Indian Antiquary Vol 02

SR No.: 032494
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 428
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 18

12
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
by one path, which was nearly destroyed by the English in 1818, but a single man can still climb up. There is a curious vaulted magazine at the top. I believe that Dr. Bhâu Dâji discovered, either here or at the Ghât, some inscriptions relating how a great king had sacrificed in this place whole armies of sheep and goats, hecatombs of horses and camels, and nine elephants. However, I have not seen either the inscriptions or the learned Doctor's papers on the subject. This fort of Jiwdhan forms part of a curious. Pleiades constellation of fortresses called the seven forts of Junnar. They lie something in the shape of the constellation to which I have compared them, and resemble it further in that "Qua septem dici sex tamen esse solent," for the locality of the seventh is very little known, and it was not till after diligent search that I discovered it on a hill over the head waters of the Dudari river, between its valley and that of the Kukri, now in question. It is, as well as I recollect, called Nimgori, and fronts westward over the Konkan with Harichandragarh and Jiwdhan, This latter, being at a corner, forms also part of the southern line of defence, with Châwand, Siwneri, and Nârâyanagarh, all rising, like it, out of the watershed of the Minâ and Kukri. Communications between these six are guarded by a fort called Harsha, commanding a pass from the Kakri valley to that of the Dudari, the next northwards. The whole together
NOTES CONNECTED WITH SAHET MAHET. BY W. C. BENETT, B.C.S., GONDA.
THE agreement of information derived from wholly independent sources lends their value, if they have any, to the following comparisons of local tradition with known or conjectured historical facts.
1. It is related at Ayudhya that the great king Vikramaditya was visited at the close of his reign of eighty years by a Jogi named Samudra Pâl. The magician induced the king to allow his soul to be transferred to a corpse, and himself occupied the vacant royal body, thus acquiring the throne of Ayudhya and Srâvasti, which was occupied by his dynasty for seventeen generations.
[JANUARY, 1873.
form a complete protection to the two great military and commercial routes of those days, vid the Nânâ and Malsej Ghats, neither of which can be approached by any route not commanded by at least three of the seven. The fort of Châwand, which is the next east of Jiwdhan, is more like a huge broken pillar than a hill, and is, like Jiwdhan and the rest, provided with a vaulted magazine at the top, and, like it, extremely difficult of access, and for the same reason, viz., the destruction of the only gate by our Engineers in 1818. To the east of it lies the village of Keli, whose inhabitants were, according to the local legend, driven out during the Mogalaiâmmal (imperial rule) by a strange and terrible plague. Men fell down dead at the plough, at their meals, on the road, without any visible cause. After a short time the survivors, who were of the caste called Gurâvs, the hereditary priests of Siva, concluded that the aborigines of the hills, the Kolis and Thâkûrs, had enchanted the place, and fled southward 18 kos into the Bhîmânêr, where their descendants are patels to this day. They have never-such is the pertinacity with which the Dakhani clings to hereditary rights-relinquished their claim to exercise the patel's office in Kelf. In 1871, while the district was in my charge, they renewed their claim, offering to return to live there. I left the taluka on sudden orders, and do not know what was the end of the matter.
A king Vikramaditya of Srâvasti is mentioned in the Raja Tarangini as the conqueror of Matrigupta of Kashmir, and the best authorities put him in about the middle of the second century.
Samudra Gupta of Behar is still better known. Surely this legend affords a very strong confirmation to the conjecture that the local monarchs of Śrâvasti were conquered by the rising Gupta dynasty; and it goes far to explain the utter desolation, contrasting so violently with the power which it must have had when it could subdue distant Kashmir, which the Chinese pilgrims found a few centuries later at Śrâvasti.
2. The second tradition is as follows. The
king of Sahet Mahet (Śrávasti) was a great hunter. He returned one evening from the chase just as the sun was setting, and his queen, fearing that he would lose his dinner, sent up to the roof of the palace the beautiful wife of his younger brother. The sun-god stayed to watch her till she descended, which was not till the feast was ended, As the king rose from table