270 
F. S. Growse —The town of Bulandshuhr. 
[No. 3, 
The town of Bulandshuhr.—By F. S. Ghowse, C. I. F. 
(With two Plates.) 
In 1821, when the present district of Eulandshahr was first formed, 
the town bearing that name was selected for its capital, chiefly on ac¬ 
count of its very convenient and central situation. 
Though a place of immemorial antiquity, it had fallen into decay 
centuries ago and had ultimately dwindled down into a miserably mean and 
half-deserted village. A ragged and precipitous hill, on the western bank 
of the narrow winding stream of the Kalindi, was all that remained of the 
old Fort, or rather of the succession of Forts, that in the course of 3000 
years had been built, each on the accumulated debris of its predecessor. 
On its summit was an unfinished mosque, commenced by Sabit Khan, the 
Governor of Kol, in 1730, and huddled about it were some fairly large, 
but mostly ruinous, brick houses, occupied by the impoverished descendants 
of the old proprietory community and of local Muhammadan officials, such 
as the Kazi and the lvanungo. The rest of the population consisted of a 
small colony of agricultural labourers, scavengers and other menial tribes, 
who had squatted in their mud huts at the foot and to the west of the hill, 
where low mounds and ridges of broken bricks and pot-sherds, the vestiges 
of former habitation, alternated with swamps and ravines that collected the 
drainage of all the surrounding country and passed it on to the river. 
Only sixty years have since elapsed and out of such unpromising- 
materials there has now been developed as bright, cleanly and thriving a 
little town as can be found anywhere in the Province. The population has 
increased to upwards of 17,000, but it is still of much less commercial im¬ 
portance than the flourishing mart of Khurja, which is only ten miles to 
the south and has the further advantage of possessing a station of its 
own on the main line of the East Indian Railway. It is, however, a matter 
for congratulation that in determining the site for the head quarters of the 
district the larger town was not given the preference; for in point of 
sanitation there is no comparison between the two places, Eulandshahr by 
reason of its well-raised site and facilities for drainage being as healthy as 
Khurja is notoriously the reverse. 
The only ground for regret is that when the old historical site 
was adopted, the old historical name of Baran was not also restored. 
Eulandshahr, which—in English characters especially—has a most cumbrous 
and barbaric appearance, has no literary authority. Apparently it was 
imposed by the Muhammadans during the reign of Aurangzeb, when the 
ruling power was possessed with a mania—like the modern French—for the 
abolition of every name that suggested recollections of an earlier dynasty. 
In large towns, such as Mathura and Brindaban, where also the experiment 
