GWALIOR, the capital of the state and fortress residence of tho Maharaja Sindia, in lat. 26° 13' N., and'Iong. 78° 12' E. The Sindia family came from a family near Satara. The first, 1724, Ranoji Sindia, was an officer in the Peshwa's army. In 1825, Baiza 13ai, widow of Dowlas Rao, adopted Jaukuji, who assumed the reins of government in 1833. This state is in political relationship with the Government of India, and consists of several de tached districts, the principal one being bounded on the north-east by the Chanibal dividino it from the British districts of Agra and Etawa. e'The area. of the whole state comprises 33,119 square miles com prehending part of the ancient province of 'Agra, and most of Malwa. The population in 1875 was 2,500,000. The people of the north-eastern part of the territory is of a mixed kind, comprising, besides the dominant Mahrattas, Bundelas, Jats, and Rajputs, with Hindus and Mahomedans. There is perhaps no part of India where the tribes of Brahmans are so various and their numbers so great. Gwalior Fort stands on a flat-topped isolated rock of ochreous sandstone formation, nearly two miles lone. N. to S., and half a mile at its broadest, cappedcat places with basalt. The face of the fort is perpendicular, and where the rock is naturally less precipitous it has been scarped, and in some portions the upper parts overhang the lower. Gwalior Rock was scaled and taken by Major Popham in 1780. IVarren Hastings had sent hini with a force of 2400 infantry, with cavalry and artillery, to protect Goliud, sixty miles S.E. of Agra. He captured Lahar, and proceeded
to Gwalior. Sir Eyre Coote, commander-in chief, had pronounced the attempt to capture it au net of madness ; but on the night of the 3d August, twenty European soldiers and two com panies of sepoys, led by Captain Bruce, scaled and took it without the loss of a single man. It was regarded as so powerful a fortress, that its capture was heard of by the chiefs of India with great astonishment. During the rebellion in Northern India, a massacre at Gwalior occurred on the 14th June 1857, but the town was recap tured by Sir IIugh Rose on the 28th June 1858. The British Indian Government kept a Political Agent at the court of Gwalior, by whom, also, Ainjliera, Narwar, Bhadaura, Khaltatin, Raghoffarh, Baroda or Sheopore, and Barra, are superintended.
There are several caves in the steepest face of tho diff. The Sas 13ahu, a great Jain temple, wa.s excavated about A.D. 1093, and the Tell ki Mandar, originally a Vaislinava shrine, about th0 KWIC time. In the 15th century, the Jains, on the cliff that sustains the fort, executed the most exten sive series of Jaina caves known to exist anywhere. Their style of execution is very inferior. The principal group is in the Urwahi ravine, and con sists of 22 colossal naked figures of the Tirthan knits, the largest a standing figure 57 feet high. Another group, on the opposite face of the cliff, has 18 statues 20 to 30 feet high, and there are others.—Burgess, p. 509.