1874.] F. S. Growse —The Etymology of Local Names in N. India. 349 
corruption and is pronounced Hindol, which means a swing. This will pro¬ 
bably before long give occasion to a legend and a local festival in honor 
of Radhii and Krishna. 
Under the same head comes the apparently Muhammadan name Noli ; 
which, with the addition of the suffix jhil, is the designation of a decayed 
town on the left bank of the Jamuna to the north of the district. At no 
very great distance, but on the other side of the river, in Gurganw, is a 
second Noli; and a third is in the Jalesar Pargana, which now forms part of 
the Agra district. So far as I have any certain knowledge, the name is not 
found in any other part of India ; though it seems to occur in Central Asia, 
for the Yarkand expedition is stated in the papers to have reached Leh via 
Kliotan, Kiria, Polu, and Noli, by the easternmost pass over the Kuen-lun 
mountains. Upon this point I may hope to acquire more definite infor¬ 
mation hereafter; the best maps published up to the present time throw 
no light on the matter, for though they give the towns of Kiria and Kho- 
tan, they do not show Noli, and its existence therefore requires confirmation. 
The three places in this neighbourhood all agree in being evidently of great 
antiquity, and also in the fact that each is close to a large sheet of water. 
The lake, or morass, at Noli-jhil spreads in some years over an area measur¬ 
ing as much as six miles in length by one in breadth. It is no doubt to a 
great extent of artificial formation, having been excavated for the double 
purpose of supplying earth with which to build the fort, and also of render¬ 
ing it inaccessible when built. The inundated appearance of the country 
combines with the name to suggest a reminiscence of the Biblical Deluge 
and the Patriarch Noah. But the proper spelling of his name, as Mr. 
Blochmann informs me, is Null, with the vowel u and the Arabic Ji. Badao- 
ni, who twice* mentions the town, spells it with the imperceptible h ; but in 
the Ain-i-Akbari, which herein agrees with invariable modern usage, the 
final letter is the Arabic h. Again, if a reference to the Deluge were in¬ 
tended, the word Noli would not have been used simply by itself; and 
standing as it does, it can scarcely be other than the name of the founder. 
But (again to quote Mr. Blochmann) “ Muhammadans use the name Null 
extremely rarely. Adam, Musa, Yusuf, and Ayub are common ; but on 
looking over my lists of saints, companions of Muhammad, and other worthies 
of Islam, I do not find a single person with the name Null ; and hence I 
would look upon a connection of Noh with Noah as very problematical. I 
would rather connect it with the Persian nuh, ‘nine,’ which when lengthen- 
ed becomes noli, not nuh ; as the Persian dih , ‘ a village,’ becomes deli, not 
diliT But if we abandon the Semitic name, it will be better, considering the 
purely Hindu character of the country, to try and fall back upon some 
* Once as the scene of a fight between Iqbal Khan and Shams Khan of Bayanah 
(A. H. 802), and again as the place where Mubarak Shah crossed the Jamuna for JartolL 
