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 51

FEBRUARY, 1873.7
JUNNAR TA'LUKA.
isolated hill opposite. They certainly did not The architecture matches with that of other dry up in 1871, but that was after a wet year. buildings in the town whose antiquity is proved These springs on the tops of hills are not un- by their inscriptions, and therefore I have little common here: there is a very fine one, for instance, doubt that in this very building was born on the fort of Narayanagash, which lies about the great founder of the Maratha power. It three miles east of the Purâ and Nasik road, and is to be regretted that no inscriptions are in forms part of the ridge between the Kakri and existence on the fort. Sayyid Jamal Ali, the the Minâ, with which we have been dealing. principal Muhammadan inhabitant of Junnar, The Narayanagash spring has an illegible in- told me that he remembered a Persian inscrip. scription, apparently in Persian.
tion purporting to have been engraved by order But the great lion of Junnar is the fort of of Chand Sultana in the mosque still known by Siwner, a huge mass of black rock cresting a her name. He had too, he said, made a copy of green hill-something like an iron-clad on an it many years ago for a European sahib, but Atlantic wave—that guards a double pass the inscription had disappeared in my time. through the range south of the town. The The whole top of the fort is covered with rockrock, as has been already mentioned, 'is honey- hewn cisterns, which contain rain water all combed with many caves, the refuge of hawks through the year, and keep it pretty sweet. The and vultures, pigeons and bees innumerable. late Dr. Gibson used the fort as a saniOn the south side it is approached by nine gates, tarium, and as a place of confinement for his one within the other; and on the north was for- Chinese convict labourers, one of whom was merly a secret passage through the rock leading dashed to pieces in trying to escape over from the Paga, or cavalry cantonment, that lay at the cliff. the base of the hill. The Påga, however, is now The town below contains many remains of marked only by bare mud walls, and a crack in Musalman grandeur. It was supplied with water the cliff shows where the English powder-bags by no less than eight different sets of waterdestroyed the postern stair. The most conspi- works, besides a fine ghâț to the Kakrî. It is cuous buildings on the top are a large-domed said, and the existing remains in part bear out tomb, and an 'Idgah, erected in honour of some the assertion, that the garrison could, when they old Pirzada. Lower down is a beautiful mosque pleased, fill the moat from some of these sources ; overhanging a tank. The two minarets are united and one of them supplied a curious underground by a single arch, and form a figure of the greatest bath still existing in the city fort or gashi (to simplicity and beauty, standing, as they do, sharp be distinguished from the hill fort of Siwner) against the sky. I have seen no other building This gaphi was 'itself a place of considerable. of this design, and do not know whether it is not strength, with large bastions and a flanker to the unique. The idea is said to have occurred to main gate, which opens north-east. It is now the the architect of the church of SS. Michel et heal-quarters of a Mamlatdar and subordinate Gudule in Brussels, but he was unable to carry judge, and the flanker is given up for municipal it out. This mosque is said to have been purposes. designed by, and afterwards finished in memory In the town itself are some good cisterns of of, Sultana Chand Bibi, the last and heroic various ages, a fine Jammå Musjid, and a rather queen of Ahmadnagar; and the tradition of curious, though not ornamental, building known the place is that it was here that she fell a as the Bâwan Chauri, which, as an inscription victim to mutineers stimulated by the gold and on its face records, was built by Akhlis Khân, intrigues of the Mughul. If this be true, it governor of the fort and city, at a date expressed is a most striking instance of historic justice by the line—" This is the glory of Akhlis that he who brought down the grey hairs of
Khân ;" but what the date was I have forAurangzeb with sorrow to the grave, the Maratha gotten. The building was very ruinous, and champion Râjâ Sivaji, was born on the other has probably been pulled down by this time. side of this same fort in, it is to be supposed, There were certain disputes about the proprietorthe heap of now ruined buildings beside the upper ship of this chauri, and many as to the derivagate, still pointed out as having been the tion of the name. Some derived it from the Killadâr's house. There are no remains of guard of 52 soldiers stationed there, and some any other building likely to have been used from its having been the head-quarters of 52 as the dwelling of so considerable a lady as sub-divisions of the city. The partiality of natives the wife of the powerful Shahji Bhonsle.' for the number 52 is curious: throughout the