1874.] F. S. Growse— The Etymology of Local Names in N. India. 353 
the bird called in Sanskrit Kokila and in Hindi Noil ; for who would dream 
of calling a place simply Cuckoo without any affix such as in the possible 
compound Cuckoo-town P Neither is it the exclamation Noi la, uttered by 
Yasudeva as he was bearing the infant Krishna across the Jamuna ; for 
whatever the language then in vogue, it certainly was not modem Hindi : 
nor again, and for a similar reason, does the word Koila mean ‘ charcoal’ 
with a reference to the ashes of the witch Putana, washed across the stream 
from the town of Grokul. But it may be taken for granted that the final 
consonant stands for ra and has the possessive force of that particle, while 
the former member of the compound is either Koi, 1 the water-lily,’ or Not , 
for Krora , ‘ a wild boar.’ The extensive morass in the neighbourhood, well- 
known to sportsmen as the Koila jhil, renders either derivation probable 
and appropriate. If the fact were not now placed on record, a few more 
years and the philologists who look for the origin of Indian names in every 
language saving only the vernacular of the country, would seize the oppor¬ 
tunity of declaring Koila to be merely a mis-pronunciation of the English 
‘ quail.’ Similarly, it may reasonably be conjectured that Kukar-gama 
is not so called because a Banjara in his travels happened to bury beside the 
village pond a favourite dog (Jcukar ), though the slab supposed to cover the 
dog’s grave is still shewn ; but rather, as the village is certainly of ancient 
date and was colonized by Thakurs from Chitor, it is more probable that its 
name commemorates the otherwise unknown founder, since Kukura occurs 
in the Maliabliarat as the proper name of a king, and may therefore have 
been at one time in common use. To pass yet more rapidly over a few 
other illustrations of the same rule, that apparent identity is equivalent to 
real difference : Kamar does not commemorate Krishna’s gift of a blanket 
(Jcamal) to the shivering hermit Durvasas, but rather implies a migration 
from the older town of Kama ; ‘ Aincli’ does not refer to the £ stretching’ 
of Krishna’s tent-ropes, though the real derivation is doubtful ; ‘ Jau’ 
is not the imperative verb ‘ go,’ but a corruption of yava, ‘ lacMarna, now 
altered by office copyists to Bharna, has no relation to the ‘ death’ of one of 
Krishna’s enemies ; and ‘ Jait’ is not simply an abbreviation for jaitra , but 
(as shewn by the village pronunciation Jaint) represents an original Jayanta, 
which occurs in Sanskrit as the name both of a river and a country. 
It must, however, be borne in mind that the application of this rule is 
restricted exclusively to local names of ancient date. Thus the name of the 
village Sanket is really identical with the Sanskrit word sanlcet , meaning 
‘ an assignation’ or ‘ rendezvous ;’ the place which lies halfway between 
Barsana and Nandganw, the respective homes of Radlia and Krishna, 
having been so called by the Grosains of the 16th century with the special 
object of localizing the legend. Similarly, Pisaya with its beautiful forest 
ofkadamb trees, to which the author of the Yraja-bhakti-vilasa gives 
