Page:Bulandshahr- Or, Sketches of an Indian District- Social, Historical and Architectural.djvu/60

 The grant—which confers a village named Gandavá on a certain Gaur Bráhman—was made by a Rája Ananga, in whose description a word occurs which the Calcutta Pandit first took to be 'Kalinga.' But the only country so-called is an extensive tract far away on the sea-coast, south of Bengal. It was never owned by a single sovereign—which in itself creates a difficulty—and it is further inconceivable how a plate relating to so distant a region could have found its way into the Doáb. The word is very indistinct and ambiguous and (as the Pandit has remarked) may with equal probability be read kanishṭha, which will also give an intelligible sense to the passage. The suggestion of 'Kalinga' seems therefore to have been an unnecessary importation of a somewhat gratuitous difficulty. It might perhaps be Kolánsa. This is given in Monier Williams's Dictionary as the name of a district, placed by some in Gangetic Hindustán, with Kanauj for its capital, but which it would seem more natural to identify with the country round about Kol, the modern Aligarh.

The name of the family was read by the Pandit as 'Rodra'; but only with great hesitation, and with the admission that it seemed to be something different, though he could not exactly say what. It is really Ḍoṛ, the name of an almost extinct Rájput tribe, who once were very notable people in these parts, though a Sanskrit scholar in Bengal may well be pardoned for not remembering them. They claim to be a branch of the great Pramár clan, which in ancient times was the most powerful of all the Rájput tribes; "The world is the Pramár's" being quoted by Col. Tod as a proverbial saying to illustrate their extensive sway. They represent their ancestor to have been a Pramár Rája of Mainpuri, who cut off his own head for a sacrifice to the divinity; whence his descendants were styled Ḍunḍ, 'the headless,' afterwards corrupted into Ḍoṛ. But this is obviously a mere etymological fable. Chand in the Prithiráj-Rásá celebrates a Ḍoṛ chief of Kasondi, a locality which cannot now be identified with certainty, though probably it was a place that still bears the same name near Ajmer. The Ḍoṛs are also mentioned in a Sanskrit inscription of the time of Prithiráj, which was found by Colonel Sumner at Hánsi. This forms the basis for a rhapsody by Col. Tod in his usual enthusiastic vein, which is published in Vol. I of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. In the body of the article the tablet is described as commemorating a victory obtained over the Ḍoṛs, but what purports to be a more or less literal summary of the