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 Bactrian 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 
Abibaran, 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- 
tindpur, 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 ahi, ‘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. Ep.] 
+ [Commonly Ahi-chhatra or “Snake-canopy,” which appears to be the correct 
form; see A. Cunningham, Ane. Geogr. of India, p. 360. Ep. ] 
_ ae 
