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 — BIT-BUR



33d

Here and there we meet with those curious old mounds of earth called dihs {vide pargana Pirnagar) containing masonry remains of buildings

which must once have existed. The principal are those in Bambhaur and banda. The former is of considerable extent, and is said to have been once a fort of the Sombansis who dwelt in the country before the Bhars and Kachheras ruled over it.

The

latter contains traces of the Kachheras (artificers in glass Jcdch), the form of several furnaces, and a square well constructed with slabs of kankar.

m _

BITB.AR—Pargana Harha— TaAsiZ JJnao—District TJnao.— The town lies ten miles south-east of Unao in pargana Harha on the road from Unao to Rae Bareli, two miles east of Harha. This was the seat of Rawat power, whose rise is related under pargana Harha. The village is surrounded with many groves, the soil is good, and so is the climate, although many of the wells contain brackish water.

There are two markets, and a school attended by eighty-six boys of whom two are Musalmans there are six temples to Mahadeo and four to Debi a large allowance which is accounted for by the proportion of Brahmans,

1,94<9

out of a population of 3,229.

BURHAPA'RA Pargana* — Tahsil Utraula—District

GoNDA.

—A small

pargana on the eastern frontier of the Gonda district, covering an area of 78 square miles. In shape it is a rough equilateral triangle, with its apex to the north, a narrow spur running out for about three miles at the southeastern corner between the Kuwana and the Bistihi rivers, and sides of from ten to twelve miles long. It marches to the west with the Sadullahnagar pargana, is divided by the Kuwana along the east from the Basti district in the North- Western Provinces, and on the south by the Bisuhi from pargana Babhnipair. The whole of the centre is a well-cultivated and thickly inhabited plain, with no distinctive natural features beyond the clumps of fine mahua trees, which were kept for their valuable flowers when the rest of the forest was felled, and give a pleasant park-like appearance to the landscape, which is, besides, diversified by the mango groves and small shallow lakes common to almost the whole of Oudh. The cultivated plain is separated on the north-west and south from the two boundary rivers by a continuous belt of forest abounding in nil-gae, spotted deer, wild cattle, pigs, and peacocks, but yielding every year to the axe and the plough. There is not much valuable wood, and indeed no effort made to produce it, and the stunted sal and ebony trees only tell of the loss of timber occasioned by the herds of oxen which eat every new shoot, and the carelessness of the neighbouring villagers who lop off the straight branches to supply fresh roofs to their constantly-burned mud huts. The whole forms part of the uparhdr, or slightly raised table-land, which runs through the centre of the district, and the rivers are consequently restrained by sloping banks from submerging the cultivation in the terribly destructive floods which desolate the villages between the •

By

Mr.

W.

C, Benett, c,

s.,

Assistant Commissioner,

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