JUNNAR TALURA.

JANUARY, 1873.]

Here is the ford by which, as well as I could learn, Rājā Śivāji crossed to surprise Junnar in May 1657, after a mountain march through the jungles of the present Ambegåm Petà. The pass by which he entered the Minäner goes by the name of the Kāwal Khind, or Crow's Gap, as being more fit for a crow than for any

featherless biped. It is however now passed, with much labour, by bullocks. Two miles below Nirgudé the trap-rock crops out to the

surface, and here is a fine Mughul dam, nearly perfect, but the canal is gone which formerly con ducted its water to Bāglohór, the garrison garden

of the fortress of Śivaneri. From this down, the Minä flows, like a respectable river, in one very rocky bed to Nārāyanagām, a fine village on the Punā and Nāšik road.

Here is another

dam of unknown age, which, lying broken when we came into the country, has been repaired by the Government, and is now the most successful

piece of irrigation that I know of; taking up no ground, costing little for repairs, and water ing, as well as I recollect, about 8,000 acres from its double canal.

We might well attend a

little in these matters to the wisdom

of “the

men of old time, and our fathers that begot us.” The Musalmān rulers of Western India and

the earlier British conquerors built few great tanks; but they covered every perennial stream

with Bundāras (weirs) which irrigated each their own village or two, while they encroached not at all on the cultivable land, and any damage a chance flood might do was easily and cheaply repaired. The Miná passes under a good modern bridge past Nārāyanagām, and joins the Ghör near Pimpalkheră, leaving to its left the fort of Nārāyanagarh. The second stream, the Kākrt, springs from a veritable “cow's mouth” carved roughly in the living rock, into a charming little kunda, or na tural basin, near the Koli village of Pūr. Thence it flows northward for a cotiple of miles, and turns again to the south-east, when it reaches the long narrow valley which terminates at the Nānā Ghât. This famous pass is no more nor less than a huge staircase, built in a crack of the precipice that here overlooks the Konkan, a wall of rock 1,500 feet sheer up and down. Curiously enough, this spot, where any one

11

above the Ghāt, and of the nearest Konkan

village below. The belligerents assembled on a high point of rock overlooking the contested frontier, and debated for a long time without prospect of coming to any better solution than the fool's argument. At last a Mahār, the here ditary guardian of the boundaries of Ghâtgarh, arose and adjured all present by a great curse to fix the boundary where he should stand still. This was agreed to, and he forth with jumped over the cliff. On the spot where he was dashed to pieces a red stone still commemorates the event, and marks the boundary of the two villages, whose inhabitants perform certain devotions there once a year.

The legend is curious as illustrating both the extraordinary love of the Indian villager for a boundary squabble, be the locality ever so well marked out by nature, and the devotion of here ditary officers to the duties of their wattan.

The sacrifice of the poor Mahār, a sort of Little Pedlington Quintus Curtius, affords a precedent which might be turned to advantage in Europe. It is possible that rectification of frontiers might not be so much talked about, were it cus tomary to settle them by the happy despatch of foreign secretaries and ambassadors. The Ghāt itself, as I have said, is a mere winding cleft in the rock, which was converted into a regular staircase by the energy of a certain Nână Rao.

I think that he wrought about

the beginning of this century, and is not to be confounded with Nână Fadnavis (Bălăji Janār

dan). However, I speak only from local tradi tion, and am open to correction.

There are

several caves about the head of the Ghât, one of which is used as a dharmaśālā, another

generally contains good water, and a third is said in former days to have been a toll-chest, into which the passers-by threw the toll money, to be collected once a day by a kärkūn. In what golden age of Hindu purity this happened I know not. In the present day no toll is collected, but if it were still thrown into the cave, and

been in old days the scene of a hot boundary

respected by men, it would probably be made away with by a numerous breed of small and sacred monkeys, said to be peculiar to the place (which I doubt). Above the Ghât, on some comparatively open ground, are a great number of mounds, testifying, I think, to the former existence on this spot of a considerable town. The modern village of Ghâtgarh is nearly two miles off, nestled on the flank of the fort of

dispute between the inhabitants of Ghâtgarh,

Jiwdhan. This is a huge crag accessible only

would think the natural limit of Konkan

and

Dakhan to be pretty well defined, is said to have