1871.] 
The Country of Braj. 
35 
math , 1 to churn.’*' In support of this theory, it may be observed that 
many places in the district unmistakeably derive their names from 
similar terms of rural life. For example, Gokul means originally 
* a herd of kine Gobardhan, ‘ a rearer of kine and Balkan, the 
name of two extensive villages near the town of Kosi, i a cattle- 
pen.’ Thus too Mat, on the bank of the Jainuna opposite Brinda- 
ban, is so called from mat , ‘ a milk pailand Dadhiganw, contract¬ 
ed into Dahganw, in the Kosi Pargana, from dadhi , ‘ curds.’ 
Native scholars would probably prefer to see in Mathura an allu¬ 
sion to Madhu-mathan, a title of Krishna, implying the destroyer 
of Madhu, the demon on the site of whose stronghold the city was 
first founded, and from whom it is sometimes called Madhupuri ; 
but this legend, there can be little doubt, is of later date than the 
local name. 
According to Hindu topography, the town forms the centre 
of a circuit of 84 /cos, called the circle of Braj or Braj-man- 
dal. This word Braj also means in the first instance ‘ a herd ;’ the 
noun being derived from the root vraj, 1 to go,’ and acquiring its 
signification from the fact that cattle are always on the move and 
never can remain long on one pasture-ground. For a similar rea¬ 
son the pastoral tribe of Ahirs, originally abhirs, take their name 
from the root vr , £ to go,’ with the prefix dbhi , ‘ about.’ Hence it 
arises that in the earliest authorities for Krishna’s adventures botii 
Yraja and Gokula are used to denote not the definite localities now 
bearing those names, but any chance spot temporarily used for 
stalling cattle: inattention to this archaism has led to some confu¬ 
sion in assigning sites to the various legends. 
* Thus in all descriptions of the local scenery the churn forms a prominent 
feature, as for example in the Iiarivansa, 3395. 
** A fine country of many pasture lands and well nurtured people, full of ropes 
for tethering cattle, resonant with the voice of the sputtering churn, and 
abounding in oceans of curds ; where the soil is ever moist with‘the froth of 
milk, and the stick with its circling cord sputters merrily in the milk pail, as the 
girls spin it round.” And again in section 73 of the same poem ^ 
“in homesteads gladdened by the sputtering churn.” 
