Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part I: History of Gujarat c17.2

c17.2

BHINMAL, North Latitude 24° 12' East Longitude 72° 4', the historical Shrimál, the capital of the Gurjaras from about the sixth to the ninth century, lies about fifty miles west of Abu hill. The site of the city is in a wide plain about fifteen miles west of the last outlier of the Abu range. To the east, between the hills and Bhinmal, 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 Chámunda the Sri or Luck of Bhinmal. From a distance the present Bhinmal 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 Bhinmal 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 Ahmadábád, describes as enclosing a circuit of thirty-six miles (24 kos) containing many fine tanks going to ruin, almost no trace remains. The names of some of the old gates are remembered. Surya in the north-east, Sri Lakshmí in the south-east, Sanchor in the west, and Jhálor in the north. Sites are pointed out