Indian Antiquary Vol 11

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 16

8
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
high and 12 feet square at base, still standing, but much decayed throughout. It stands on a sand bank, near where a river once flowed, to the south of the mounds indicating the site of an ancient town. A small low door on the west side gives access to a little vacant cell or chamber. The jambs, lintel, and sill of the doorway are of (red sand-)stone, carved with a row of deep rectangular incisions, and the remains of a lion's head in front of the sill. There appears to be another chamber in the upper story. The walls are divided into arch. headed panels and ornamented with a course of carved bricks, of the pattern shown in Figs. 19 and 20.
The tower is in several (P3) storeys, and a few projecting stones remain to show that they were marked by wide cornices. It is to be desired that photographs and a full description of this ancient relic should be taken and published.
Mathêlo or Nagar Mathêla is said to be one of Râi Sahâsi's six fortresses, abovenamed. It is about 45 miles N. E. from Rohri, 6 or 7 miles S. E. from Ghotki, and about 8 or 9 S. W. from Mirpur (Maharki), both of them stations of the Indus Valley State Railway. The site of the old fort is to the west of the modern town, but east of the mounds which are said to mark the position of the ancient city. It is reported to be very like the other two old forts already described, Serwâhi (Seorai) and Mau-Mubarak, only not so high. It is a square of about 170 paces (nearly 650 yards in circumference) with ten or twelve round towers at the angles and at intervals between them, with the gateway on the eastern side. The ruins of some of these towers or bastions are said to be 20 or 30 feet high, and there is a high mound or platform in the centre which seems to have been recently repaired.
The following story was told by some of the elders of the place. In the Satya-Yug (the good old days), Raja Nand was King of Nagar Mathêla, an important city of northern Sindh. He had seven daughters, but never a son to succeed him. The eldest named Mammul went to Kakku of Jesalmer where she was married to a prince of that country. In her train went all the wealth and prosperity of Nagar Mathêla, and they continue to follow after her to the present day. Mayâ or Lakshmi for
[JANUARY, 1882.
sook the place (disguised) as a bichchu, or scorpion.
Afterwards Chagdo Musalmân ruled here, and after him the Kalhora, who was succeeded by the Mir (Biloch) till the English came.
In the Gazetteer of Sindh (1876), page 677, Mathêlo is mentioned as having been founded by a Rajput named Amur about 1400 years ago, and named after his grandson.
The historian Firishtah mentions a strong fort named Bhatia, between Multân and Alôr, which was taken by assault in A.D. 1003 by Mahmud of Ghazni, when the Râja named Bajjar or Bijê Rai was killed. General Cunningham suggests that this Bhâtia may be the same as Mâtila, or Mahâtila, which was one of the six great forts of Sindh in the seventh century. (See Anc. Geog. of India, p. 256.)
It is believed that there are some other ancient sites in Bahawalpur, and the desert on the borders of north-eastern Sindh, along the courses of the rivers that have long since been swallowed up by the sand, or left by the deflection of their waters to the westward.
The continued westing of the Indus river channels has been usually attributed to the natural tendency of north-to-south-flowing rivers in the northern hemisphere to move westwards (analogous to the westing of the trade winds), owing to the increasing (eastward) diurnal velocity of the parallels of latitude which they successively cross. A more efficient cause however seems to lie in the excess of westing over easting in the winds which in the dry season blow the sand of the river beds, and the dust of the country, eastwards, tending to raise the river beds along their eastern banks, and to form a cushion as it were, which protects the eastern bank from erosion more than the western bank, gradually fills up the easternmost channels, and tends to raise the level of the country to the eastward.
For countless ages the sea breezes of the gulf and the force of the south-west monsoon have been and are still carrying the sand of the sea-shore inland, by which the desert of Ajmêr and western Rajputâna has been formed, and the rivers between the Jamna and the Panjab have been choked and swallowed up. In the southern parts of the desert the hillocks and ridges of blown sand