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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 6, p. 248.

248 BALI and next by the Ranas of IUdaipur. It passed finally into the possession of the Jodhpur chiefs about the end of the eighteenth century. Balia.-Village in Dinajpur District, Eastern Bengal and Assam. See ALAWAKHAWA. Baliap1a.-Village in the head-quarters subdivision of Balasore District, Bengal, situated in 21i 39' N. and 87° 17' E., on the Matai river. Population (I90I), 298. Rice to the annual value of a lakh of rupees is exported in sloops to Calcutta, Madras, and the Laccadives. Balipara.-Village in Darrang District, Eastern Bengal and Assam, situated in 26c 50' N. and 920 44' E., about 20 miles north of Tezpur town. Balipara is the terminus of a light railway, which runs from that point to the river ghdt at Tezpur. A large market is held every Sunday, which is attended by great numbers of coolies from the tea gardens in the neighbourhood. Prior to the construction of the rail- way, an outpost of military police was stationed at Balipara to keep the AKAS in check. In 1835 this outpost was rushed and seventeen persons killed by the hillmen. In 1883 theAkas again gave trouble and carried off two native forest officers from the Balipara range office. Balisna.-Town in the Patan taluka, Kadi prdnt, Baroda State, situated in 23° 49' N. and 72° 15' E., with a population (1901) of 4,650. It is the home of the Leva Kunbis. The town possesses a vernacular school. Balkh.-Town in Afghan-Turkistan, situated in 360 46' N. 66° 53' E.; 1,266 feet above the sea. Balkh (Bactra) was the capital of the old Bactrian satrapy and subsequently of the Graeco-Bactrian kings. Its siege by Antiochus the Great (206 B.c.), followed by the temporary submission of king Euthydemus, marks the last effort of Seleucid power in these regions. On the overthrow of the Graeco- Bactrian kingdom, Balkh passed under the Yueh-chi and then under the Parthians; and it was here that Artaxerxes (Ardeshir), the first of the Sassanids, was acknowledged as Great King in supersession of the Parthian dynasty. After the overthrow of the Sassanid kingdom by the Arabs, Balkh and the adjoining territories, known as Haiathala or Tukharistan (now Afghan-Turkistan), fell under their sway, and the subsequent connexion of these was generally either with Khorasan or with Trans-Oxiana. On the break-up of the Khalifat, Balkh came successively under the rule of the Saffarids, the Samanids, the Ghaz- nivids, the Seljuks, the Shahs of Khwarizm, the Mongols of Chingiz who destroyed the city, and of Timuir, from one of whose descendants it passed to the Uzbegs, Shay-banids, and Janids of the line of Chingiz. It was temporarily occupied, under the reign of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, by his sons, Murad and Aurangzeb, but was evacuated very shortly. It passed into Afghan possession under Ahmad Shah Durrani, but was again lost (1826) in the troublous period that followed the