1883.] 
F. S. Growse— The toim of Bulandshahr . 
performed a sacrifice for the destruction of the whole serpent race. Though 
still accounted the capital of a Pargana, it is a miserably poor and decayed 
place with a population, according to the last census, of only 2,414. It 
is evidently, however, a site of great antiquity. Part of it has been 
washed away by the river, but heaps of brick and other traces of ruin 
still extend over a large area, and I found lying about in the streets 
several fragments of stone sculpture of early date. These I brought away 
with me to Bulandshahr, as also a once fine but now terribly mutilated 
round pillar, which I dug up on the very verge of the high cliff overlook¬ 
ing the river. This is specially noticeable as having its base encircled 
with a coil of serpents, which would seem to corroborate the connection 
of the local name with the word ahi, ‘ a snake.’ The principal residents 
of the town are Nagar Brahmans by descent, though—since the time of 
Aurangzeb—Muhammadans by religion, who believe that their ancestors 
were the priests employed bv Janamejaya to conduct his sacrifice, and 
that in return for their services they had a grant of the township and the 
surrounding villages. Immediately after this event it is said that the 
Pandavas transferred their seat of local government from Ahar to Baran, 
and it may be that they then first attached the prefix alii to the name of 
the town—so making it Ahibaran—in order to commemorate the circum¬ 
stances of the migration. This would imply that the town was already in 
existence; and it might with much plausibility be identified with the 
Yaranavata,* mentioned in the 143rd chapter of the first Book of the 
Mahabharat. 
All this, however, is conjectural and refers to a period so remote, 
nearly 1400 years before Christ, that no tangible record of it could be 
expected to survive to the present day. To come down to somewhat later 
times : the Bactrian dynasty, which flourished in the centuries immediate¬ 
ly preceding our era, and the Gupta dynasty that succeeded it, have both 
left traces behind them. In the rains, copper and gold coins with Greek 
and Pali inscriptions, used so frequently to be washed down in the debris 
from the high ground of the old town, at a particular point, now called 
4 the Manihars ’ or bangle-makers’ quarter,’ that after any heavy storm 
people made it a regular business to search for them. To prevent further 
cutting away, the slope was built up with masonry in 1876 ; but even 
since then two copper coins of Su-Hermmus, styled Basileus Soter, a gold 
coin of Chandra Gupta II, and another of an intermediate dynasty, have 
been picked up, which I presented to the coin cabinet of the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal. 
* General Cunningham proposes to identify with the Yaranavata of the Maha- 
bharata a village, now called Barnawa, in the Merath district. It has not yet been 
explored, and it is therefore uncertain whether it is really an ancient site or not. 
