Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/124

Rh 11-} G A These great embankments have been originally faced throughout with masonry, whilst the crest shows numerous traces of ediﬁces ; but the whole of the earthworks are now overgrown with dense jungle. The Ganges now flows at a distance varying between 5 and 1;’. miles to the west of the enclosed area. of the city, but there seems to be no doubt that in the earlier centuries of its occupation the great river washed its western wall, where now the Bhagirathi ﬂows. On this side, near the southern end, stood the citadel or royal fortress, stretching for a mile along the river bank, and marked out by the remains of a huge rampart of irregular truce, 180 feet vide at the base, and once faced with masonry, with numerous circular bastions. Shapeless masses of ruin ﬁll the interior. The palace itself formed a rectangular inner enclosure of 3100 feet by 750, girt by a splendid brick wall, 18 feet thick at bottom, 8% feet thick at top, and -12 feet in height. To the northward the western embankment is prolonged far beyond the northern limit of the city, and about 3 miles north of the latter we encounter a vast line of earthwork stretching from the prolongation just mentioned, in an irregular curve eastward and then south-eastward to the vicinity of the Mahztliaiitla river, in all for more than 6 miles. This also was probably intended chieﬂy as a defence against inundation of the suburbs. A huge excresccnce protruding from the line, and overgrown with forest trees, encloses an area of nearly a square mile, which tradition points out as the palace of one of the Sena kings. Still north of this, and extending to the banks of the Kalindri river, some 3 miles further, are found traces of ancient Hindu buildings. Turning again to the southern extremity of Gaur, for 6 or 7 miles to the south of the city there seems to have ex- tended, still under the protection of a western embankment, a continuous chain of suburbs. In the northern portion, at least, of these, “prostrate domes, mingled with carved lintels and innumerable bricks, are seen lying in confusion on all sides, and show how dense has been the population” (R-avenshaw, p. 26). Thus from north to south, the whole extent of ground bearing indications of urban occupancy is hardly less than 20 miles. We may, however, feel conﬁdent that, as in the case of Delhi, these traces comprehend a space Within which the royal city occupied various localities in various ages. Traditions, collected by Dr Francis Buchanan, placed the residence of the older Sena kings on the sites at the extreme north near the Kalindri. The southern part of the fortiﬁed area of Gaur, with the citadel and palace, was evidently, as we shall see from the dates of the buildings, the seat of the later kings who immediately preceded the absorption of Bengal into the Moghul empire in the last half of the 16th century. The exact site occu- pied by Illahommed Bakhtiyztr Khilji and his successors does not seem to have been determined. Throughout the interior length of Gaur run embanked roads, whilst the whole area is thickly dotted with excavated tanks of all sizes, up to the great Scigar Di;/hi (or “ Ocean Tank ”), a rectangular sheet of water measuring little short of a mile by half a mile. This vast work is probably to be referred to the Hindu age. The former existence of six ghauts of masonry can be traced on its banks, which are densely wooded to the water’s edge. Numerous excavated channels also run in every direction, the earth from which appears to have served to raise the inhabited surface. The remaining buildings of importance are scattered at wide intervals over the area, but the soil is throughout covered with fragments of brick, &c., in a manner which leaves no doubt of the former density of population. But Gaur has repeatedly been a quarry of building material. The old Lakhnaoti was robbed to build the mediaeval capital of Pan-.lua, and the later Gaur probably to build Rajmahl, UR whilst in more recent times their brick and stone were transported as merchandise to .lalda, Moorshedabad, 1-Ioogly, Rungpore, and even (as regards the more valuable kinds of stone) to Calcutta. In the revenue returns of Bengal, at the time of its transfer to the Company, there was an entry of an annual levy of 8000 rupees, as “ Gaur brick royalty,” from landholders in the neighbourhood of Gaur who had the exclusive right of dismantling its remains. The bricks of Gaur, Rennell says, are of extraordinary solidity of texture and sharpness of edge. The facilities which the site affords for water carriage during the rainy‘ season greatly aided this systematic spoliation. That no Hindu buildings remain from the earlier cities is probably to be accounted for by this process of destruction. We have quoted a Mahometan visitor to Gillll‘ in the middle of the 13th century. The next such mention per- haps occurs in the travels of the Venetian Nicolo Conti, who somewhat early in the 14th century ascended the Ganges 15 days’ voyage to a city of great size and wealth called Cernove. On both banks of the stream were most charming villas, and plantations, and gardens. The name looks like S/ea/u°-i-nao, which we know from coins to have been the name of a royal city of Bengal about 1380-85, and Wliicli Mr Ed. Thomas believes to have been merely that given to one of the re-foundations of Gaur. A more detailed and certain account is given by De Barres, when describ- ing the adventures of the Portuguese party in 1537-38, to which allusion has been made above (dec. iv. liv. ix. cap. i.):— “ The chief city of this kingdom (of Bcngala) is called Gaul-u. It is situated on the waters of the Gauges, and is said to be three of our leagues in length, and to contain 200,000 inhabitants.‘ On the one side it has the river for its defence, and on the landward faces a wall of stone and lime of great height, besides llZ1VlI’I_'__', where the river comes not, a great ditch full of water, in “'lli( ll great boats can swim. The streets are broad and straiglit, and t.l.e main streets have trees planted in rows alonrr the walls, to give shade to the passe-nge1's. And the population Is so great, and the streets so thronged with the concourse. and traflie of people, especially of such as come to present themselves at the king’s court, that they cannot force their way past one another, and thus such as hap to fall among the llorsemen, or among the elephants which are ridden by the lords and nobleman, are often killed on the spot, and crushed under the feet of those beasts. A great part of the houses of this city are stately and well wrought buildi_ngs.” The earliest detailed notice of the ruins that we hear of is a MS. one, by Mr Reuben Burrows, the mathematician (1787), which is quoted by the editor of Crcighton’s drawings as being in the India Library. Rennell gives some account of the ruins in his Jllemoir of (6 Jlap Qf I1z'ndusz'mz (l78‘l, and the plan of them is roughly laid down, on a small scale, in his Bengal Atlas (No. 15). Mr Henry Creighton, who for many years managed an indigo factory among the ruins (1786-1806), made many drawings of them, with notes and a detailed map, on a large scale. Dr Buchanan states that engravings from Creighton’s drawings had been published by a Mr Moffat in Calcutta before the compilation of his own statistical work. Of this we have seen no copy. It is probably the same as “the set of eight views of the ruins of Gour and Rajmehal,” which is advertised in the_ Calczcll-I. Gazelle, 6th December 1798 (see Seton—Karr's bileclions, vol. iii. p. 529). A work, however, was published in London in 1817, from the materials left by Mr Creighton, called the Rains qf(}'o'ur Describetl, &c.; and this contain ed the most accessible data on the subject till Mr Ravenshaw‘.-1 work. There is in the India Office a MS. volume (1810) by Major William Francklin of the Bengal army, containing notices of the remains and translations of a good many ‘ So in De Barros, Lisbon edition of 1777, vol. viii. p. 45°‘. ‘ ‘ duzentos mil vizinhos. ” But in the English version of Ruin y Sousa's Asia Portuguesa by Stevens (1695), i. p. 417, a passage al)_ri_dged frr_nn De Barros has “om million and two_ hundred thousand famzlaes. .'lhe last word is probably a mistranslation, but the nulhon seems required.