Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/434



422 OK-KAN-OLD UDAIPUR. boats as far as Ok-kan village. Large quantities of teak and other timber are floated down the stream into the Hlaing. Ok-kan.–Village in the Ok-kan revenue circle, Hanthawadi District, Lower Burma; situated about 5 miles west of the Hlaing river. It contains two public rest-houses, a monastery, and two square-built pagodas. Ok-kan is said to have been founded about 300 years ago by a Talaing. Old Agartala. – Village in Hill Tipperah State, Bengal. — See AGARTALA, OLD, Old Maldah.--Town in Maldah District, Bengal. — See MALDAH. Old Udaipur.–Village in Hill Tipperah State, Bengal; the ancient capital of Udai Mánikya Bahádur, who reigned over Tipperah in the latter half of the 16th century. Situated on the left bank of the river Gumtí, a few miles higher up the river than the village known at present by the same name. The palace and all the buildings connected with it have been long deserted, and are now overgrown with dense jungle. The enclosing wall can with difficulty be traced amidst the profusion of vegetation. There are still many houses in excellent preservation within the will referred to, which seems to have once surrounded all the buildings in the occupation of the Raja and his family. Others again are fast falling to the ground, but enough remains to show their foriner strength, and the care with which they were constructed. The walls are rarely less than 4 feet in thickness, and the floors of most of the buildings are raised high above the ground; the brick foundation in one case having an elevation of about 10 feet. There is one two-storied building with large doorways on each side of the upper storey, and on three sides of the lower storey. The doorways are arched, and the neat and simple carving above them is still almost unaffected by the length of time that the place has been deserted. Near this house are several large brick buildings, apparently inonuments erected to the memory of deceased Rájás or their queens. The two principal ones are raised on the same brick foundation, and the open space inside each is so small that there is utter darkness in the interior. On the ground outside one of the buildings in the enclosure, there lay, until lately, an iron cannon 8 feet in length, bearing a Hindustani inscription on a small copper plate. How it came to Udaipur the hill people do not know, but evidently it was either captured from or left by the Muhammadans on the occasion of one of their inroads in the 16th or 17th century. Every man who used to visit the spot made an obeisance before the gun, and placed on the top a leaf or branch, in the belief that if his offering was accepted, it would be miraculously removed from the position in which he placed it, and covered over by the gun. The gun was removed in 1881 to the Maharaja's capital at Agartálá, where no such respect is now shown to it.