Mathura A Gazetteer-1

MATHURA A GAZETTEER,
edited and compiled by, D.L. DRAKE-BROCKMAN [1911]
GENERAL FEATURES

BOUNDARIES AND AREA

Muttra, or as it is more correctly spelt Mathura, is the north-western district of the Agra division, and lies between the parallels of 27° 14' and 27° 58' north latitude and 77°17' and 78°12' east longitude. It is bounded on the north-west by the Gurgaon district of the Punjab; on the north-east and east by Aligarh, except for some eight miles where the borders of the Sadabad tahsil march with those of the Etah district; on the south by Agra ; and on the west by the independent state of Bharatpur. In shape it is like an imperfect crescent, whose horns look up towards the north-east; and its borders are extremely symmetrical and in no degree disfigured by the intru­sions of independent territory so frequently found in districts which are conterminous with native states. South-west of Muttra city, however, there are five inclaves of Bharatpur territory, consisting either of single villages or groups ; and in the south-western corner the district possesses one village, Phulwara, which is completely isolated in the midst of land belonging to that state. According to the latest returns, the total area of the district is 924,497 acres or 1,445 square miles. Its greatest length is approximately sixty miles and its great­est breadth is forty miles. The district has been from time to time subjected to several changes of area, of which mention will be made in chapter IV.

TOPOGRAPHY AND GENERAL APPEARANCE

The district lies in the basin of the Jumna, which flows through the centre of it and divides it into two tracts of some-what dissimilar characteristics. Generally speaking it consists of two plains, sloping at a rate of 1.28 foot per mile in the direc­tion of the river's course. The few small rocky out-crops which protrude across the Bharatpur boundary in the west and no-where rise more than 200 feet above the plain are the only features that vary the otherwise monotonous landscape. Flanked by ravines and sand dunes, the broad channel of the river rarely sinks more than 30 feet below the general surface of the country and alone prevents the district from being an un­interrupted level expanse; for Muttra is unusually ill-provided with streams or drainage channels. If the eastern corner, comprising parts of Mahaban and the whole of the Sadabad tahsil, be excluded, modern Muttra coincides almost exactly with the Braj Mandal of the Hindus. Its beauties have formed the theme of many a poet's praise in song. But the first aspect of the holy land could not fail to disappoint the student of Sanskrit literature, who had been led to anticipate grassy swards and smiling prospects ; and the impression upon the mind of any chance traveller during the hot and cold seasons of the year is that of a vista of depressing flats, blurred by a dense and cloudy haze and unrelieved by the grateful shade of trees. The general poverty of the Braj Mandal is the inspiration of a popular Hindi couplet, in which Krishna's neglect to enrich the land of his birth with any choicer product than the wild caper (karil) is cited as an instance of his wilfulness.

In the rains, however, which is the time of pilgrimage the landscape improves; and there are several places in the holy land that have a charm of their own. The beauty of Gobardhan and Barsana, where the gleaming tanks, overhung with pipal trees, are overlooked by the rocky hills hallowed by centuries of devotion, is sufficient to justify the warmest panegyrics of the devotee or poet. In the same season the Jumna becomes a mighty rushing stream, a mile or two broad; the dusty plain is transformed into an expanse of green grass and crops ; even the barren undulations along the river are clothed with verdure; and the patches of sacred grove land that lie dotted about over the district are decked once more with blossoms of white and red.

THE TRANS-JAMNA TRACT

The three trans-Jumna tahsils, Mat, Mahaban and Sadabad, have a total area of 643 square miles and present a fair sample of the scenery usually found in the Doab. This tract is care-fully cultivated and is irrigated from both a canal and wells. Luxuriant crops and fine mango groves indicate the fertility of the soil and render the landscape not unpleasing to the eye. To the farmer and economist it is by far the most important part of the district, though of less interest to the historian and anti­quary than the tract which lies on the other side of the river. The agricultural population is denser than in western Muttra and the number of scattered hamlets gives the country a less solitary air. Two intermittent streams, the Pathwaha and the Jhirna, carry towards the Jumna the drainage of northern Mat and central Sadabad respectively. Above Bhadaura, in tahsil Mat, several old beds of the Jumna form lagoons. The undulat­ing ridges of sand which flank the stream stretch further inland than on the opposite side of the river; and isolated dunes may be seen several miles eastward on the uplands. Below Bhadaura the river bank is scored into ravines which are dwarf-likenesses of those in the trans-Jumna tract of Agra.

WESTERN MUTTRA

The western part of the district includes the Muttra and Chhata tahsils, and has a total area of 802 square miles. The surface is perhaps less uneven than that of eastern Muttra; but it is slightly hog-backed, its line of highest elevation lying, though parallel to the Jumna, at some distance both from the river and the Bharatpur boundary. The rural inhabitants eschew hamlets and live in semi-fortified villages. This central­ization is due partly to the quality of the water, which in some places is undrinkable, partly to the attraction of religious association but mainly to the past necessity of providing pro­tection for life and property from the attacks of Jats and Marathas in the troublous days before the British rule. Most of the larger villages, as well as the large towns, Muttra, Brindaban and Kosi, lie on this side of the Jumna. Except that boundary river, the tract can boast no stream. It has no marshy spots beyond the hollows where rain-water stands for a few days ; and the only line of natural drainage in it is the ill-defined channel called the " western depression." This channel was formerly known as the Gobardhan nala. It forms the natural outlet for all drainage on the western side of the Agra canal, from its tenth mile stone, and has a catchment basin of some 2,428 miles. There is no flow-off and no continuous valley down to the point at which the depression leaves Bharatpur territory for the Muttra district, near the village of Sanket.

Above this point the flood water is retained in large hollows approaching the size of jhils, as at Khalitpur, Chandeni and Kotala in Gurgaon, which latter are used for irrigation purposes. From Sanket the valley extends with fair continuity past Gobardhan and Santhrak to the Fatehabad tahsil in Agra, where it terminates in a watercourse emptying into the Utangan river near the village of Nibohra. On the portion that lies with-in this district little or no flow is recorded ; but it has been found necessary to provide for six fairly large culverts in a project recently sanctioned by the Government for raising and improv­ing the road from Muttra to Dig. An additional waterway has also been found necessary on the road to Bharatpur, as both roads run across the depression and become submerged in years of heavy rainfall. Down to the culvert at mile 9 ¾ on the Fatehpur-Sikri distributary of the Agra canal, the valley is now covered with a network of high watercourses for irrigation, the existence of which precludes the possibility of any flow in the depression in ordinary years. A proposal made to open up its whole course by a drainage cut from Hodal to the Fatehpur-Sikri culvert, in order to make the depression serve as an effective line of drainage, was abandoned in 1894, because it was realised that it would be impossible to deal with the accumulation of water in a year of heavy rainfall and on account of the consequent likeli­hood of floods in Muttra and Agra. Trees are scarce in western Muttra. The only large lagoon is an old bed of the Jumna at Koila, in tahsil Muttra. Below this the river banks are scored with ravines similar to those on the opposite side; and there is a long line of similar erosions further north, between Shergarh and Brindaban. Elsewhere the shore consists of sandy undulations, in some places sparsely cultivated but for the most part producing only sarpat grass or tamarisk.

HILLS

In the two western tahsils just described lie the only hills of the district. These eminences are outlying spurs of the Aravalli system and belong to several distinct ranges. The most northerly is the Charn Pahar in Chhota Bathen, which is a low heap of rocks about 400 yards long and ten feet high rising directly out of the plain. Six miles to the south-west is the hill of Nandgaon, which is half a mile long and is covered with the houses of the village, the highest point being surmounted by the Nand Rai temple. The chief hill system of the district lies four miles further south and consists of two parallel ranges less than a mile apart. The main line commences at the village of Unchagaon and runs along the boundary of the district to Nahra at an approximate elevation of 200 feet above the plain. It is covered with huge boulders of rock similar in character to the substance of the hill itself and is entirely destitute of trees; while the detritus of the rock has produced a sandy belt along the foot, locally known as wal. The parallel range is really a series of three almost detached hills, the southernmost being overlaid by the village of Rankauli and the northernmost and largest having Dibhala at one end and the sacred village of Barsana at the other. The Rankauli hill has a few trees on it, and the northern half of the Barsana hill from the village of Manpur, which occupies a depression in the centre, is densely wooded with the dho tree (Anogeissus parvifolia) and is crowned by several temples of great sanctity. The soil between the two ranges is almost pure sand. Some ten miles further south-east, but following the same strike, is the Giriraj or Annakut hill of Gobardhan in Muttra tahsil. At its northern end it is little more than a heap of stones, but it rises at the southern to some 100 feet above the plain : it is a famous place of pilgrimage, wooded with chhonkar and other trees, and has on it numerous temples. All these hills are of ancient quartzite, and the largest is the Gobardhan hill, which extends altogether for about five miles. The only other formation approaching a hill in the district is near Gopalpur in the south of the same tahsil, where there is a curious elevation of red earth seamed with ravines and containing nodules of quartz : it lies far away from any range, but the formation resembles the hillocks at the foot of the Chhata ranges.

LEVELS

Apart from these hills and the valley of the Jumna the district has a gentle slope from north to south which can be clearly depicted by the line of levels. The frontier on the Gurgaon side near Kotban is 613.8 feet above the level of the sea. This falls to 600 feet at Sahar and 594 feet near Aring, some 16 and 25 miles respectively further south. The gradient then becomes a little steeper, for at Beri, 15 miles south of Aring, the recorded height is 574 feet, and on the Agra boundary only five miles beyond Beri this falls to 568 feet. The eastern portion other district is a trifle lower than the western, but the changes in level are not less gradual. Starting at 618 feet on the Aligarh frontier in the north of Mat the recorded height sinks to 610 feet at Chandpur, to 598 at Karahri and to 587 feet near Mat. Only eight miles further on, at Raya, the level is 585 feet ; and this falls to 574 feet near Baldeo and 564 feet near Barauli, at the head of the Jumna ravines. Owing to the easterly trend of the Jumna from this point onwards the level sinks in Sadabad to 564 feet, and at Jalesar road station, at the extreme eastern end of the district, is 563 feet above the level of the sea.

SOILS

For purposes of soil classification the district was at the last settlement in 1879 divided into two portions—the bangar or up-lands and the khadar or Jumna valley, the latter of which, excluding the actual river bed, covered 59,453 acres or 93 square miles. The soils of the uplands do not differ from those found in other Doab districts, and vary from dumat or rich loam to bhur or sand. Dumat is not plentiful in the district, and is found for the most part in Mat, Sadabad and the northern tract of Chhata which was once comprised in the old pargana of Kosi. It varies from a dark to a mellow brown in colour, the varieties of the latter colour being less, fertile than those of the former. Far the most prevalent soil is piliya or light loam, which has a large admixture of sand. As its name denotes, it is yellow in colour, and it is more workable after rain than dumat. It varies considerably in quality, the better forms being equal to dumat, but the inferior varieties differing little from bhur. Pure clay is only found in the tarai or the lowlands, which are known as dahar : it is hard and unyielding and, except in years of favourable rainfall, cannot be worked with the plough. Bhur is almost pure sand, though the designation is also applied to lighter kinds of piliya. The pure sand found in the undulat­ing hillocks is known as puth. Both bhur and puth are, as a rule, accompanied by lowlying tarai or clay beds, into which the alumina of the soil appears to have drained, leaving the sand above. The latter, after being continually blown hither and thither by the wind, drifts into heaps to which the name puth is applied. In the ravines of the Jumna, generally known as behar, cultivation is not extensive, the soil, which is largely mixed with kankar and denuded by drainage, being very poor, while in the actual valley of the river the characteristics are gen­erally similar to those in the uplands. The ground-work of all the firmer soils is clay : in the bed of Nohjhil and in other places, where the soil is subject to the influence of stagnant water, the clay remains and is known as chiknot or slippery earth ; but where the action of the stream is felt, it becomes mixed with other matter, and produces a rich steel-gray loam, which is found at its best in the katris or fertile deposits along the edges of the river.