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PLACES OF INTEREST
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PAL.
Pal (Raver Taluka; 21°20' N. 75°50' E: R. S. Raver, in. 14;
p. 483), is a ruined town in the Pal tappet in Raver taluka. on a tableland in the Satpuda hills. 14 miles north-west of Raver railway station (Bombay-Itarsi line). It is said to have been abandoned about the beginning of the eighteenth century, and at the introduction of British rule was utterly desolate and infested with wild beasts. In 1820 Subhedar Nimbalkar, a brother of the proprietor of Yaval, offered to re-people Pal if Government advanced him a sum of Rs. 25,400. But Captain Briggs advised the British Government not to favour the proposal. After 1820, several attempts were made to re-people the place, but on account of its deadly climate and of the ravages of wild beasts, none proved successful. At last, in 1869-70 Mr. C. S. James induced some cultivators to settle there. There were six hundred inhabitants in 1880. The site of the old town seems to be a triangular piece of ground, about a square mile in area, enclosed between two mountain streams and the Suki river.
Traces remain of the wall and battlements of the old fort with its flanking towers. About two hundred yards east of the fort, in what seems to have been the centre of the main street of the town, an old stone mosque stands inside an enclosure, entered by a stately arched gateway strengthened by brickwork battlements. On each side of the enclosure are the ruins of rooms, and to the right of the mosque. a doorway opens on steps that lead
to the roof of these buildings. The mosque, of black stone without cement measures twenty-seven square feet. Though its front pillars are much weather-worn and some of the blocks have been displaced, the main building is well preserved. Behind the mosque, a little to the north-west, stands a caravanserai known as Hathiwada, about 200 square feet, with a gateway facing west. Nothing remains but the three walls and a portion of the fourth and the plinths showing the position of the different rooms. Passing from the mosque towards the fort, a once well paved road leads down to the Nagziri fountain, a little cistern of pure water overshadowed by a grove of well-grown trees. The cistern, fifty feet by thirty, is said, to be fed from the old fort well with which it is joined by an underground pipe. The supply of water is large, the overflow passing to the river through 13 outlets in the cistern. Heaps of stones are the only traces of private buildings.
The working of the Sarvodava centre allotted to Raver includes Pal, that has led to the rise of a school for Adivasis where a holiday centre is also proposed to be started.
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