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F. S. Groiyse — The Tirthas of VrindA-vana and GoTcula. [No. 4, 
Lala Babu.’ He hel<l office first in Bardwan and then in Orisa, and when 
about thirty years oi ago, came to settle in the holy land of Braj. In con- 
nexion with his temple at Brinda-ban he founded also a rest-house, where a 
large number of pilgrims are still daily fed ; the annual cost of the whole 
establishment being, as is stated, Rs. 22,000. He also enclosed the sacred 
tanks at Radlia-kuud with handsome ghats and terraces of stone at the cost 
of a lakh. When some forty years of age, he renounced the world, and in 
the character of a Bainigi continued for two years to wander about the woods 
and plains of Braj, begging his bi'ead from day to day till the time of his 
death, which was accidentally caused by the kick of a horse at Gfobardhan. 
He was frequently accompanied in his rambles by Mani Ram, father of the 
famous Seth Lakhmi Chand, who also had adopted the life of an ascetic. 
In the course of the ten years which the Lala Babu spent as a worldling in 
the Mathura district, he contrived to buy up all the villages most noted as 
places of pilgrimage in a manner which strikingly illustrates his hereditary 
capacity for business. The zamindirs were assured that he had no pecuniary 
object in view, but only the strict preservation of the hallowed spots. Again, 
as in the days of Krishna, they would become the secluded haunts of the 
monkey and the peacock, while the former proprietors would remain undis- 
turbed, the happy guardians of so many new Arcadias. Thus the wise man 
fiom the Bast picked up one estate after another at a price in every case far 
below the real value, and in some cases for a purely nominal sum. How- 
ever binding his fair promises may have been on the conscience of the pious 
Babu, they were never recorded on paper, and therefore are naturally ignor- 
ed by his absentee descendants and their agents, from whom any appeal ad 
misericordiam on the part of the impoverished representatives of the old 
owners of the soil meets with very scant consideration. The villages which 
he acquired in the Mathura district are fourteen in number, viz., in the Kosi 
Parganah, Jiiu ; in Chhiita, Nandg.,nw, Barsana, Sanket, Karhela, and Hathi- 
ya; and in the home Parganah, Mathura, .Tait, Maholi and Nabi-pur, all 
these, except the last, being more or less places of pilgrimage. He also ac- 
quired by purchase from the Giijars the five villages of Pirpur, Gulalpur, 
Chamar-gaphi and Dhlmri. For Nand-ganw he gave Rs. 900 ; for Barsana, 
Rs. 600 ; for Sanket, Rs. S00 ; and for Karhela, Rs. 500 ; the annual revenue 
derived from these places being now as follows ; from Nandg&nw, Rs. 6,712 ; 
from Barsana, Rs. 3,109 ; from Sanket, Rs. 1,642 ; and from Karhela, Rs. 
1 ,900. It may also be noted that payment was invariably made in Brinda- 
ban rupees, which arc worth only 13 or 11 annas each. The Babu further 
purchased seventy-two villages in ’Aligarh and Balandshahr from Raja Bir 
Smha, Chauhiin ; but twelve of these were sold at auction in the-time of his 
heir, Babii Sri Narayan Sinha. This latter, being a minor at his father’s 
death, remained for a time under the tutelage of his mother, the Rani Kai- 
