Cannon found in Bidar

Date of the 10-ft long three-tonne monument is yet to be determined

HERITAGE:The huge cannon found in the moat surrounding the fort in Bidar on Friday.— PHOTO: T. GOPICHAND


A team of officials of the District Heritage Cell have found a cannon, while cleaning a moat beside the outer fort wall here on Friday.

“The cannon, which is possibly made from iron, going by the sparse metal traces, weighs at least three tonnes. Its length is about 10 ft and diameter about nine inches,” Shashikanth Malli, engineer in-charge of heritage conservation, toldThe Hindu. It has two arms on the side, a hole for the wick and a latch to close it.

“It seems to be a tripod-mounted cannon. We may find the tripod or a stand, if we dig deeper,” he said.

The driver of an earthmover, which has been pressed into service to clear the bushes and dig the soil in the moat, found the cannon. It is now kept along the moat wall, in a lane next to the Bahujan Samaj Party office at Shah Gunj in the Old City. Mr. Malli said, the weapon would be examined by experts of the State Archaeology Department to determine its date. The cleaning operations would continue and all artefacts and other materials found in the moat would be handed over to the Department of Archaeology. “It must have been mounted on one of the watch-towers along the moat and it might have fallen down from there,” Prakash Patil, a resident of the Old City, said.

The Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation has taken up the project of cleaning the moat at a cost of Rs. 4 crore. There are two sets of moats in the Old City. The first set of triple moats surrounds the inner fort walls.

The second moat that works as a large drain, surrounds the outer fort wall. The total length of these two moats is over 14 kilometres, covering an area of over 1,100 acres of land in the Old City.
Experts to examine itto determine date

Source:http://splashurl.com/mraorqc