual trade done, since there is no duty either on cotton or on cattle, excepting beasts intended for slaughter.

The area of the parish is 2,277 acres, on which the Government demand used to be Rs. 6,700; but the assessment was proved to be too severe by the distress it caused to the zamindars, and it was reduced to Ra 4,790.

The principal annual melas, or fairs, are—1st, the Dasahara, only started between forty and fifty years ago by Lalu Singh, khattri, and Darbari Singh, baniya ; 2nd, the Muharram ; and 3rdly, the Phul-dol, on Chait badi 2, which is a general gathering for all the Jilts of the Denda pal from Dah-ganw Sot-ban,, Nabi-pur, Umraura, and Nagara Hasan-pur.

In the centre of the town stands a large Sarae, covering nine and-a-half bighas of land, with high embattled walls, corner kiosques, and two arched gateways, all of stone, ascribed to Khwaja I’tibar Khan, governor of Delhi, in the reign of the Emperor Akbar. On the inside there are ranges of vaulted apartments all round, and the principal bazar lies between the two gateways. The building has been partially repaired by the municipality at a cost of Rs. 4,000, and if the inner area could be better laid out, it might form a remunerative property. At present it yields only an income of between Rs. 300 and 400 a year; even that being a considerable increase on what used to be realised. A large masonry tank, of nearly equal area with the same, dates from the same time, and is called the Ratnakar Kund, or more commonly the ‘pakka talao.’ Unfortu nately it is always dry except during the rains. The municipality was desir ous of having it repaired, but it was found that the cost would amount to Rs. 3,500, a larger sum than the funds could afford. The enclosing walls are twenty feet high and the exact measurement is 620 by 400 feet. Three other tanks bear the names of Maya-kund, Bisakha-kund, and Gomati-kund, in allusion to places so styled at the holy city of Dwaraka, or Kusasthali—a cir cumstance which has given rise to, or at least confirms, the popular belief that Kosi is only a contraction of Kusasthali. The Gomati-kund, near which the fair of the Phul-dol is held, Chait badi 2, is accounted the most sacred and is certainly the prettiest spot in the town. The pond is of considerable size, but of very irregular shape and has a large island in the middle. There are two or three masonry ghats, constructed by wealthy traders of the town, and on all sides of it there are a number of small shrines and temples overshadowed by fine kadamb, pipal, and bar trees, full of monkeys and peacocks; while the tank itself is the favourite haunt of aquatic birds of different kinds. There are a few handsome and substantial private houses in the quarter of the town called Baladeva Ganj; but as a rule the shops and other buildings have a very mean appearance; and though there are a number of Hindu temples and four mosques, they, too, are all quite modern and few have any architectural pretensions.

A little beyond the town on the Delhi side close to the new canal and not far from the Idgah is a tirath called Mabhai, with a masonry tank and temple, which is looked after by a Pandit of the Radha Ballabh sect, called Bal-mukund. When I went to see him, he would only talk in Sanskrit and derived the name of the place from Ma bhaishih, `fear not,' the exclamation of Krishna to the herdsmen when the forest was set on fire. But there was an old fort of the same name in the Bulandshahr district near the town of Khurja, where no such legendary explanation would be applicable. The word is a peculiar one, and I am unable to offer any suggestion regarding it.

The Saraugis, or Jainis, have three temples at Kosi, dedicated respectively to Padma-Prabhu, the sixth of the Jinas or Tirthankaras ; Nem-nath, or Arishtanemi, the twenty-second ; and Mahavira, or Varddhamana the twenty-fourth and last of the series who is supposed to have died about the year 500 B. C. A festival is held at the temple of Nem-nath, which is the smallest and most modern of the three, on the day after the full moon of Bhadon, when water is brought for the ablution of the idol from a well in a garden at some little distance. Any processional display, or beating of drums, or uttering of a party cry is so certain to result in a riot that extra police are always told off to prevent anything of the kind, and to confine every religious demonstration strictly within the walls of the temple. The antipathy to the rival faith on the part of the Vaishnava Hindus is so strong that it is ordinarily expressed by saying that it would be better, on meeting a mad elephant in a narrow street, to stand still and be trampled to death than to escape by crossing the threshold of a Jaini temple.

As regards the essential matters of conservancy, water supply and road communication, the condition of the town is satisfactory and has been much improved by municipal action. Most of the streets are either metalled or paved, and lighted by lamps at night. A neat dispensary has been opened and is well attended, though as yet it has no accommodation for indoor patients. A small bungalow has been built for the meetings of the committee and for occasional use as a rest-house ; the ground between it and the dispensary being laid out as a garden for the supply of fruit and vegetables and as a decorative feature at the entrance of the town. A new market was also designed with lines of substantial brick-built and stone-fronted shops of uniform character, arranged on three sides of a square, which was secured end levelled for the pur pose. In order to further the speedy completion of a work which it was thought would so much improve both the appearance of the town and also the finances of the municipality, a loan of Rs. 12,000 was contracted, with the sanction of Government, to be repaid in the course of four years by half-yearly instalments, beginning from October, 1874. Before application was made for the loan, Rs. 6,000 had been already expended, and with a further allotment, to about the same extent, from ordinary municipal income, the market might have been completed by the end of 1878. But unexpected changes in the schedule of taxation reduced the octroi receipts so considerably that the annual income was nearly all exhausted by the charges for establishment, repairs, and the repayment of the loan. Thus the work dragged slowly on; and since I have left the district has come, I believe, to a dead stand-still. At its commence ment an illustration was afforded of the extraordinary mania with which the local baniyas are possessed for hoarding large quantities of grain. This they do in the hope that a year of famine will come when they will be able to realise a rapid fortune by selling their stores at enormously high rates. As the grain is simply thrown into a pit sunk in the ground, and no precautions taken to preserve it from the damp, in a few years the greater part of it becomes quite unfit for human consumption, and its sale would only increase the general distress by spreading disease. This, however, is a consideration which has no influence on the mind of a baniya: he has a fixed method of squaring accounts with Providence, and holds that the foundation of a sumptuous temple, at the close of his life, is an ample atonement for all sins of fraud and peculation, and the only one which Divine justice is entitled to demand from him. Such a pit came to light after the heavy rains of 1873. Five of the shops then in course of construction began to settle and give way to such an extent that they had to be taken down. On digging a few feet below the foundations to ascer tain, if possible, the cause of the accident, a subterranean granary was revealed with an invoice stating that it had been filled in Sambat 1898 (1841 A.D.), and contained in all 1,303 mans of different kinds of grain. The greater part of this was so much damaged that it had to be destroyed, and the sale of the remainder realised only Rs. 324, which did not cover the cost incurred in dig ging it out, filling up the pit, and rebuilding the shops.

The Tahsili School was built by the Public Works Department at a cost of Rs. 6,000. The police, maintained by the municipality on an annual grant of Rs. 1,800, are located in a corner of the sarae, with an entrance made through the old wall directly on to the high road, opposite the parao. The latter is the property of private individuals, who levy a toll on every animal or vehicle driven into its enclosure, —the rates being fixed by the municipality—and pay Rs. 10 a month for the monopoly.

On the 31st of May, 1857, the rebels on their march to Delhi stopped at Kosi and, after burning down the Customs bungalow and ransacking the police station, proceeded to plunder the tahsili, but Rs. 150 was all that they found in the treasury there .The records were scattered to the four winds, but were to a great extent subsequently recovered. The Musalmans of Dotana, the Jats of Aziz-pur, and the Gujars of Majhoi and Ram-pur lent a willing hand to any deed of mischief; but the townspeople and the inhabitants of the adjoining villages of Hasan-pur Nagara, Umraura, Dah-ganw and Nabi-pur, gave what assistance they could in maintaining order, and as an acknowledgment of their good behaviour one year's jama was remitted and a grant of Rs. 50 made to each lumberdar. The position of the town between Agra and Delhi and the strength of its fortified sarae have rendered it a place of some impor tance at other periods of local disturbance. Thus, in 1774, the Jat Raja, Ranjit Sinh, on his retreat to Barsana, occupied it for some time and again, in 1282, after the death of Najaf Khan, his nephew, Mirza Shafi, fled to it as a temporary refuge from before his rival Afrazyab Khan.

BATHAN, GREAT AND LITTLE, are two populous and extensive Jat villages (the former with a Halkabandi school) in the immediate neighbourhood of the town of Kosi. According to popular belief, the name is derived from the circumstance that Balarama here sat down ‘(baithen) to wait for his brother Krishna’; but like so many of the older local names, which are now fancifully connected with some mythological incident, the word is really descriptive simply of the natural features of the spot,' bathan being still employed in some parts of India to denote a pasture-ground for cattle. In the same way Brinda-ban, ‘the tulsi grove,’ is now referred to a goddess Vrinda; Loh-ban, ‘the lodhri grove,’ to a demon Loha-jangha; and Kotban, ‘the limit or last of the groves,’ to a demon Kota, whose head was tossed to Sirthala, and his hands to Hathana. On the outskirts of Great Bathan is an extensive sheet of water with a mason ry ghat built by Rup Ram, the Katara of Barsana, which, by its name Balbhadra-Kund, has either occasioned, or at least serves to perpetuate the belief that Balarama was the eponymous hero of the place. Here, on Choir badi 3, is held the Holanga Fair, when some 15,000 to 16,000 people assemble and a sham fight takes place between the women of Bathan, who are armed with clubs, and the men from the neighbouring village of Jav, who defend themselves with branches of the acacia. At a distance of two miles, between two smaller groves, each called Padar Ganga, the one in Bathan, the other in Jav, is Kokila ban, the most celebrated in Hindi poetry of all the woods of Braj : so much so, indeed, that the word is often used as a synonyme for ‘the garden of Eden.’ It comprises a wide and densely-wooded area the trees becoming thicker and thicker towards the centre, where a pretty natural lake spreads cool and clear, and reflects in its deep still waters the over-hanging branches of a magni ficent banyan tree. It is connected with a masonry tank of very eccentric configuration, also the work of Rup Ram ; on the margin of which are several shrines and pavilions for the accommodation of pilgrims, who assemble here to the number of some 10,000, Bhadon sudi 10, when the Ras Lila is celebrated . There is also a walled garden, planted by a Seth of Mirzapur, who employed as his agent Ghan-pat Ram, one of the Kosi traders. It has a variety of shrubs and fruit trees; but, like most native gardens, is rapidly becoming a tangled and impenetrable jungle. Adjoining it is a barah dari, or pavilion, constructed in 1870, by Nem Ji, another Kosi baniya, out of money left for the purpose by his brother Bansidhar. A fair is held in the grove every Saturday and a larger one on every full moon, when the principal diversion consists in seeing the immense swarms of monkeys fight for the grain that is scrambled among them. The Bairagi belongs to the Nimbarak Sampradaya.

Between Kokila-ban and the village is another holy place, called Kabir-ban besides the Padar-Ganga. The origin of the word Padar is obscure: it is inter preted by hara, ‘green,’ and therefore may be a corruption of the Sanskrit padapa, a tree.

At little Bathan, a curious ridge of rock, called Charan Padar, crops up above the ground, the stone being of precisely the same character as at Barsana and Nand-ganw. It was once proposed to utilize some of it for engineering purposes, but such strenuous objections were raised that the design was never carried into execution. The name of the present hermit is Radhika Das. This, it is said, was one of the places where Krishna most delighted to stop and plays his flute, and many of the stones are still supposed to bear the impress of his ‘feet,’ charan. The hill is of very insignificant dimensions, having an average height of only some twenty or thirty feet, and a total length of at most a quarter of a mile. On the rock are several specimens of the tree called Indrajau (Wrightia tinctoria), which I have not seen elsewhere. In the cold weather it is almost entirely bare of leaves, but bears bunches of very long slender dark-green pods, each pair cohering lightly at the tip. There is also an abundance of a scraggy shrub called Ganger, a species of Grewia (?) and a creeper with white sweet-scented flowers which may be the zedoary. Its native name is nirbisi. In the small belt of jungle, which environs the hill, may also be found almost every variety of the curious inedible fruits for which Braj is noted, viz., the karil, pilu, pasendu, hingot, barna, and anjan-rukh. A little beyond the neigh bouring town of Kamar, just across the Gurgaon border, is a very similar ridge called the Bichor hill, from a large village of that name.

DOTANA, population 1,185, is a Muhammadan village on the high road between Kosi and Chhata with a number of old buildings which are sure to attract the traveler’s attention. There are seven large tombs dating from the time of Shahjahan and Aurangzeb if not earlier (there are no inscriptions) three mosques of the same period, erected respectively by Inayat-ullah Khan,Kazi Haidar Khan and Rau-ullah Khan, a modern mosque founded by Abd-ul Barkat, and four small gardens.

A masonry tank, which covers an area of 12 bighas and is in good repair, though dry for the greater part of the year, is said to have been constructed by the village founder Kabir-ud-din Auliya. One of his most illustrious descendants was Sadullah Khan, from whom the town of Sadabad derives its name, the minister of Shahjahan, in whose reign Dotana is said to have been a large town. Shernagar originally belonged to the same family, and three members of it are commemorated by the three Pattis, called respectively Lal, Ruh-ullah and Malak. A distributary of the canal runs within a few yards of the tank, which might easily be filled from it. Near it is the tomb of Kudus and Anwar, two of the village patriarchs.

Many of the large brick houses in the village are in a most ruinous condi tion, and the zamindars are now in poor circumstances. In the mutiny they joined the rebels in plundering the Kosi Tahsili, and part of their estate was confiscated and bestowed on Kunvar Sham Prasad, a Kashmiri, formerly Tahsildar of Maha-ban, who has transferred it to his sister, Maharani. The name Dotana is thought to be derived from Danton, a tooth-brush, and if so, is rather suggestive of Buddhist legends. The place is mentioned by Bishop Heber in his Journal, who writes: " January 7th, 1825.-Traversed a wild but more wood country to Dotana. Here I saw the first instance of a custom which I am told I shall see a good deal of in my southern journey, a number of women, about a dozen, who came with pitchers on their heads, dancing and singing to meet me. There is, if I recollect right, an account of this sort of dance in Kehama. They all professed to be Gopis, or milk-maids, and are in fact, as the thanadar assured me, the wives and daughters of the Gwala caste. Their voices and style of singing were by no means unpleasant; they had all the appear ance of extreme poverty, and I thought a rupee well bestowed upon them, for which they were very thankful." There can be no doubt also that this is the place to which John de Laet, in 1631, alludes in his India Vera, though he calls it Akbar-pur, the name of the next village. “This was formerly a consi derable town; now it is only visited by pilgrims who come on account of many holy Muhammadans buried here." Annual fairs are still held in honor of three of these holy men, who are styled Hasan Shahid, Shah Nizam-ud-din, and Pir Shakar-ganj, alias Baba Farid. The shrines, however, are merely commemorative and not actual tombs; for Hasan, ‘the Martyr,' is probably Ali's son, the brother of Hussain; Nizam ud-din Aulia is buried at Delhi; and the famous Farid-ud-din Ganj-i-Shakkar lies at Pak Patan near the Satlaj.

KAMAR, population 3,771, six miles from Kosi on the Gurgaon border, is still a populous Jat town with a considerable trade in cotton; but in the early part of last century was a place of much greater wealth and importance, when a daugh ter of one of the principal families was taken in marriage by Thakur Badan Sinh of Sahar, the father of Suraj Mall, the first of the Bharat-pur Rajas. On the outskirts of the town is a large walled garden with some monuments to his mother's relations, and immediately outside it a spacious masonry tank filled with water brought by aqueducts from the surrounding rakhya. This is more than a thousand acres in extent, and according to village computation is three kos long, including the village, which occupies its centre. For the most part the trees are exclusively the pilu, or salvadora oleoides, very old, with hollow trunks and strangely gnarled and distorted branches. The fruit, which ripens in Jeth, is sweet and largely eaten by the poor, but as a rule not sold, though some is occasionally dried and exported. A Bairagi of the Nimbarak Sampradaya, by name Mangal Das, has a hermitage with a small temple of Bihari Ji, in the midst of some fine kadamb trees, which form a conspicuous group at one end of the rakhya. He has a great reputation for sanctity and the offerings made during the last 30 years have enabled him to have a fine masonry tank con structed, of great depth, at an outlay of Rs. 2,500; from its appearance it might be taken to have cost even more. It is filled to the brim in the rains, but soon becomes dry again; a defect which he hopes to obviate by paving it at the bottom. It is about half a mile from the village and is a pretty spot. Had I remained in the district, I should have got the tank finished; arrangements were being made when the order came for my transfer. At a rather greater distance in the opposite direction is a lake with unfinished stone ghats, the work of Raja Suraj Mall; this is called Durvasas-kund, after the irascible saint of that name; but there is no genuine tradition to connect him with the spot; though it is sometimes said that the town derives its name from a ‘blanket’ (kamal) with which Krishna persuaded him to cover his nakedness. Among the trees on the margin of the lake are some specimens of the Khandar or Salvadora Panica. This is less common than the oleoides species, and is a prettier tree and blossoms earlier. Its fruit, however, is bitter and uneatable. In the town are several large brick mansions built by Chaudharis Jasavant Sinh and Sita Ram, the Raja’s connections, and one of them has a fine gateway in three stories, which forms a conspicuous land mark : but all are now in ruins. At the back of the artificial hill on which they stand, and excavated to supply the earth for its construction, is a third tank of still greater extent than the other two, but of irregular outline, and with only an occasional flight of stone steps here and there on its margin.

A temple of Suraj Mall's foundation, dedicated to Madan Mohan, is specially affected by all the Jats of the Bahin-war pal, who are accounted its chales, or sons, and assemble here to the number of some 4,000, on Chait badi 2 and the following day, to celebrate the mela of the Phul-dol. The school, a primary one, is not a very prosperous institution. The Chaukidari Act has been extended to the town; but it yields a monthly income of only Rs. 60, which, after payment of the establishment, leaves an utterly insignificant balance for local improvements. The only work of the kind which has been carried out is the metaling of the principal bazar.

SHAH-PUR, under the Jats the head of a pargana, is a large but somewhat decayed village on the bank of the Jamuna, some ten miles to the north-east of Kosi. It is one of the very few places in this part of the country where the population is almost equally divided between the two great religions of India; there being, according to the census of 1881, as many as 1,137 Muhammadans to 1,084 Hindus, The total area is 3,577 acres, of which 2,263 are under the plough and 1,314 are untilled. Of the amble land 612 acres are watered by wells, which number in all 63 and are many of masonry construc tion. The Government demand is Rs. 3,907. The village was founded towards the middle of the sixteenth century, in the reign either of Sher Shah or Salim Shah by an officer of the Court known as Mir Ji, of Biluch extrac tion, who called it Shahpur in honour of his royal master. The tomb of the founder still exists not far from the river bank on the road to Chaundras. It is a square building of red sandstone, surmounted by a dome and divided on each side into three bays by pillars and bracket arches of purely Hindu design. By cutting off the corners of the square and inserting at each angle an additional pillar the tomb on the inside assumes the form of a dodecagon. On the other side of the village, by the road to Bukharari, is another tomb, in memory of Lashkar Khan, a grandson of the village founder: it is solidly con structed of brick and mortar, but quite plain and of ordinary design. Nearly opposite is the hamlet of Chauki with the remains of a fort erected by Nawab Ashraf Khan and Arif Khan, upon whom Shah-pur with other villages, yield ing an annual revenue of Rs. 28,000 were conferred as a jagir for life by Lord Lake. There is a double circuit of mud walls with bastions and two gateways of masonry defended by out works, and in the inner court a set of brick build ings now fallen into ruin. This was the ordinary residence of the Nawab, and it was during his lifetime that Shah-pur enjoyed a brief spell of prosperity as a populous and important town. It would seem that the fort was not entirely the work of Ashraf Khan, but had been originally constructed some years earlier by Agha Haidar, a local governor under the Mahrattas, who also planted the adjoining grove of trees.

The village has continued to the present day in the possession of Mir Ji's descendants, to one of whom, Fazil Muhammad, the great grandfather of Natha Khan, now lumberdar, we are indebted for the large bagh, which makes Shah pur the most agreeable camping place in the whole of the Kosi pargana. It covers some sixty or seventy bighas, and, besides containing a number of fine forest trees, mango, jaman, mahua and labera, has separate orchards of limes; and ber trees; while the borders are fenced with the prickly nag-phani interspersed with nims and babuls, having their branches overspread with tangled masses of the amar-bel with its long clusters of pale and faint-scented blossoms. The yearly contracts for the different kinds of fruit yield close upon Rs. 1,000. Though a mile or more from the ordinary bed of the river, it is occasionally, as for example in the year 1871, flooded to the depth of some two or three feet by the rising of the stream. The more extensive the inundation, the greater the public benefit; for all the fields reached by it produce excellent rabi crops without any necessity for artificial irrigation till, at all events, late in the season. In the village are three mosques, but all small; as the Muhammadan population, though considerable, consists, to a great extent, merely of kasabs; there is also a temple erected by the Mahrattas. The chief local festivals are the Dasahara for Hindus and the Muharram for Muhammadans, both of which attract a large number of visitors from the neighbourhood. There is a weekly market on Monday and a small manufacture of earthen handis. The halkabandi School, which, for some years, maintained only a struggling existence, has been better attended of late, since the completion of the new building.

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