JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL 
Part I.—HISTORY, LITERATURE, See. 
No. I.—1881. 
Contributions to the History of BundelTchand.—By Vincent A. Smith, 
B. A., B. C. S. 
Paet I. 
The Peae-Chandel Peeiod. (To 830 A. D.) 
The Gaharwdrs. 
The traditions current in Mahoba and the villages in the neighbour¬ 
hood unanimously declare that a Gaharwar Raj preceded at some undefined 
date the rule of the famous Chandel dynasty. I have carefully noted all 
traditions of this kind that I heard, but have not succeeded in learning 
much about the old Gaharwar chiefs. One fact we know for certain that 
they were great tank builders, and in the country round Mahoba their tanks 
are nearly as numerous as those ascribed to the Chandels, from which they 
may generally, if not always, be distinguished by the circumstance that in 
the Gaharwar embankments no cut stone is employed, whereas part of the 
Chandel embankments is generally formed of dressed granite blocks. The 
antiquity of the Gaharwar works is attested, not only by the rudeness of 
their construction, but also by the fact that in several cases the embank¬ 
ments are broken and the beds of the lakes or tanks dry. 
The greatest of the Gaharwar works is the massive embankment of the 
Bijanagar lake, a beautiful sheet of water about four miles in circumfer¬ 
ence, situated about three miles east of Mahoba. 
General Cunningham (Arch. Rep, II, 439) asserts that this lake was 
the work of Vijaya Pala Chandel in the eleventh century, but, although it 
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