HASTINAPUR  , an

ancient city of British India, in the Meerut district of the United Provinces, lying on the bank of a former bed of the Ganges, 22 M . N.E. of Meerut . It formed the capital of the great Pandava kingdom, celebrated in the Mahabharata, and probably one of the earliest Aryan settlements outside the Punjab . Tradition points to a group of shapeless mounds as the residence of the Lunar princes of the house of Bharata whose deeds are commemorated in the great national epic . After the conclusion of the famous war which forms the central episode of that poem, Hastinapur remained for some time the metropolis of the descendants of Parikshit, but the town was finally swept away by a flood of the Ganges, and the capital was transferred to Kausambi .