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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH 1, 1872.
ing home of Vaishnava Hinduism, that forms the subject of the present papers. It is about 42 miles in length, with an average breadth of 30 miles, and is intersected throughout by the river Jamuna. On the right bank of the stream are the pargaņas of Kosi and Chh atâ,t so named after their principal towns, with the home pargana below them to the south; and on the left bank the united parganas of No h-j hilt and Mats with half the pargana of Mah âban as far east as the town of Balda v.a. This extent of country is almost absoiusely identical with the Braj-mandal of Hin lu topography, the circuit of 84 kos in the neighbourhood of Gokul and Brinda-ban, where the divine brothers Krishna and Balaram grazed their herds. On the west a low range of sandstone hills forms a barrier between Eng- lish territory and the independent state of Bharatpur; and one of the twelve sacred woods, viz., Kâmban, is beyond the border. To a very recent period almost the whole of this large area was pasture and woodland, and to the present day many of the villages are environed by broad belts of trees variously designated as ghaná, jhári, rakhya, ban, or khandi. These tracts are often of considerable extent; thus the Ko- kila-ban at Great Bathan covers 723 acres; the rakhya at Kamar more than 1000,
and in the contiguous villages of Pisa y o* and Karhelat the rakhya and kadamb-khandi together amount to nearly as much. The year of the great famine Samvat 1894, that is, 1838 A. D., is invariably given as the date when the land began to be largely reclaimed ; the immediate cause being the number of new roads then opened out for the purpose of affording employment to the starving population. Almost every spot is traditionally connected with some event in the life of Krishna or of his mythical mistress Radha, sometimes to the prejudice of an earlier divinity. Thus two prominent peaks in the Bharatpur range are crowned with the villages of Nandga i w and Barsana, of which, the former is venerated as the home of Krishna's foster-father Nanda, and the latter as the residence of Radha's parents Brikhabhân and Kîrat. Both legends are now as implicitly credited as the fact that Kțishna was born at Mathura; while in reality the name Nandgå i w, the sole foundation for the belief, is an ingenious substitution for Nandish var, a title of Mahadeva, and Barsana is a corruption of Brahmasánu, the hill of Brahma. Only the Giriraj at Gobardhan was according to the original distribution, dedicated to Vishnu, the second person of the trimurti, who is now recognised
Kogi is a populous and thriving municipal town on the high rond to Delhi, with the largest cattle market in that part of the country. The name is said to be a corruption of Kugasthali; though it may be surmised to have rather some connection with the sacred grove of Kotban which is close by.
+ The local pandits, who are determined to find a reference to Krishna in every name throughout the whole of Brni,derive Chhâta from the Chhattra dhára alila, which they say the god celebrated there. But the town has no genuine tradition nor reputed sanctity, nor appearance of antiquity, and more probably derives its name from the stone Chhattris which surmount the lofty gateway of the Imperial Sarai, And form prominent objects from & very considerable distance.
I Noh-jhil is a decayed town about 30 miles from Matburî, situate on the borders of & very large jhil, some 6 miles in length, which is said to have been the original bed of the Jamuna. The banks of the river are now some 4 or 5 miles distant. The name of the patriarch Noh may have been given to the place with a reference to its flooded Appearance. There is a ruinous Fort with high and massive earthen ramparts constructed by the Játs, and also a Mohammndan dargah which includes in its precincts a covered colonnade, consisting of some 20 or 80 Hindu pillars, the spoils of an older temple.
S M at, though the head of spargana, is merely a small and meanly-built village on the left bank of the Jamuna,
little above Brinda-ban. It is one of the stations in the ban-játra, and is the reputed scene of Krishna's childish frolic in upsetting Jasodás milk pails (ma!). Close by are the more famous tirthas-Bhandir-ban and Bhadra-ban: both mentioned in all the Vaishnava Purinas.
The number 84 seems originally to have been selected as & sacred number in consequence of its being the multiple of the number of months in the year with the number of
days in the week. Its connection with the Braj-mandal is therefore peculiarly appropriate, if Krishna be regarded as the Indian Apollo. Thus the magnificent temple in Kashmir dedicated to the sun under the title of Martand has a colonnade of exactly 84 pillars.
Kamar in the Kosi pargane is still a populous Jat town, but in the early part of last century Wis a place of much greater wealth and importance, when a daughter of one of the principal families was taken in marriage by Thakur Badan Sinha of Sabar, the father of the famous Sûraj Mal, the first of the Bharatpur Rájás. On the outskirts of the town is a large walled garden with some monuments to his mother's relations, and in connection with it & spacious masonry tank filled with water brought by aqueducts from the surrounding rakhya. At a little distance is an artificial lake with untinished stone ghâta, the work of the Rájá: this is called Durvasag-kund, after the irascible saint of that name, but there is no tradition to connect him with the locality.
• Bhûk ho pisayo is, in the local patois, a common expression for hungry and thirsty; and Piskvo is said to be so called because Radha one day met Krishna there fainting with thirst, and relieved him with a draught of water.
+ Karhela is locally derived from kar hilna, the movements of the hands in the Rás lila. At the village of Little Bharna a pond bears the same name-Karbela kund —which is there explained as karm hilna equivalent to pop mochan. But in the Mainpuri district is a large town called Karha)-the same name in a slightly modified form —where neither of the above etymologies could hold. In each case the name is probably connected with a simple natural feature, there being at all these places dense thickets of the karil plant.
Kirat is the only name popularly known in the locality, but in the Brahma Vaivarta Purana it is given as Kalâvati
madan damparts constructors Fort with be to its flooded
