________________
MARCH 1, 1872.]
GEOGRAPHY OF MAGADHA.
69
counter the dangers of the road. Now, the soli- tary traveller is so confident of legal protection, that, rather than drive his cart up the steep ascent that conducts to the portals of the fortified enclosure, he prefers to spend the night unguarded on the open plain. Hence it comes that not one of the saräis is now applied to the precise purpose for which it was constructed. At Chhât a one corner is occupied by a school, and another by the offices of the Tahsildar and local police, while the rest of the broad area is nearly deserted ; at Chaumuha, the solid walls have in past years been undermined and crirted away for building materials ; and at Kosi, the whole area is occupied with streets and bazars forming the nucleus of the town.
Till the close of the 16th century, except in the neighbourhood of the one great thoroughfare, the country was unreclaimed wood-land, with only here and there a scattered hamlet. The tanks and temples which now mark the various legendary sites were either constructed by Râp Râm of Barsana, about the year 1740, or are of still more recent date. Many of the sacred groves however, though occasionally disfigured by the too close proximity of the village, are pleasant and picturesque spots; one of the most striking being the Ko kila-ban at
great Bathan. The prevalent trees are the pilu, ber, chhonkar, kadamb, pasendu, papri, and other species of the fig tribe, which are always intermingled with clumps of karil, the special product of Braj, with its leaf-less evergreen twigs and bright-coloured flower and fruit. Somewhat less common are the arni, hingot, aján, rukh, gondi, barna and dho; though the last named, the Sanskrit dhava, clothes the whole of the hillside at Barsâ na. In the month of Bhadon these woods are the scene of a series of melas, where the rás-lila is celebrated in commemoration of Krishna's sports with the Gopis; and the arrangement of these dances forms the recognised occupation of a class of Brahmans very numerous in some of the villages, who are called Rasdh âris, and have no other profession or means of livelihood.
The number of sacred places, woods, groves, ponds, wells, hills and temples, which have all to be visited in the course of the annual perambulation, is very considerable ; but the twelve bans or woods and twenty-four groves or upabans are the characteristic feature of the pilgrimage, which is thence called the Banjátra. Further notice of this popular devotion must be reserved till our next chapter.
(To be continued.)
ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF VARIOUS PLACES IN THE KINGDOM OF MAGADHA VISITED BY THE PILGRIM CHI-FAH-HIAN.
BY A. M. BROADLEY, B.C.S., BIHAR (Cotinued from page 21.)
PART II. "LEAVING the south side of the city and pro-, place of Makhdum Sharif-ud-din, one of the ceeding south wards four li, we enter a valley greatest saints amongst the faithful in Hinbetween five hills. These hills encircle it com- dustân. pletely like the walls of a town. This is the site These five hills are by no means solitary; of the old city of king Bimbisára.” . This valley they form a portion of a rocky mountain chain is clearly identical with the narrow tract of stretching nearly thirty miles from the neighcountry surrounded by the five mountains of bourhood of Gayâ, north-west as far as Giryak Rajgir, a little less than a mile due south of the in Bihar. Their sides are rugged and precipitous, fortifications previously described. This spot is and are mostly covered with an impenetrable of the greatest archæological interest. Here once jangal, broken only by irregular pathways overstood, according to tradition, the impregnable grown with brushwood, which are yearly trodden fortress of Jarasandha, outside whose walls was by hundreds of Jaina pilgrims from Murshidabad, fought the celebrated battle of the Mahabharata; Banares, and even Bombay, who throng to centuries later the valley was the scene of many Rajgir during the cold and dry seasons to do of the episodes in the life of the Tathagate; and homage to the sacred charanas or foot-prints' lastly-during the palmiest days of Muhammadan of their saints enshrined in the temples which rale in Bihar-its solitudes became the abiding crown the mountain tops.
• Beal's Fah Hian, Chapter xxviii. p. 112.