FEBRUARY, 1873.]

isolated hill opposite. They certainly did not dry up in 1871, but that was after a wet year.

These springs on the tops of hills are not un common here: there is a very fine one, for instance, on the fort of Nārāyanagarh, which lies about three miles east of the Punā and Nāšik road, and forms part of the ridge between the Kūkri and the Miná, with which we have been dealing. The Nārāyanagarh spring has an illegible in scription, apparently in Persian. But the great lion of Junnar is the fort of cresting a

Śiwner, a huge mass of black rock

green hill—something like an iron-clad on an Atlantic wave—that guards a double pass through the range south of the town. The rock, as has been already mentioned, is honey combed with many caves, the refuge of hawks and vultures, pigeons and bees innumerable. On the south side it is approached by nine gates, one within the other; and on the north was for

merly a secret passage through the rock leading from the Pāga, or cavalry cantonment, that lay at the base of the hill. The Pāga, however, is now marked only by bare mud walls, and a crack in the cliff shows where the English powder-bags destroyed the postern stair. The most conspi cuous buildings on the top are a large-domed tomb, and an 'Idgah, erected in honour of some old Pirzādā.

45

JUNNAR TALUKA.

Lower down is a beautiful mosque

overhanging a tank. The two minarets are united by a single arch, and form a figure of the greatest simplicity and beauty, standing, as they do, sharp against the sky. I have seen no other building of this design, and do not know whether it is not unique. The idea is said to have occurred to the architect of the church of SS. Michel et

Gudule in Brussels, but he was unable to carry it out. This mosque is said to have been designed by, and afterwards finished in memory of, Sultana Chand Bibi, the last and heroic

queen of Ahmadnagar; and the tradition of the place is that it was here that she fell a victim to mutineers stimulated by the gold and intrigues of the Mughul. If this be true, it is a most striking instance of historic justice that he who brought down the grey hairs of

Aurangzeb with sorrow to the grave, the Marātha champion Rājā Sivāji, was born on the other side of this same fort in, it is to be supposed,

the heap of now ruined buildings beside the upper

The architecture matches with that of other

buildings in the town whose antiquity is proved by their inscriptions, and therefore I have little doubt that in this very building was born

the great founder of the Marātha power.

It

is to be regretted that no inscriptions are in existence on the fort. Sayyid Jamāl Ali, the principal Muhammadan inhabitant of Junnar, told me that he remembered a Persian inscrip tion purporting to have been engraved by order of Chand Sultana in the mosque still known by her name. He had too, he said, made a copy of it many years ago for a European sahib, but the inscription had disappeared in my time. The whole top of the fort is covered with rock hewn cisterns, which contain rain water all through the year, and keep it pretty sweet. The late Dr.

Gibson used

the fort as

a sani

tarium, and as a place of confinement for his Chinese convict labourers, one of whom was dashed to pieces in trying to escape over the cliff.

The town below contains many remains of Musalmān grandeur. It was supplied with water by no less than eight different sets of water works, besides a fine ghât to the Kūkri. It is said, and the existing remains in part bear out the assertion, that the garrison could, when they pleased, fill the moat from some of these sources; and one of them supplied a curious underground bath still existing in the city fort or garhi (to be distinguished from the hill fort of

Siwner)

This garhi was itself a place of considerable. strength, with large bastions and a flanker to the

main gate, which opens north-east. It is now the head-quarters of a Mamlatdār and subordinate judge, and the flanker is given up for municipal purposes.

In the town itself are some good cisterns of various ages, a fine Jammâ Musjid, and a rather curious, though not ornamental, building known as the Bâwan Chauri, which, as an inscription on its face records, was built by Akhlis Khān, governor of the fort and city, at a date expressed by the line—“This is the glory of Akhlis Khān ;” but what the date was I have for gotten. The building was very ruinous, and has probably been pulled down by this time. There were certain disputes about the proprietor ship of this chauri, and many as to the deriva

gate, still pointed out as having been the

tion of the name.

Killadár's house.

guard of 52 soldiers stationed there, and some from its having been the head-quarters of 52 sub-divisions of the city. The partiality of natives for the number 52 is curious : throughout the

There are no remains of

any other building likely to have been used as the dwelling of so considerable a lady as the wife of the powerful Shahji Bhoñsle,

Some derived it from the