HARDWAR, or HURDWAR  , an ancient town of British India, and Hindu place of pilgrimage, in the Saharanpur district of the United Provinces, on the right bank of the Ganges, 17 M . N.E. of Rurki, with a railway station . The Ganges canal here takes off from the river . A branch railway to Dehra was opened in 1900 . Pop . (1901), 25,597 . The town is of great antiquity, and has borne many names . It was originally known as Kapila from the sage Kapila . Hsuan Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, in the 7th century visited a city which he calls Mo-yu-lo, the remains of which still exist at Mayapur, a little to the south of the modern town . Among the ruins area fort and three temples, decorated with broken stone sculptures . The great object of attraction at present is the Hari-ka-charan, or bathing ghat, with the adjoining temple of Gangadwara . The charan or foot-mark of Vishnu, imprinted on a stone let into the upper wall of the ghat, forms an object of special reverence .

A great assemblage of

people takes place annually, at the beginning of the Hindu solar year, when the sun enters Aries; and every twelfth year a feast of peculiar sanctity occurs, known as a Kumbh-mela . The ordinary number of pilgrims at the annual fair 1903 there were 400,000 present . Since 1892 many sanitary improvements have been made for the benefit of the annual concourse of pilgrims . In early days riots and also outbreaks of cholera were of common occurrence . The Hardwar meeting also possesses mercantile importance, being one of the principal horse-fairs in Upper India . Commodities of all kinds, Indian and European, find a ready sale, and the trade in grain and food-stuffs forms a lucrative traffic .