Indian Antiquary Vol 04

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 76

66
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
take them off without hurting my own; but it is said to contain two Persian and two Arabic inscriptions, of which I append copies to this paper. There is a good tank beside the tomb, and a short way south of it a small but deep and good well, with a Persian and a Marathi inscription, of which also I append copies, estampages being unobtainable either here or in the tomb. I found no Hindu buildings or remains of any importance near Bhivandi, nor any at all at the next camps to the N. E. at Parghe on the Agra road, and to the N. at Nanditne. But to the west of the latter is the fort of Ghautârâ, which may, for aught I know, contain something to repay an obviously very toilsome ascent; and at the village of W â dowli, half a mile N.E. of Nanditne, I measured a pimpal-tree (Ficus religiosa) 46 feet 9 inches in girth. This is the second largest tree that I have measured in Western India, the largest being an African Baobab (Adansonia digitata, Marathi Gorakh Chinch) at Jannar, with a circumference of 47 feet, and a hollow in it big enough to stable a pony in. The third is a common tamarind (Tamarindus Indica) messuring 45, which stands near a village on the right bank of the Árûnavati river, about a mile above the town of Sirpur, in Khândesh. The pimpal, however, is beyond comparison the handsomest tree of the three, and is justly held in high veneration by the inhabitants of the village, which, as it shows no sign of unsoundness or decay, it may continue to overshadow for many generations to come. Four miles north of Nanditne is the town of Dug hâd, famous for the defeat of the Marâthâs by Colonel Hartley.* From Dughâd, riding over the battlefield and through the pass in rear of it, it is four miles to Aklol, on the Tansâ river, where commences the group of hot springs known generally as those of Wazrâbâi, cursorily alluded to by Colonel Sykes under the name of "Vizrabhaee." These springs occur in or near the bed of the Tansà river, every here and there along about four miles of its course, which here lies over a common reddish trap pierced by occasional dykes of intensely hard and homogeneous black basalt. I had no thermometer, but, with the aid of one improvised of an egg, ascertained that none of the springs approach boiling-point in temperature; and into most of
Grant Duff, Hist. of the Marathas, vol. II. pp. 426-428.
[MARCH, 1875.
them natives jump at once, though there are one or two which it is thought prudent to approach by first entering one of lower temperature. The water is tasteless; and the strong smell of rotten eggs and gun-washings, which pervades the neighbourhood of the springsarises, I think, less from it than from the bubbles of gas which rise through it, being certainly strongest when and where these are most numerous. The natives believe much in the power of these springs for the purification from deadly sin and cutaneous diseases. Those at Akloli are clustered round a temple of Mahadeva called Rameswar (from which name one might perhaps infer that it was originally a place of Vaishnava, and not of Saiva, worship). The temple itself is not very remarkable or ancient. It has two or three good cisterns filled by the hot springs; and about a hundred yards lower down are half a dozen others in the bank and bed of the river. A little way north-east of the temple, in a pretty spot on the river-bank, is the nameless tomb of a European officer, of whom no one knows anything but that "he was a Captain Frâs Sâheb (query Frost or Ferrers), who came here with his wife and children about fifty years ago to have the benefit of the hot waters, and died here. Then the Madam Sâheb chose this spot, and buried him in it and went away."
About half a mile down the river from Râmeswar, in the village of Wadowli, are the springs of Wazres war or Wazrâ hâi proper, which are in the bed of the Tansâ, and exactly similar to the last-mentioned or lower Râmeswar group. On the side of a spur of the Ghautârâ range stands the temple of Waz râ bâ i herself; "Our Lady of the Falchion" the Brâhmans here say her name means,-interpreting ward to mean "a very sharp short sword," though 1 should have been inclined to derive it from vajra (Sanskrit, a thunderbolt).
This lady is a Yogini who became incarnate in this neighbourhood to destroy Daityas, and formerly resided at Gunj, seven miles to the north, but broke up house there under circumstances hereafter to be mentioned. There is very little to be learnt about her from the people around, and though there is a Mahatmya or chronicle recording some particulars about her and the river Waitûrnâ, it is not kept here, but by her upadhyd or hereditary priest, who Geol. Papers of Western India, p. 108.