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.

II.—PARGANA CHHATA
The pargana of Chhata has a population of 84,598 and an area of 256 square miles. It lies immediately to the south of Kosi, with the same boundaries as it to the west and east, viz., the State of Bharat-pur and the river Jamuna; and, farther, resembles its northern neighbour in most of its social and physical characteristics. Being the very centre of Braj, it includes within its limits many of the groves held sacred by the votaries of Krishna; but, with the exception of these bits of wild woodland, it is but indifferently stocked with timber, and the orchards of fruit trees are small and few in number. The principal crops are joar and chana, there being 63,000 acres under the former, and 29,000 grown with chana out of a total area of 160,433. A large amount of cotton is also raised, the ordinary outturn being about 20,000 mans. But the crop varies greatly according to the season ; and in 1878 did not exceed 1,500 mans, in consequence of the very heavy and continuous rains at the beginning of the monsoon, which prevented the seed from being sown till it was too late for the pod to ripen. The coarse sandstone, which can be obtained in any quantity from the hills of Nand-ganw and Barsana, is not now used to any extent for building purposes, but it is the material out of which the impe rial saries at Chhata and Kosi were constructed, and is there shown to be both durable and architecturally effective. The western side of the pargana is liable to inundation in exceptionally rainy seasons from the overflowing of a large jhil near Kama in Bharat-pur territory; its waters being augmented in their sub sequent course by junction with the natural line of drainage extending down from Hodal. In 1861, and again in 1873, the flood passed through Nand-ganw, Barsana, Chaksauli, and Hathiya extended as far even as Gobardhan; but no great damage was caused, the deposit left on the surface of the land being beneficial rather than otherwise.

The first assessment, made in 1809, was for Rs.1, 02,906. This was gradually increased to Rs. 1, 77,876, and was further enhanced by the last settlement. Much land, formerly lying waste for want of water, was brought under cultivation on the opening of the Agra Canal. This has a total length of 11 miles in the pargana, from Bhadaval to Little Bharna, with bridges at each of those places and also at Rahera and Sahar.

Till 1838 Sher-garh and Sahar were two separate parganas, subordinate to the Aring tahsili : but in that year Sahar was constituted the headquarters of a tahsildar, and so remained till the mutiny, when a transfer was made to Chhata. The latter place has the advantage of being on the highroad, and is tolerably equi-distant from east and west, the only points necessary to be con sidered, on account of the extreme narrowness of the pargana from north to south. Thus, its close proximity to the town of Kosi—only seven miles off—is rather an apparent than a real objection to the maintenance of Chhata as an administrative centre.

The predominant classes in the population are Jats, Mons, and Gaurua Thakurs of the Bachhal sub-division; while several villages are occupied almost exclusively by the exceptional tribe of Ahivasis (see page 10) who are chiefly engaged in the salt trade. A large proportion of the land—though not quite to so great an extent as in Kosi—is still owned by the original Bhaiyachari communities; and hence agrarian outrage on a serious scale is limited to the comparatively small area where, unfortunately, alienation has taken place, more by improvident private sales, or well-deserved confiscation on account of the gravest political offences, than from any defect in the constitution or adminis tration of the law. The two largest estates thus acquired during the present century are enjoyed by non-residents, viz., the heirs of the Lala Babu (see page 258), who are natives of Calcutta, and the Rani Sahib Kunvar, the widow of Raja Gobind Singh, who took his title from the town of Hathras, the old seat of the family, though she now lives with the young Raja at Brinda-ban. Of resident landlords, the three largest all belong to the Dhusar caste, and are as follows: First, Kanhaiya Lal, Sukhvasi Lal, Bhajan Lal, and Bihari Lal, sons of Ram Bakhsh of Sahar, where they have property, as also at Bharauli and three other villages, yielding an annual profit of Rs. 3,536. Second, Munshi Nathu Lal, who, for a time, was in Government service as tahsildar—with his son, Sardar Sinh, also of Sahar, who have an assessable estate of Rs. 3,874, derived from Astoli, Tatar-pur, and shares in nine other villages ; Nathu Lal's father, Giridhar Lal, was sometime Munsif of Jalesar, and was descended from one Harsukh Rae, who received from Raja Suraj Mall the grant of Tatar-par, with the title of Munshi, by which all the members of the family are still distinguished. Third in the list is Lala Syam Sundar Das, son of Shiu Sahay Mall, a man of far greater wealth—his annual profits being estimated at a lakh of rupees. He is the head of a firm which has branch houses at Kanh-pur, Agra, and Amritsar, and other places, and owns the whole of the large village of Naugama and half of Taroli. For many years he was on the worst possible terms with his tenants; but the dispute between thorns has at last been amicably arranged, and during the recent famine the eldest son, Badri Prasad, came forward as one of the most liberal landlords in the district.

The two places of most interest in the pargana, Barsana and Nand-ganw, have already been fully described; there remain Chaumuha, Chhata, Sahar, Sehi, and Shergarh, which may each claim a few words of special mention.

CHAUMUHA, population 2,275, on the high road to Delhi, 12 miles from the Mathura station, was included in the home pargana till the year 1816. It has the remains of a large brick-built sarae, covering upwards of four bighas of land, said to have been constructed in the reign of the Emperor Sher Shah. It now a rental of only some Rs. 20 a year, being in a very ruinous state. This fact, combined with the perfect preservation of the parallel buildings at Chhata and Kosi, has given rise to a local legend that the work was bad in the first instance, and the architect, being convicted of misappropriating the funds at his disposal, was, as a punishment, built up alive into one of the walls ; the corpse, however, has not been discovered. Immediately opposite its upper gate, though at some little distance from it, stands one of the old imperial kos miners. Though in itself a clumsy erection, it forms a picturesque object as seen through the arch from inside the courtyard, and would make a pretty sketch. When Madho Rio Sindhia was the paramount power, he bestowed this and other villages in the Agra and adjoining districts on the celebrated pandit, Ganga-dhar Shastri, who constituted them an endowment for educational pur poses. In 1824, one quarter of the estate was assigned to his sons Tika-dhar and Murli-dhar; the remainder, yielding an annual rental of Rs. 24,000, of which Rs. 3,730 come from Chaumuha, is the property of the Agra College. In the old topographies the same is described as situate at Akbar-pur, a name now restricted to the next village, since the discovery of an ancient sculpture supposed to represent the four-faced (chaumuha) god Brahma. It is in reality the circular pedestal of a Jaini statue or column, with a lion at each corner and a nude female figure in each of the four intervening spaces: the upper border being roughly carved with the Buddhist rail pattern. The inhabitants are chiefly Gaurua Thakurs. A weekly market is held on Tuesday. There is a primary school; also a bungalow occupied by an assistant patrol in the customs; a small new mosque inside the sarae; a temple of Bihari Ji, built by Kasi Das, Bairagi, some 200 years ago, and kept in repair by his successors; and two ponds known as Bihari-kund and Chandokhar. As a punishment for malpracties during the mutiny, the village was burnt down, and for one year the Government demand was raised to half as much again.

CHATTA, since the mutiny the capital of the pargana, has a population of 6,014. It is on the high road to Delhi, 19 miles from Mathura, with a camping ground for troops, about 46 bighas in extent. The principal feature of the town is its sarae (already noticed at page 29), which covers an area of 20 bighas, its walls measuring 732 feet by 694. Jacquemont, who saw it in the year 1829, describes it as " a large fortress, of fine appearance from the outside, but it will not do to enter, for inside there is nothing but misery and decay, as everywhere else, except perhaps at Mathura and Brinda-ban". He would find matters improved now, for in 1876 I had a broad street laid out through the centre of it from the one gate to the other, and at the time of my transfer it had become the principal bazar in the town. I had also sent up an application to Government for a grant of Rs. 3,500 for the repair of the gateways, which possess considerable architectural merit. The repair of the side walls and cells I had already taken in hand and nearly completed, by means of small aunnal allotments out of the chaukidari fund.

In 1857 the sarae was occupied by the rebel zamindars, and one of the bastions (now built up square) had to be blown down before an entrance could be affected. The town was subsequently set on fire and partially destroyed, and twenty-two of the leading men were shot. It was originally intended to confiscate the zamindars' whole estate, but eventually the jama was only raised to half as much again for one year. The population are chiefly Jats, the next most numerous class being Jadons. The name is derived by the local pandits from the Chhattra-dharana-lila, which Krishna is said to have held there ; but there is no popular legend regarding such an event, nor any very ancient sacred place in its vicinity ; though the Vraja-bhakti-vilasa (1553 A.D.) mentions, it is true, a Chhattra-ban and a Suraj-kund. The latter is still in existence to the north-east of the town, and is a large sheet of water with one good masonry ghat built by a Brahman, Bijay Ram, an officer of the Bharat-pur Raj, who also built the very large brick house adjoining it, now in ruins. All round the tank are fine old trees and beyond it an extensive rakhya of chhonkar, pilu, and hingot. There is another tank on the Mathura road called Chandra-kund, which it would be an improvement to deepen and embank. The word Chhata probably refers to the stone chhattris which surmount the sarae gateways, and form prominent objects in the landscape from a long distance. There is a tahsili school and a weekly market on Fridays. The Hindus have nine small temples and the Muhammadans four mosques.

SAHAR—population 2,776—seven miles from Chhata and nine from Gobar dhan, was, from 1838 to 1857, the headquarters of a tahsili. At the beginning of last century it was a place of considerable importance under the Jats, being the favourite residence of Thakur Badan Sinh, the father of Suraj Mall, the first of the Bharat-pur Rajas. The handsome house which he built for himself is now unoccupied, and to a great extent in ruins; and the very large masonry tank which adjoins it was left unfinished at his death and has never since been completed. The word Sahar would seem to have been originally either Sabha-ra, or Sabha-pur. Probably the latter; for in the Mainpuri district there is a place called Sahawar, which is clearly for Sabha-pur, and from which to Sahar the transition is an easy one. The township is divided into two thoks, the one of Brahmans, the other of Muhammadans, and the latter have four small mosques and a dargah. The Government demand under the present settlement is (including nazul) Rs. 5,392, collected by 16 lumberdars. Part of the land has been transferred by the old proprietors to the two Dhusar families that have been seated here for some generations and are really the principal people in the place. In the town are several old houses with carved stone gateways of some architectural pretension; also a tank, with two masonry ghats, called Mahesar-kund, another known as Manik-Das-wala-kund, and a small ruined temple of Baladeva. There are a police station, a post-office, a weekly market held on Wednesday, and a very well attended primary school. For the accommodation of the latter I had a large and substantial building erected, in the form of a double corridor, arched and vaulted, running round three sides of an open square, with a low wall and central gateway on the fourth side or front. The cost was Rs. 1,858.

The Agra Canal runs close to the town and is bridged at the point where it crosses the Gobardhan road. It would have been much better to have diverted the road and so brought the bridge, which is now a mile away, nearer to the town. As matters stand at present, the canal, instead of being a blessing, is an intolerable nuisance. On account of the depth of its bed and the absence of any distributary, no water can be had from it for irrigation, while some hundreds of acres that used to be close to their owners' doors can now be reached only after a circuit of some three miles, and are, of course, very much lowered in value.

In the mutiny there was no disturbance here except that the lock-up was broken open, a suspected rebel let loose, and the patwari's-papers seized and destroyed.

A short time ago a dispute arose between the Muhammadans and the Hin dus as to the possession of a site on which they wished to erect, the one party a mosque, the other a temple. The real fact, as afterwards more clearly appeared, was that the Hindus had originally a temple there, which the Muhammadans had thrown down and built a mosque over it. This, too, had fallen, and the ground had for some years remained unoccupied. The case, when brought into court, was decided in favour of the Hindus, who thereupon set to work and commenced the erection of a shrine to be dedicated to Radha Ballabh. In dig ging the foundations, they came upon the remains of the old temple, which I rescued and brought into Mathura. They consist of 10 large pillars and pilas ters, in very good preservation and elegantly carved with foliage and arabesques, and also a number of mutilated capitals, bases, &c., the whole series proving an interesting illustration of the mediaeval Hindu style of architecture. Their value is increased by the fact that two of the shafts bear inscriptions, in which the date is clearly given as Sambat 1128 (1072 A. D.) The style that I call 'the mediaeval Hindu,' and of which these pillars afford a good late example, began about the year 400 A. D., and continued to flourish over the whole of Upper India for more than seven centuries. It is distinguished by the constant employment in the capital, or upper half column, of two decorative features, the one being a flower-vase with foliage over-hanging the corners, and the other a grotesque mask. The physiognomy of the latter is generally of a very unIndian type, and the more so the further we go back, as is well illustrated by a pillar in the underground temple in the Allahabad Fort. The motif is precisely the same as may be seen in many European cinque cento arabesques, where a scroll pattern is worked up at the ends, or in the centre, into the semblance of a human face. The fashion with us certainly arose out of the classic renaissance, and in India also may possibly have been suggested by the reminiscence of a Greek design. But it was more probably of spontaneous and independent origin; as also it was among our Gothic architects, in whose works a similar style of decoration is not altogether unknown. In the earlier examples, such as that at Allahabad, the face is very clearly marked; though even there the hair of the head and the moustaches are worked off into a scroll or leaf pattern. In later work, of which numerous specimens may be seen in my collection of anti quities in the Mathura museum, the eyes are made so protuberant, and the other features so distorted and confused by the more elaborate treatment of the foliage and the introduction of other accessories, that the proportions of a human face are almost and in some cases are altogether destroyed. The tradition however exists to the present day; and a Mathura stone-mason, if told to carve a grotesque for a corbel or string-course of any building, will at once draw a design in which are reproduced all the peculiarities of the old models.

SEHI is a place of some note, as being the centre of a clan of Ganrua, i.e., spurious, Thakurs, who derive their distinctive name of ‘Bachhal’ from the Bachh-ban here. They are numerous enough to form a considerable item in the population of the pargana, where they once owned and where they still inhabit as many as 24 villages, viz., Sehi, Chaumuha, Sihana, Akbarpur, Jaitpur, Bhau ganw, Mai, Basi Buzurg, Gangroli, Javali, Dalota, Siyara, Bahta, Kajiroth, Agaryala, Tivoli, Parsoli, Mangroli, Naugama, Undi, Gora, Ranera, Bharauli and Baroli. The Bachh-ban is now a ‘grove’ only in name, and is accounted one of the hamlets of the town. In it is the temple of Bihari Ji, to which the Bachhals resort; the Gosains, who serve it, being accounted the Gurus of the whole community. The name Sehi is probably derived from Sendhna, ‘to exca vate,’ as a great part of the village area (1,442 bighas) consists of broken ground and ravines (khar and behar). Other 106 bighas are occupied by tanks and ponds, one of which is called Ritharo, another Bhabhardi, after the name of the Bach hal, who dug it in the famine of 1837. In 1842 the village was put up to auction for arrears and bought in by Government. After being farmed for some years by Kunvar Faiz Ali Khan, it was sold in 1862 for Rs. 4,800 to Seth Gobind Des, who, in the following year, sold it to Swami Rangacharya, the head of his temple at Brinda-ban, for Rs 10,000. The annual Government demand is Rs. 6,100. There are four other hamlets in addition to the Bachh-ban, called respectively Odhuta, Garh, Devipura (in the khadar) and Little Hazera. The old khera bears the name of Indrauli, and is said to have been at one time the site of a large and populous town. It was certainly once of much greater extent than now, as is attested by the quantity of broken bricks that strew the adjoining fields; but there are no ancient remains nor traces of any large build ing. It is still, however, a fairly well-to-do place, most of the houses in the bazar being of masonry construction, and a few of them partly faced with carved stone. The school has an attendance of about 40 boys; the population being 2,211. In the courtyard of the temple of Bihari Ji is a square chhattri of red sand-stone with brackets carved in the same style as some in the Brinda-ban temple of Gobind Deva; and of those that support the eaves of the temple itself six are of the same pattern. The shrine has evidently been rebuilt at a much later period; and on one of the pillars is cut a rough scrawl with the date Sambat 1805, which is no doubt the year of its restoration. In the village is a small temple of Hanuman, recently rebuilt; and outside, a semi-Muhammadan shrine, erected by a chamar,. Khumani, about the year 1860. There are two annual melas held at it, in Baisakh and Kartik, on the day of the full moon. They are attended equally by Hindus and Muhammadans (as is the case with the shrine of the Bare Miyan at Jalesar) and of the two ministers one is a Brahman, the other a Musalman Fakir. A mosque which, seen from a little distance, looks rather an imposing structure, was built by two Pathans, Kasim Khan and Alam Khan of Panipat, who had a jagir of 24 villages, 12 here and 12 about Sonkh. Their descendants were reduced to poverty under the Bharat-pur Raj; but one of the families, Gulab, has lately in part repaired the mosque.

SHER-GARH—population 4,712-eight miles from Chhata, with which place it is connected by a metalled road, derives its name from a large fort, now in ruins, built by the Emperor Sher Shah. The Jamuna, which once washed the foot of its walls, is now more than a mile distant from it. The Hindus would derive the name from Sihra, Krishna's marriage wreath; but though this is improbable, it is clear that there was a town here long before the time of Sher Shah; for in taking down one of the towers of the fort, I came upon a stone carved with foliage of decidedly early Hindu or Buddhist character, with the trefoiled circle so common in the Kashmir temples. There were six towers to the fort and four gates, called the Dehli, the Madar,the Patti or water gate, and the Khirki or postern. By the latter, which is now the most frequented of all, is the school which I had built in 1875 at a cost of Rs. 1,933, in the same style as the one at Sahar. The original zamindars were Pathans, but in 1859, in execution of a decree held by Kishori Lal, Bohra, the whole of their estate, excepting 11/4 of biswa, still held by the sons of the late Asaf Khan, a descendant of the old family, was put up to auction and sold for Rs. 16,200 to Muhammad Nur Khan of Merath, from whom it was purchased for Rs. 20,000 by Seth Gobind Das. It now forms part of the endowment of the temple of Dwarakadhis in the city of Mathura. In the mutiny, considerable alarm was caused to the townspeople by the Gujars of the neighbouring villages, who made this their centre, and whose estates were afterwards confiscated and bestowed on Raja Gobind Sinh of Hathras. The Hindus have twelve small temples; the Saraugis one, dedicated to Parsvanath, and the Muhammadans three mosques. The weekly market is held on Thursday. There is a police station, a district postoffice, and besides the school for boys there are two for girls, one of the latter having been supported till his death by Asaf Khan. The town is singularly well-supplied with roads, for, in addition to the one to Chhata, it has three others (unmetalled) leading direct to Kosi, to Jait, and, across a bridge of boats, to Noh jhil.

III.—PARGANA MATHURA

THE Mathura pargana is the last of the three lying to the west of the Jamuna. It is the largest in the district, comprising as many as 247 villages and townships, with a population of 220,307 and an area of 401 square miles. Under the Jat and Mahratta Governments of last century its present area was in five divisions—Aring, Sonkh, Sonsa, Gobardhan, and Farrah; Aring being the jagir of Baja Bai, the queen of Daulat Rao Sindhia, who (if local traditions are to be believed) inherited all the ferocious qualities of her infamous father Gatgay Shirzi Rao, the prepetrator of the massacre of Puna. In 1803, when the country was ceded to the Company, two parganas were formed, Mathura and Aring, which were put under a single Tahsildar, who was stationed at the latter place; and this arrangement continued till 1868, when his office was transferred to its present more appropriate location at the capital. The 84 villages, that had previously constituted the Farrah parganah of the Agra district, were added in 1878.

The first settlement was assessed at Rs. 5,149 for Mathura and Rs. 98,885 for Aring, making a total of Rs. 1,04,034, which was gradually increased to Rs. 2,14,336 ; the actual area also having undergone considerable change. For, in 1828, after the conclusion of the war with Durjan Sal, 15 villages on the Bharatpur border were annexed, and about the same time several muafi estates in the neighbourhood of Mathura were resumed. The first contractor for the Government revenue was a local magnate, whose name is still occasionally quoted, Chaube Rudra-man, who, after one year, was succeeded by Khattri Beni Ram.

In addition to the City, it includes within its limits some of the most notable places in the district—such as Brinda-ban, Gobardhan, and Radha-kund a- also several large and populous villages which are of modern growth and have no special characteristic beyond their mere size, as Parson, Phendar, Usphar and others, each with two or three thousand inhabitants.The principal landed proprietors are the trustees of the Seth's temple at Brinda-ban: Gosain Puru shottam Lal of Gokul; the Raja of Awa; the heirs of the Lila Babu, in Calcutta; and Seths Ghansyam Das and Gobardhan Das of Mathura; not one of whom resides immediately upon his estate. The predominant classes of the population are Jats, Brahmans, and Gaurua Kachhwahas. The ancestor of all the latter, by name Jasraj, is traditionally reported to have come at some remote, but unspecified, period from Amber, and to have established his family at the village of Kota, whence it spread on the one side to Jait, and on the other to Satoha, Giridhar-pur, Pali khera, Maholi, Nahrauli, Naugama, Nawada, and Tarsi ; which at that time must have formed a continuous tract of country, as the villages which now intervene are of much more modern foundation. The estates continued for the most part with his descendants till the beginning of the present century; but seventy years of British legislation have sufficed to alienate them almost entirely. The most common indigenous trees are the nim, babul, remja, and kadamb and the principal crops tobacco, sugarcane, chana, cotton, and barley; bajra and joar being also largely grown, though not ordinarily to such an extent as the varieties first named. Wheat, which in the adjoining parganas is scarcely to be seen at all, here forms an average crop. The cold-weather instalment of the Government demand is realized principally from the outturn of cotton. An average yield per acre is calculated at one man of cotton, seven of joar, three of bajra, six of wheat, eight of barley, five of chana, eight of tobacco, and ten and a half of gur, the extract of the sugarcane. The cost of cultivation per acre is put at Rs. 7 for the kharif and Rs. 10 for rabi crops. The river is of little or no use for irrigation purposes; but after the abatement of the rains it is navigated by country boats, which are always brought to anchor at night. Water is generally found at a depth of 49 feet below the surface of the soil; and it is thus a matter of considerable expense to sink a well, more especially as the sandiness of the soil ordinarily necessitates the construction of a masonry cylinder. The Agra Canal has proved a great boon to the agri culturist; it has a length of 16 miles in the pargana, from Konai to Sonoth, with bridges at Basonti, Aring, Sonsa, Lal-pur, and Little Kosi.

ARING—Population 3,579-nine miles from Mathura, on the high road to Dig, was, from 1803 to 1868, the head of a tahsili, removed in the latter year to the Civil Station. Near the canal bridge, the navigation channel to Mathura branches of on the one side and on the other a distributary, that runs through the villages of Usphar and Little Kosi. Till 1818 the town was a jagir of a Kashmir Pandit, by name Baba Bisvanath. On his death it was resumed and assessed at Rs. 6,447, which sum has subsequently been raised to Rs. 10,000. In 1852, the old Gaurua zamindars' estate was transferred at auction to Seth Gobind Das, who has made it part of the endowment of his temple at Brinda-ban. In the mutiny the rebels marched upon the place with the intention of plundering the treasury, but were stoutly opposed by the zamindars and resident officials, and driven back after a few shots had been fired. Lala Ram Bakhsh, the here ditary patwari, who also acted as the Seth's agent, was conspicuous for his loyalty, and subsequently received from the Government a grant of Rs. 1,000 and the quarter jama of the village of Kothra, which he still enjoys. The Tahsildar, Munshi Bhajan Lal, also had a grant of Rs. 1,200, and smaller donations were conferred upon several other inhabitants of the town, chiefly Brahmans. It is much to be regretted that a misunderstanding with regard to the management of the estate has arisen within the last few years between the Seth and his agent, the Lala, which threatens to sever entirely the lat ter's connection with the place. Aring is generally counted as one of the 24 Upabans, and has a sacred pond called Kilol-kund, but no vestige of any grove. Various mythological etymologies for the name are assigned by the local pandits; but, as usual, they are very unsound. Probably the word is a corruption of Arishta-grama; Arishta being the original Sanskrit form of ritha, the modern Hindi name of the Sapindus detergens, or soap-berry tree. The Gosains would rather connect it with Arishta, the demon whom Krishna slew. There is a school of the tahsili class (which hitherto has been liberally supported by Lala Ram Bakhsh), a post-office, a police-station in charge of a Sub-Inspector, and a customs bungalow, recently moved here from Satoha. Three small temples are dedicated respectively to Baladeva, Bihari Ji, and Pipalesvar Mahadeva; and the ruins of a fort constructed last century preserve the name of Phunda Ram, a Jat, who held a large tract of territory here as a jagir under Raja Suraj Mall of Bharat-pur. The Agra Canal passes close to the town, and is bridged at the point where it crosses the main road. The market day is Sunday. The avenue of trees extending from Mathura through Aring to Gobardhan was mainly planted by Seth Sukhanand.

AURANGABAD—population 2,219—was originally a walled town. It is four miles from the city of Mathura on the Agra road, and derives its name from the Emperor Aurangzeb, who is said to have made a grant of it to one Bhim Bhoj, a Tomar Thakur, with whose descendants it continued for many years. For some time previously to 1861 it was however held rent-free by a Fakir, commonly called Bottle Shah, from his bibulous propensities, a grantee of Daulat Rao Sindhia. On his death it was assessed at Rs. 691, which was subsequently raised to Rs. 898. The place is frequently, but incorrectly, called Naurangabad. It also has the subsidiary name of Mohanpur, from one Mohan Lal, a Sanadh, a man of some importance, who came from Mat and settled there last century. On the bank of the Jamuna is an extensive garden, and on some high ground near the old Agra gate a mosque of the same age as the town, which presents rather a stately appearance, being faced with stone and approached from the road by a steep flight of steps. The weekly market is held on Friday, and is chiefly for the sale of thread and cotton. The Government institutions consist of a police-station and a school. For the accommodation of the latter, which for some years past had borne an exceptionally high character, I had a handsome and substantial building erected, with pillars and tracery of carved stone, which now forms the most conspicuous ornament of the place. This was the last work that I completed before I left the district. A view is given of it as an example of the way in which the indigenous style of architecture can be adapted to ordinary modern requirements. A reach of sandy and broken ground extends from the town to the river, where a bridge of boats affords means of communi cation with Gokul and Maha-ban on the opposite bank. Aurangabad is the chief place for the manufacture of wicker chairs and couches, which find a ready sale among the English residents of the adjoining station.

FARAH—population 3,642—has a camping ground for troops on the high road to Agra, from which district it has only lately been detached. It was founded by Hamida Begam, the mother of the Emperor Akbar. About the year 1555, during the exile of the Emperor Humayun the town was the scene of a battle between Sikandar Shah (a nephew of Sher Shah) and Ibrahim Shah, in which the latter was defeated, though he had with him an army of " 70,000 horse and 200 persons, to whom he had given velvet tents, banners, and kettle-drums." Sikandar, whose force did not exceed 10,000 horse, offered peace upon condi tion of receiving the government of the Panjab, but on his overtures being - rejected, he joined in battle, and by his victory-became sovereign of Agra and Delhi while Ibrahim fled to Sambhal.

SONKH—population 4,126—is on the road from Mathura to Kumbhir. It is a very thriving and well-to-do place, with a large number of substantial brick-built shops and houses, many of them with carved stone fronts. Under the Jats it was the head of a local Division. It is said by the Gosains—with their usual absurdity—to derive its name from the demon Sankhasur; but, accord ing to more genuine local tradition, it was first founded in the time of Anang Pal, the rebuilder of Delhi, probably by the same Tomar chief who has left other traces of his name at Son, Sonsa and Sonoth. The ancestor of the present community was a Jat, by name Ahlad, whose five sons—Asa, Ajal, Purna, Tasiha and Sahjua—divided their estate into as many separate shares, which still bear their names and are to all intents and purposes distinct villages, with the Sonkh bazar as their common centre. This lies immediately under the Khera, or site of the old fort, of which some crumbling walls and bastions still remain. It was built by a Jat named Hati Singh, in the time of Suraj Mall of Bharatpur, or Jawahir Singh; but the khera itself must be many hun­dreds of years older. There are two market-places in it, the one belonging to Sahjua, the other to the Purna zamindars. The market day for the former is Thursday, for the latter Monday. But a considerable amount of business is transacted every day of the week; there being as many as 200 baniyas' shops and almost enough local trade to justify the incorporation of a Municipality. In Sahjua there are several extensive orchards of mango and ber trees, with an octagonal stone chhattri (commemorating the grandfather of the present lum berdar), and three masonry wells of exceptionally large dimensions; all attest ing the greater wealth and importance of the Jat proprietors during the short period of the Bharat-pur Hegemony. About a mile from the bazar, just across the Bharat-pur border, at a place called Gunsara, is a very fine masonry tank, worthy of a visit from any one in the neighbourhood, being on the same scale and in much the same style as the Kusum-Sarovar near Gobardhan. This was the work of the Rani Lakshmi, the consort of Raja Randhir Sinh, who also built the beautiful kunj that bears her name on the bank of the Jamuna at Brinda -ban. The tank was not quite completed at the time of her death, and, according to native custom, has never been touched since. Adjoining it is an extensive walled garden overgrown with khirni and other trees that are sadly in need of thinning. In the centre is an elaborately carved stone plinth for a building that was designed but never executed. Though the population of Sonkh exceeds 4,000, the school has an attendance of no more than sixty pupils, of whom only six are the sons of the Jat zamindars. The five pattis stand as follows:—

Name	Thoks	Lumber- dars	Wells	Population (1872)
Ajal ,,,	4	2	3	195	The Ajal thoks are called Bhagmall,Jagraj Sirmaur and Kunja.
Ase ...	2	5	7	380	Ase is now divided into distinet mahals.
Purna ...	2	2	6	1,104	The Purna thoks are named Kisan and Isvar.
Sahjua ..	2	4	15	2,017	The Sahjua,Biluchi and Bewal.
Tasiha ..	3	3	2	415	The Tasiha;Taj,Uranf and Manohar.
Total...	13	16	33	4,1111

Where the road branches off to Gobardhan is a towered temple of Maha deva, with a masonry tank of no great area, but very considerable depth, which was commenced twenty years ago by a Bairagi, Ram Das. It is now all but completed, after an outlay of Rs. 1,300, which he laboriously collected in small sums from the people of the neighbourhood, with the exception of Rs. 200 or 300, which were granted him from the balance of the Chaukidari fund. The avenue of trees along the road between Sonkh and Gobardhan was almost entirely planted by another Bairagi by name Salagram, who began the work out of a donation made him by the deceased Raja of Bharat-pur on the birth of his son and heir.

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