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 DEB

368

has detected the remains of an old temple. The excavations are not as yet sufficiently advanced to allow of any kind of identification, and nothing but one or two rough Lingams, a Ganesh, and a female figure, probably Lakshmi, have been recovered.

may

be remarked that the scene of Kama's history* Malini has been identified with Champanagara, a town on the Ganges to the east of Monghyr but if Kama remained a tributary to the king of Hastinapur, it is more reasonable to look for his'kingdom to the west of Magadha, between Delhi and Behar. In the light of the local legend I am inclined to believe that in the original epic the Malini referred to was the small affluent of the Gogra which joins the main stream about 50 miles above Ajodhya.

On

is

these legends

it

laid in central northern Hindustan.



Further, as the son of the Sun God, the wearer of the golden earrings, and the favourite of the great Shaivic here Jardsindhu, Kama himself seems to have been connected with the earliest forms of Shaivic worship, and the name, Chandrashekara (he who wears the moon on his head), by which the god is still known at Patan, is certainly derived from times when he was yet worshipped as the beneficent lord of production. .It is not, therefore, impossible that the old legend, which ascribes the ancient ruins of a fort on which the present temple is built and its adjoining

may have some kind of historical basis, though it is more probable that the actual existing remains belong to the period of

tank to Kaja Kama, far

Vikramaditya of Sravasti.

We

have no further light on the history of Debi Patan till, in the middle of the second century after Christ, the great Vikramaditya, king of Sravasti, or Sahet-Mahet, raised a new fane on the legendary spot, now overgrown with jungle. It is quite certain that tradition refers to this king, the conqueror of Kashmir, and the hot enemy of Buddhism, who restored the old sacred places at Ajodhya, and not to the more celebrated founder of the Ujjaini era. It is to this time that we may ascribe the Purdnic legend of Debi's dishonour at the hand of Eaja Dakhsha of the Panjab. Her husband, Shiva, arrived to find her dead, and taking the self-immolated corpse on his shoulder carried it eastwards. The dead and live bodies were not to be separated till Vishnu cut the former into fifty pieces with his chakra, and flinging

them in as many directions created new places of pilgrimage. Her right arm fell at Patan and sank through the earth into the lower world. The story is quite modern, and the god bearing the inseparable corpse of his consort from the Panjab may refer to the spread of the worship of the Androgynous Shiva, whose figure is found on the coins of the IndoScythic princes who reigned in north-western India soon after the commencement of the Christian era.

Again the story breaks ofi', and we have no more information till a third temple was erected by the great Eatan Nath, the third in spiritual descent from Gorakh Nath, the deified saint whose worship is spread all over the Naipal valley, as well as in many other parts of India.

See article "

vol. I., p. 323.

Kama."

Garrett's Classical Dictionary, p. 321. Wheeler's History of India