Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/395

 BIL

317

came to Nims^r and found many RisRis engaged in hearing the sacred Bhagwat read. And one of them, by name, Sita, did not, like the rest, rise and do obeisance to the hero, wherefore Bala Rama took a blade of kus, a grass, and smote off his head. But the Brahmans condemned the deed, and Bala Rama repented him of it and offered to go on pilgrimage anywhere and do anything that they might appoint to purge away his guilt. So they required of him two things that he should instal the son of Sita in his father's place, and rid them of a terrible dano, Hal son of BiMl, who was wont to vex the Brahmans of Nimsar by raining blood and filth whenever

they sacrificed. And Bala Rdma consented and while he was yet at Nimslr a mighty tempest arose, and the winds blew from the four quarters of heaven, and the sky became black as night, and a grewsome rain of blood and flesh began to fall, and the Rishis knew that the dano was at hand. Soon he came in view -a horrible body, with large teeth, swarthy skin, red eyes, and grizzled hair. Then BelaRdma took up his ploughshare and pestle and rushed upon the demon and felled him to the ground and slew him. Then the Rishis were glad and worshipped Bala Rama as a god, and low mound to put jewels upon him, and invoked blessings on his head. the east of the high ground, on which stands the ruined fort of Bilgram, is still shown as the spot where the legendary demon abode. It is marked by a small temple built some twenty-five years ago on the ruins of an older shrine said by the ancients of the quarter to have stood there since the days of Bil himself.

—

A

The precise historical 'significance of the legend is open to question. Apparently it belongs to the heroic age, when the tide of Aryan conquest was pouring down the valleys of the Ganges and Jumna, and every conflict with the aborigines deified the Chhattri conqueror in the imagination of a degenerate posterity, and conversely bedevilled his aboriginal opponents. The dano of this and other legends probably represents a blackskinned pre-Aryan tribe akin to the Dasyas of the Vedas and the Asuras of the Mahabharata that for a time harassed siiccessfuUy an early Aryan settlement on the Gumti and forced it to seek protection from a prominent Chhattri hero of the time.

"We may conceive," says Muir (Sanskrit Texts, II, page 392), "the Aryans advancing from the Indus in a south-easterly direction into a country probably covered with forest and occupied by savage tribes, who lived in rude huts, perhaps defended by entrenchments, and subsisted on the spontaneous products of the woods, or on the produce of the chase, and of These barbarians were of fishing, or by some attempts at agriculture. dark complexion, perhaps also of uncouth appearance spoke a language fundamentally distinct from that of the Aryans differed entirely from them in their religious worship, which no doubt would partake of the most degraded fetichism and (we can easily suppose) regarded with intense hostility the more civilised invaders who were gradually driving them from The Aryans, meanwhile, as they advanced, and their ancient fastnesses. gradually established themselves in the forests, fields, and villages of the aborigines, would not be able all at once to secure their position, but would be exposed to constant reprisals on the part of their enemies, who would



avail themselves of every opportunity to assail them, to carry off their