Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/50



In 1824, when the present district of Bulandshahr was first formed, the town bearing that name was selected for its capital, chiefly on account 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 Kálindi, 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 Sábit Khán, 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 Kázi and the Kánungo. 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 importance than the flourishing mart of Khurjá, 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, Bulandshahr by reason of its raised position and consequent facilities for drainage being as healthy as Khurjá is notoriously the reverse.