Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/535

 '

FYZ

457

On

the whole, there seem good local reasons for believing with the French antiquarians that Ayuto was the present Ajodhya.

General Cunningham thinks that the pilgrim came down by BSngarmau along the Ganges instead of across Oudh that he came first to Ayuto or Kukupur, one mile north of Shiurdjpur and twenty miles north-west of Cawnpore then to Ayamukha, which he places near Daundia Khera in Rae Bareli then, still down the Ganges, to Prag ; then to Kosiimbi; then north to Kusapur, which be finds near Sultanpur; then north to Ajodhya; thence to Sahet Mahet or Sravasti.





Undoubtedly the

latter part of his itinerary does not require so

savants.

The

and assume

many

many

the French But the former part requires very violent treatment of the text.

alterations of the text,

subject

and pages 243

so

errors, as that of

treated in pages 279, 335, vol. I, Archaeological Survey, Contr^es Occidentales, vol. I.

is

—308, Julien



The story of the kingdom of Ajodhya would indeed be an absolute blank during the first seventeen centuries of our era if it were not for the dim and feeble light shed over some small fractions of this long period of darkness by the two Buddhist pilgrims. There is no doubt that great convulsions attended the fall of Buddhism and the conquest of Oudh by the Musalmans but these belong more to

the history of

Oudh than to the district of Fyzabad. We do not even know how the country was peopled: we know that the

Sakar or Sakti were massacred in thousands on the borders of Gonda that at Srdvasti lived the barbarians who wore head-dresses of human fingers, and one of whom was converted by Buddha when killing his mother in order to complete the fashionable number. It is only too probable that after the fall of Contrees Buddhism the people relapsed into those barbarous taS^TOL '
 * ^° 294°"

pagJ'w*""

1

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a es, vo

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,

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practices from which this

.

humane faith had restrained

them.

We may date the fall of with, and yielding

to,

Buddhism, or rather its gradual contamination Brahmanical ideas, about the eighth century.

—

The Musalman invasion. In 1030 A.D., Sayyad Salar Musalid passed through Fyzabad. It is not certain whether any great battle was fought here but in the account of Mangalsi are related, with minuteness, the They still point out still vivid traditions and superstitions of the people. a portion of the Queen's highway along which the country people will not pass after dark. They say that at night the " road is thronged with troops The of headless horsemen,—the dead of the army of Prince Sayyad S£Mr. The ghostly horses make no vast array moves on with a noiseless tread. sound, and no words of command are shouted to the headless host."

In 1080 Ajodhya was attacked by Sultan Ibt^him. After Sayyad Sdlar was killed, the leaders of the great popular rising which defeated him turned against each other.

Mr. Oarnegy says that Sohildeo, a Sdrajbans and a Buddhist, the ruler of Sravasti, fought Chandar Deo, the Rathor king of Oudh Castes, page 25. ganauj, for the possession of Ajodhya. The battle was