Mahaban Town, 1908
Mahaban Town
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Head-quarters of the tahsil of the same name in Muttra District, United Provinces, situated in 27° 27' N. and 77° 45' E,, near the left bank of the Jumna. Population (1901), 5,523. According to tradition, Krishna spent his childhood at Mahaban. The legend goes that his uncle Kans, a giant, knew by prophecy that his sister's son would slay him, and commanded that if she brought forth a male child it should at once be killed. The nurse, however, fled with the baby, and though the Jumna was in flood, the waters parted, and the fugitives reached Mahaban. A covered court divided into four aisles by five rows of sixteen richly decorated pillars, from which it takes its popular name of AssT Khamba, or the ' eighty pillars,' is said to have been the palace of Nanda, who adopted Krishna, and gave up his own female child. The building was, however, recon- structed in the time of Aurangzeb, from ancient Hindu and Buddhist materials, to serve as a mosque. Its architecture presents interesting features, which have been discussed by the late Mr. F. S. Growse\ Krishna's reputed cradle, a coarse structure, covered with calico and tinsel, still stands in the pillared hall, while a dark blue image of the sacred child looks out from a canopy against the wall. The churn from which he stole his foster-mother's butter is shown, consisting of a carved stone in which a long bamboo is placed, while a spot in the wall is shown as the place where the sportive milkmaids hid Krishna's flute. In addition to the steady stream of devotees from all parts of India, the pillared hall is resorted to by Hindu mothers from the neighbouring Districts for their purification on the sixth day after childbirth, whence the building derives its local name of the Chhatthi Palna, or place of the Chhatthi Puja, i. e. ' the sixth day of worship.'
Mahaban first emerges into history in 1 018-9, when it shared the fate of the neighbouring city of Muttra, and was sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni. The Hindu prince is said, when the fall of the town became inevitable, to have solemnly slain his wife and children, and then to have committed suicide. An inscription found here records the erection of a temple in 1151 in the reign of Ajayapala, whose dynasty is uncertain ^ In 1234 a contemporary writer mentions Mahaban as one of the gathering-places of the imperial army sent by Shams-ud-din against Kalinjar. It is incidentally referred to by the emperor Babar in 1526. In 1804 Jaswant Rao Holkar fled from the Doab, after his defeat at Farrukhabad, by a ford a little west of Mahaban. A mile away lies the small village of Gokul, celebrated as the residence of the founder of the Vallabhacharya sect, and still the head-quarters of the sect. Mahaban is administered under Act XX of 1856, with an income of about Rs. 1,000. It contains a middle school with about 130 pupils, and at Gokul there is a primary school with 80 pupils.
