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JANUARY, 1873.]
JUNNAR TÁLUKA.
11
Here is the ford by which, as well as I could learn, Raja Sivaji crossed to surprise Junnar in May 1657, after a mountain march through the jungles of the present Ambegâm Petå. The pass by which he entered the Minâner goes by the name of the Kawal Khind, or Crow's Gap, as being more fit for a crow than for any featherless biped. It is however now passed, with much labour, by bullocks. Two miles below Nirgude the trap-rock crops out to the surface, and here is a fine Mughul dam, nearly perfect, but the canal is gone which formerly conducted its water to Baglohôr, the garrison garden of the fortress of Sivaneri. From this down, the Minâ flows, like a respectable river, in one very rocky bed to Nârâyaņagam, a fine village on the Punâ and Nâsik road. Here is another dam of unknown age, which, lying broken when we came into the country, has been repaired by the Government, and is now the most successful piece of irrigation that I know of; taking up no ground, costing little for repairs, and water- ing, as well as I recollect, about 8,000 acres from its double canal. We might well attend a little in these matters to the wisdom of "the men of old time, and our fathers that begot us."
The Musalman rulers of Western India and the earlier British conquerors built few great tanks; but they covered every perennial stream with Bundâras (weirs) which irrigated each their own village or two, while they encroached not at all on the cultivable land, and any damage a chance flood might do was easily and cheaply repaired. The Mînâ passes under a good modern bridge past Narayanagam, and joins the Ghop near Pimpalkhera, leaving to its left the fort of Narayanagash.
The second stream, the Kukri, springs from a veritable "cow's mouth" carved roughly in the living rock, into a charming little kunda, or natural basin, near the Koli village of Pår. Thence it flows northward for a couple of miles, and turns again to the south-east, when it reaches the long narrow valley which terminates at the Nâng Ghåţ. This famous pass is no more nor less than a huge staircase, built in a crack of the precipice that here overlooks the Konkan, & wall of rock 1,500 feet sheer up and down. Curiously enough, this spot, where any one would think the natural limit of Konkan and Dakhan to be pretty well defined, is said to have been in old days the scene of a hot boundary dispate between the inhabitants of Ghâțgarh,
above the Ghât, and of the nearest Konkan village below. The belligerents assembled on a high point of rock overlooking the contested frontier, and debated for a long time without prospect of coming to any better solution than the fool's argument. At last a Mahâr, the liereditary guardian of the boundaries of Ghatgarh, arose and adjured all present by a great curse to fix the boundary where he should stand still. This was agreed to, and he forthwith jumped over the cliff. On the spot where he was dashed to pieces a red stone still commemorates the event, and marks the boundary of the two villages, whose inhabitants perform certain devotions there once a year.
The legend is curious as illustrating both the extraordinary love of the Indian villager for a boundary squabble, be the locality ever so well marked out by nature, and the devotion of hereditary officers to the duties of their wattan. The sacrifice of the poor Mahâr, a sort of Little Pedlington Quintus Curtius, affords a precedent which might be turned to advantage in Europe.
It is possible that rectification of frontiers might not be so much talked about, were it customary to settle them by the happy despatch of foreign secretaries and ambassadors.
The Ghât itself, as I have said, is a mere winding cleft in the rock, which was converted into a regular staircase by the energy of a certain Nânâ Rao. I think that he wrought about the beginning of this century, and is not to be confounded with Nânâ Fadnavis (Balaji Janardan). However, I speak only from local tradition, and am open to correction. There are several caves about the herul of the Ghat, one of which used as a dharmasalâ, another generally contains good water, and a third is said in former days to have been a toll-chest, into which the passers-by threw the toll money, to be collected once a day by a kárkûn. In what golden age of Hindu purity this happened I know not. In the present day no toll is collected, but if it were still thrown into the cave, and respected by men, it would probably be made away with by a numerous breed of small and sacred monkeys, said to be peculiar to the place (which I doubt). Above the Ghât, on some comparatively open ground, are a great number of mounds, testifying, I think, to the former existence on this spot of & considerable town. The modern village of Ghâtgarh is nearly two miles off, nestled on the flank of the fort of Jiwdban. This is a huge crag accessible only
