The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c6.s3.t39.7

c6.s3.t39.7

*Khajurâho* is a small village of 162 houses, containing rather less than 1000 inhabitants. Amongst these there are single houses of seven different divisions of the *Jajhotiya* Brahmans, and eleven houses of Chândel Rajputs, the chief of whom claim descent from Raja Paramâl Deo, the antagonist of the famous Prithi Raj. The village is surrounded on all sides by temples and ruins; but these are more thickly grouped in three separate spots on the west, north, and south-east. The western group, which consists entirely of Brahmanical temples, is situated on the banks of the Sib-sâgar, a narrow sheet of water, about three-quarters of a mile in length from north to south in the rainy season, but not more than 600 feet square during the dry season. It is three-quarters of a mile from the village, and the same distance from the northern group of ruins, and a full mile from the south-eastern group of Jain temples. Altogether, the ruins cover about one square mile; but as there are no remains of any kind between the western group and the Khajur Sâgar, the boundary of the ancient city could not have extended beyond the west bank of the lake. On the other three sides of the lake, the ruins are all continuous, extending over an oblong space 4500 feet in length from north to south, and 2500 feet in breadth from east to west, with a circuit of 14,000 feet, or nearly 3¾ miles. This corresponds almost exactly with the size of the capital as recorded by Hwen Thsang in A.D. 641, but at some later period the city of Khajurâho was extended to the east and south as far as the Kurar Nala, when it had a circuit of not less than 3½ miles. As Mahoba must have been about the same size as Khajurâho, it is doubtful which of the two was the capital at the time of Hwen Thsang’s visit. But as the very name of Mahoba, or Mahotsava-nagara, the “City of the great Jubilee,” is specially connected with the rise of the Chândel dynasty, I think it most probable that Khajurâho must have been the capital of the earlier dynasty of Jajhotiya Brahmans; and therefore it must have been the capital of Jajhoti at the time of Hwen Thsang’s visit. But as it is upwards of 300 miles from Ujain, or just double the distance mentioned by the pilgrim, his 1000 *li* must be increased to 2000 *li*, or 333 miles, to make it accord with the actual measurement. It is a curious fact that Abu Rihân’s distance from Kanoj is also in defect in the same proportion; and this agreement suggests that the probable cause of both errors must be the same, namely, the excessive length of the kos of Bundelkhand, which is a little over 4 miles, or exactly double the ordinary *kos* of northern India.