34 
The Country of Braj. 
[No. 1, 
The Country of Braj.—By E. S. Growse, Esq., M. A., C. 8. 
’Whatever the changes in the national religion, the city of Ma¬ 
thura has continued from remotest antiquity the chosen centre of 
Hindu devotion. When Buddhism prevailed throughout India, 
the votaries of Sakya Muni were drawn from the far distant realm 
of China to visit its sacred shrines ; and when the temples of Bud¬ 
dha were swept away by the torrent of Pauranik Brahmanism, the 
desecrated sites were speedily occupied by the new order of divi¬ 
nities. Though the city was plundered of all its accumulated 
wealth by the very first of the great Muhammadan invaders, the 
sacred edifices themselves survived, and for a period of 700 years 
continued to be enriched with successive donations, till Aurangzeb, 
the last and most fanatical of the Delhi emperors, razed every stone 
to the ground, built mosques with the materials, and abolished the, 
very name of the city, changing it from Mathura to Islamabad. 
But the humiliation was of short continuance ; after the death of 
Aurangzeb and the virtual extinction of the empire, first ensued a 
period of anarchy in which neither Hindu nor Musalman had the 
power to crush his neighbour, and then the tolerant sway of Great 
Britain, under which both are equally protected. Thus in the pre¬ 
sent day, after the lapse of a century and half from the period of its 
utter ruin, though the temples have lost the charm of antiquity, 
nor can boast the enormous wealth which they enjoyed in the days 
of the great Indo-Scythian sovereigns, Kanislika and Huvishka 
and their successors till the invasion of Mahmud, yet the holy city & 
has no lack of stately buildings, with which, as described of old in the 
Harivansa, it rises beautiful as the crescent moon over the dark 
stream of the Jamuna.* 
No ancient authorities state in precise phrase the origin of the 
name ‘ Mathura but as the district has always been celebrated for 
its wide extent of pasture land and many herds of cattle, it is more 
than probable that the word is connected with the Sanskrit root 
* Harivansa, 3100. 
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