Note 1 — 1857–1859.

Appendix III. Bhinmál. Description. Description.Bhinmál,1 North Latitude 24° 42′ East Longitude 72° 4′, the historical Shrimál, the capital of the Gurjjaras from about the sixth to the ninth century, lies about fifty miles west of Ábu hill. The site of the city is in a wide plain about fifteen miles west of the last outlier of the Ábu range. To the east, between the hills and Bhinmál, except a few widely-separated village sites, the plain is chiefly a grazing ground with brakes of thorn and cassia bushes overtopped by standards of the camel-loved pilu Salvadora persica. To the south, the west, and the north the plain is smooth and bare passing westwards into sand. From the level of the plain stand out a few isolated blocks of hill, 500 to 800 feet high, of which one peak, about a mile west of the city, is crowned by the shrine of Chámuṇḍa the Śrí or Luck of Bhinmál. From a distance the present Bhinmál shows few traces of being the site of an ancient capital. Its 1500 houses cover the gentle slope of an artificial mound, the level of their roofs broken by the spires of four Jain temples and by the ruined state office at the south end of the mound. Closer at hand the number and size of the old stone-stripped tank and fortification mounds and the large areas honeycombed by diggers for bricks show that the site of the present Bhinmál was once the centre of a great and widespread city. Of its fortifications, which, as late as a.d. 1611, the English merchant Nicholas Ufflet, in a journey from Jhálor to Ahmedábád, describes as enclosing a circuit of thirty-six miles (24 kos) containing many fine tanks going to ruin, almost no trace remains.2 The names of some of the old gates are remembered, Surya in the north-east, Śrí Lakshmí in the south-east, Sanchor in the west, and Jhálor in the north. Sites are pointed out Appendix III. Bhinmál. Description. as old gateways five to six miles to the east and south-east of the present town, and, though their distance and isolation make it hard to believe that these ruined mounds were more than outworks, Ufflet’s testimony seems to establish the correctness of the local memory.3 Besides these outlying gateways traces remain round the foot of the present Bhinmál mound of a smaller and later wall. To the east and south the line of fortification has been so cleared of masonry and is so confused with the lines of tank banks, which perhaps were worked into the scheme of defence, that all accurate local knowledge of their position has passed. The Gujarát gate in the south of the town though ruined is well marked. From the Gujarát gateway a line of mounds may be traced south and then west to the ruins of Pipalduara perhaps the western gateway. The wall seems then to have turned east crossing the watercourse and passing inside that is along the east bank of the watercourse north to the south-west corner of the Jaikop or Yaksha lake. From this corner it ran east along the south bank of Jaikop to the Jhálor or north gate which still remains in fair preservation its pointed arch showing it to be of Musalmán or late (17th–18th century) Ráhtor construction. From the Jhálor gate the foundations of the wall may be traced east to the Kanaksen or Karáda tank. The area to the east of the town from the Karáda tank to the Gujarát gate has been so quarried for brick to build the present Bhinmál that no sign remains of a line of fortifications running from the Karáda tank in the east to the Gujarát gate in the south.