Note 21 — CHAPTER 2

I doubt if Shahpur is yet known. I traced its extent from the remains of a tower between Humayun’s tomb and the grand column, the Kutb. In 1809 I resided four months at the mausoleum of Safdar Jang, the ancestor of the present [late] King of Oudh, amidst the ruins of Indraprastha, several miles from inhabited Delhi, but with which these ruins forms detached links of connexion. I went to that retirement with a friend now no more, Lieutenant Macartney, a name well known and honoured. We had both been employed in surveying the canals which had their sources in common from the head of the Jumna, where this river leaves its rocky barriers, the Siwalik chain, and issues into the plains of Hindustan. These canals on each side, fed by the parent stream, returned the waters again into it; one through the city of Delhi, the other on the opposite side. [Cunningham (ASR, i. 207 ff.) proved that the true site of the ancient city, Siri, was the old ruined fort to the north-east of Rāī Pithora’s stronghold, which is at present called Shāhpur. This identification has been disputed by C. J. Campbell (JASB, 1866, p. 206). But Cunningham gives good reasons for maintaining his opinion. The place took its name from Sher Shāh and his son Islām or Salīm Shāh. See also Carr Stephens, Archaeological and Monumental Remains of Delhi (1876), pp. 87 f., 190.]