Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/56

 accounts for its excellent preservation. It is oval in shape, with a dotted rim, and is divided by two parallel lines across the centre into two equal compartments. In the upper are two devices, one of which is a conch shell, the other—which is raised on a little stand—looks like a wing, and may possibly be intended to represent the chakwá, or Bráhmani duck, so frequently introduced in old Indian painting and sculpture. In the lower compartment is the name 'Mattila, in characters of about the 5th century A. D.

It is quite possible that the Fort on the river-bank may also have been founded by Parmál, for the protection of his infant town of Banchhati. Tradition, however, ascribes it to one of his successors, who is made to bear the name of Ahi-baran, interpreted to mean 'cobra-coloured.' But this appears to me to be absolutely untenable. Baran is certainly not the Sanskrit word varna, 'colour,' but varana, ‘a hill-fort or enclosure;' and, Ahi-baran would thus mean 'snake-fort' or 'Nága fort,' in the same way as Ahi-kshetra means 'Snake-land.' No Rája Ahi-baran, I should conjecture, ever existed, though there may well have been an Ahibaran Rája, the town being so called because it was a stronghold of the Nága tribe. Nor is it impossible that the epithet 'Nága,' like the English 'reptile,' may have been attached to a Buddhist community by their Brahmanical neighbours by way of reproach. Another explanation may, however, be suggested. Some twenty-one miles to the north-east of Bulandshahr, on the right bank of the Ganges, is the small town of Ahár, which (according to local tradition) is the spot where, after Paríkshit, the successor of Rájá Yudhishṭhir on the throne of Hastinápur, had met his death by snake-bite, his son Janamejaya, to avenge his father's death, 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