[2][3][4][5][nb 1] According to the anthropologist Morton Klass, by 1963 it "had become a sleepy village of mud houses scattered among the ruins of once much grander buildings."

However, until the independence of India from British rule in 1947 it had been of local significance as it was home to a zamindar successor to the Maharajah of Kasipur and to both religious centres and schools, although it had never possessed a market.

Klass noted in 1978 that it was still a focal point of sorts for the villages that surrounded it because many Brahmin priests continued to live there, along with other castes with specialist occupational roles.

It is a rocky undulating area with laterite soil, with the Ajay on the north, the Damodar on the south and the Barakar on the west.

The Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene reported that "the primary cause was neglected diarrhoea, due to eating indigestible food".