JOURNAL 



OF 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. 39-— March, 1835. 



I. — Account of a Visit to the Ruins of Simroun, once the capital of the 

 Mithila province. By B. H. Hodgson, Esq. Resident in Nipal. 



[In a letter to the Editor.] 

 I trust that the drawings and inscriptions lately sent you from 

 Bakra, Mathiah, Radhiah, and Kesariah, will serve to draw attention 

 towards the remains of Hindu science and power still extant in this 

 direction — the Mithila, or Maithila Desa of the Sastras, and North 

 Bihar of the Moghuls. But it is not merely on the British side of the 

 boundary that these astonishing traces of ancient civilization exist ; 

 for, in the Nipalese Tara'i, also within a few miles of the hills, where 

 now (or recently) the tiger, wild boar, and wild buffalo usurp the soil, 

 and a deadly malaria infects the atmosphere for three-fourths of the 

 year, similar vestiges are to be found. The Nipalese Tarai is synominous 

 amongst Europeans with pestilential jungle. It was in the halls of 

 Janakpur, however, that the youthful Rama sought a bride : it was 

 from the battlements of Simroun that the last of the Deva dynasty 

 defied so long the imperial arms of Toglak Sha'h ! 



But the ruins of Janakpur and of Simroun still exist in the Nipalese 

 low-lands : and he who would form a just idea of what the Hindus of 

 Mithila achieved prior to the advent of the Moslems must bend his 

 pilgrim steps ' from the columns of Radhiah and of Mathiah, in the 

 British territories, to the last but still astonishing vestiges of the cities 

 of Kings Janaka and Nanyupa, in those of Nipal. 

 ' Of the Nipalese Tara'i it might justly be said, until very lately, 

 ' A goodly place it was in days of yore, 

 But something ails it now : the place is cursed.' 

 Five centuries of incessant struggle between Moslem bigotry and 

 Hindu retaliation had indeed stricken this border land with the 



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