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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

by one path, which was nearly destroyed by the English in 1818, but a single man can still climb

up. There is a curious vaulted magazine at the top. I believe that Dr. Bhau Dāji discovered, either here or at the Ghāt, some inscriptions relating how a great king had sacrificed in this

place whole armies of sheep and goats, heca tombs of horses and camels, and nine elephants. However, I have not seen either the inscriptions or the learned Doctor's papers on the subject. This fort of Jiwdhan forms part of a curious

[JANUARY, 1873.

form a complete protection to the two great military and commercial routes of those days, vić the Nănā and Malsej Ghâts, neither of which can be approached by any route not com manded by at least three of the seven. The fort of Châwand, which is the next east of Jiwdhan, is more like a huge broken pillar than a hill, and is, like Jiwdhan and the rest, provided with a vaulted magazine at the top, and, like it, extremely difficult of access, and for the same reason, viz., the destruction of the only gate by

Pleiades constellation of fortresses called the

our Engineers in 1818.

seven forts of Junnar. They lie something in the shape of the constellation to which I have compared them, and resemble it further in that “Quae septem dici sex tamen esse solent,” for the locality of the seventh is very little known,

the village of Keli, whose inhabitants were, according to the local legend, driven out during the Mogalaiāmmal (imperial rule) by a strange and terrible plague.

To the east of it lies

Men fell down dead at the

and it was not till after diligent search that I

plough, at their meals, on the road, without any visible cause. After a short time the survivors,

discovered it on a hill over the head waters of

who were of the caste called Gurăvs, the heredi

the Dudari river, between its valley and that of the Kūkri, now in question. It is, as well as

tary priests of Siva, concluded that the abori gines of the hills, the Kolis and Thäkärs, had enchanted the place, and fled southward 18 kos

I recollect, called Nimgori, and fronts westward over the Konkan with Harichandragarh and Jiwdhan. This latter, being at a corner, forms

also part of the southern line of defence, with

Châwand, Śiwneri, and Nārāyanagarh, all rising, like it, out of the watershed of the Minä and Kūkri.

Communications between these six are

guarded by a fort called Harsha, commanding a pass from the Kūkri valley to that of the Dudari, the next northwards, The whole together

into the Bhimanèr, where their descendants are

patels to this day. They have never—such is the pertinacity with which the Dakhani clings to hereditary rights—relinquished their claim to exercise the patel's office in Keli. In 1871, while the district was in my charge, they renewed their claim, offering to return to live there. I left the taluka on sudden orders, and do not know what was the end of the matter.

NOTES CONNECTED WITH SAHET MAHET. By W. C. BENETT, B.C.S., GONDA.

THE agreement of information derived from wholly independent sources lends their value, if they have any, to the following comparisons of local tradition with known or conjectured his torical facts.

1. It is related at Ayudhya that the great king Vikramāditya was visited at the close of his reign of eighty years by a Jogi named Sa múdra Pål. The magician induced the king to allow his soul to be transferred to a corpse, and himself occupied the vacant royal body, thus acquiring the throne of Ayudhya and Srāvasti, which was occupied by his dynasty for seventeen generations.

A king Vikramāditya of Srávasti is mention ed in the Rājā Tarangini as the conqueror of Matrigupta of Kashmir, and the best authorities

put him in about the middle of the second century.

Samūdra Gupta of Behar is still better known.

Surely this legend affords a very strong con

firmation to the conjecture that the local mo narchs of Srivasti were conquered by the rising Gupta dynasty ; and it goes far to explain the utter desolation, contrasting so violently with the power which it must have had when it could

subdue distant Kashmir, which the Chinese pilgrims found a few centuries later at Śrāvasti. 2.

The second tradition is as follows.

The

king of Sahet Mahet (Sravasti) was a great hunter. He returned one evening from the chase just as the sun was setting, and his queen, fear ing that he would lose his dinner, sent up to the roof of the palace the beautiful wife of his younger brother. The sun-god stayed to watch her till she descended, which was not till the feast was ended. As the king rose from table