BULANDSHAHR.
CHAPTER I.
THE DISTRICT: ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND ITS CAPABILITIES.
THE area comprised in the present District of Bulandshahr was first administered from Aligarh, and then for a brief period from Merath, during the first twenty years after the British conquest[1] As a separate political unit, it dates only from the year 1824. Since then it is reckoned as one of the six Collectorates that, together, make up the Merath Division[2] of the North-West Provinces. It consists of an oblong tract of almost absolutely level country, which covers an extent of 1,915 square miles, being some 35 miles in breadth from north to south, with an average length of 55 miles from the banks of the Jamuná on the west, to the Ganges on the east. A third river, the Kálindi, more commonly called the Káli Nadi,[3] runs through its centre with a south-easterly
- ↑ After the fall of Aligarh in 1803, the Parganas (or Hundreds) of Baran (i. e. Bulandshahr) and Khurja were first placed under Colonel Ochterlony, the Delhi Resident. In the following year they were made part of the Aligarh District, and so remained till 1818, when Baran and the other Western Parganas were transferred to Merath; but this arrangement lasted only for six years.
- ↑ Commonly spelt 'Meerut,' for which Dr. Hunter in his Imperial Gazetteer proposes to substitute Mirath.' This, however, would be a very unsatisfactory correction. The word is identical with 'Mertha,' the name of an ancient hill-fort in Jodhpur. The first syllable 'mer' appears as a termination in Ajmer, Jaysalmer, &c., and means 'a hill' The old town of Merath stands on a considerable elevation, though apparently an artificial one.
- ↑ When the Hindi word had to be written in Persian or Urdu, the vowel in the second syllable was purposely lengthened by the Munshis in order the better to preserve its sound, and to prevent its degenerating into short a, as it soon would, were no vowel expressed. For a similar reason, the common Hindi termination pur, meaning 'town,' is always written by Munshis with a long a, and the short vowels e and i in English Proper names are almost invariably lengthened in the process of transliteration. The stream thus became the Kandi, from which the transition was easy to the more readily intelligible Káli nadi, 'Black river'; the pronunciation only being altered; since the written form of the two words Kálindi and Káli nadi in Persian characters is absolutely identical. The error is of respectable antiquity, as Yahya bin Ahmad, the author of the Chronicle entitled the Táríkh-i-Mubárak Sháhi,
