Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/675

 GUN

597

Pargana Gundwa, Sarkdr Lucknow^— Cultivated area

H,8fl3 blghas 300,759 ddma 100

Land revenue Zamindars, Brahmana, Foot soldiers

No

fort or cavalry force

The

materials at

^.

mentioned.

my

disposal from which to outline the past history of from the impossibility of finding time to make a more exhaustive search than from their non-existence. The legends, coins, inscriptions, sanads, and other materials collected during a single cold weather tour in a district of 2,292 square miles are so numerous as to convince me that everywhere this most interesting part of Oudh teems with the relics and traditions of a past of imniense antiquity " Still the landmarks of the ancient states linger on in local legend in the unwritten chronicles of the past which are but slowly fading away from the national memory. History has vanished from the land, but the names survive." (Wheeler's India III., 26-5). Here as elsewhere the most vigorous life of local legend clings round the deserted mounds that entomb the memorials of a past civilization. Let me try to reproduce the tale of Bharaiya Khera as noted for me by Majlis Rae, qanungo, and as partly learnt from the lips of an Arakh chaukidar, and endeavour to supply from sources unknown to them the links that seem to connect their folk lore with the authentic History of ancient India. Historical events.
 * ^^ pargana are somewhat meagre, more, I think,

—



More than a thousand years ago a tribe of Baurias called Khargis setand became the zamindars, as it were, of the surrounding country. A hundred years or more later a band of Kurmis from Fyzabad drove out the Baurias by degrees, founded the villages of Bibi Khera and Bauria Khera, and threw up the strong earthwork which tled at Bharaiya Kharauli



you may see at Bharaiya between Gundwa and Atrauli and which we call Bhankargarh. And while the Kurmis were still in the land a Banjara To escape payarrived from the north with a rich load of merchandize. ment of the heavy dues which the zamindars would charge, he said that his load was only khari ( Glauber's salt), and God was wroth with him for his lie. And when he came to unload his pack, behold it had turned to khari, and he was a broken man. In those days a Nag haunted the forest and the tank, and in his trouble he went to the tank and prayed to the kindly Nag to help him in his strait, and vowed a shrine in his honour if the Nag would aid him, and the Nag listened to his prayer and the Banjara went on his way rejoicing ; and sold his bales for twice their cost. And when he had now become rich he remembered his vow, and returned, and built a stately shrine and placed in it an image of the kindly Nag. And the ruins of that shrine you may still see. And some say that the shrine yas set up because the Banjara worshipped snakes, and his servant had ignorantly killed the Nag. But be this as it may, all Hindus still worship at the ruined shrine and offer milk at it for the sacred Nag.

And when

the Kurmis had held the land for a hundred and

fifty

or

two