1879.] F. S. Growse — Bulandshahr Antiquities. 271 



the designation of the Pargana. Of its early history there are no written 

 records, and little or nothing upon which implicit reliance can be placed 

 has been preserved by oral tradition. Gold coins, however, bearing Greek 

 and Pali inscriptions of the JBactrian dynasty, used to be not unfrequently 

 washed down in the rains among the debris from the high ground of the 

 old city,* and sufficiently attest that the place at that remote period 

 was one of considerable wealth and importance. 



According to tradition the founder was a Tomar Raja, by name 

 Parmal, in whose time and for several generations later the town was 

 called Banchati. One of his successors, Raja Ahibaran (' the cobra- 

 coloured,' as his name is popularly interpreted), is said to have been the 

 first to give his capital the name of Baran, intending thereby to perpetuate 

 the memory of his own name. This appears to me very doubtful, or 

 rather I might say plainly is obviously incorrect. Baran is certainly not 

 the Sanskrit word varna ' colour,' but varana, ' a hill fort or enclosure ;' 

 and Ahibaran might thus mean ' snake-fort' or ' Naga-fort,' in the same 

 way as the more famous Ahi-kshetraf means ' snake-land.' No Raja 

 Ahibaran, I should conjecture, ever existed, but the town may well have 

 derived its name from being a stronghold of the Naga tribe. 



Another explanation is, however, possible. Some twenty-one miles to 

 the north-east of Bulandshahr, on the right bank of the Ganges, is the small 

 town of Ahar, which (according to local tradition) is the spot where, 

 after Parikshit, the successor of Raja Yudhishthir on the throne of Has- 

 tinapur, had met his death by snake-bite, his son Janamejaya, to avenge 

 his father's death, performed a sacrifice for the destruction of the whole 

 serpent race. Though still accounted the capital of a Pargana, it is a 

 miserably poor and decayed place with a population, according to the last 

 census, of only 2,414. It is evidently, however, a site of great antiquity. 

 Part of it has been washed away by the river, but heaps of brick and other 

 traces of ruin still extend over a large area, and I found lying about in 

 the streets several fragments of stone sculpture of early date. The two 

 best I brought away with me to Bulandshahr, as also a once fine but now 

 terribly mutilated round pillar, which I dug up on the very verge of the 

 high cliff overlooking the river. This is specially noticeable as having its 

 base encircled with a coil of serpents, which would seem to corroborate 

 the connection of the local name with the word alii, ' a snake.' The prin- 

 cipal residents of the town are Nagar Brahmans by descent, though — since 



* The side of the hill where they used to be washed down in the rains was not 

 long ago built up with masonry, to prevent any further cutting away. [See note, 

 p. 272. Ed.] 



t [Commonly Ahi-chhatra or " Snake-canopy," which appears to be the correct 

 form; see A. Cunningham, Anc. Geogr. of India, p. 360. Ed.] 



