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years, then, more than seven hundred years ago, Raja Gauri Shankar, Kashiwala ( of Benares ) a Brahman, conquered this part of the country, and stormed the stronghold of the Kurmis at Bhankargarh and slew them with a great slaughter so that not one remained. And to this day in the dead of night the lonely watcher in the fields hears from the deserted Khera the shouts of the conquering Brahmans and the shrieks of the slaughtered garrison.

hundred

And one

Kurmi women was away at her father's house waiting one to be bom. And she bore a son, and named him Gohna, and when he had grown he took service with the Delhi king, and became a great warrior, and brought an army, and slew the Ka&hi raja and routed his troops, and got back the Kurmi domain. But Bhankargarh was haunted by the ghosts of the dead, so Gohna chose another spot where Raja Gauri Shankar had built a spacious enclosure ( Gonda) for his elephants and horses and cattle. And he named it by his own name Gohna Gundwa or the enclosure of Gohna, and in time the writers changed it to Goni Gonda Kharauli, and now it is called Goni Gonda, (pronounced Goni Gonwa). About seventy years ago the nazim of Khairabad, Raja SItal Parshad Tirbedi, built a masonry fort, and threw up an earthwork in Goni Gonda, and posted his tahsildar there, yonder where is now the for

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—

village school-house, I know of only one hypothesis by which this tradition can be made to yield a definite residuum of historic truth. From the travels of Hwen Thsang we learn that in the early half of the seventh century A.D. the

Magadha empire extended over the greater part of Hindustan. The reigning sovereign was named Siladitya (or Harsha Varddhana). He had carried his victorious arms to the east and west. At least eighteen feudatory princes paid him homage as their suzerain. He was a zealous patron of Buddhism His kingdom of Kanauj was wealthy and full of merchandize". At Ajodhya at this time Buddhism 'appeared to be in a struggling condition'. At Prayaga (Allahabad) 'Brahmanism was decidedly flourishing. At Benares also it was in the ascendant'. (Wheeler's India, 111.265^268). "It is this Buddhist Emperor Harsha Varddhana or Nahdi Bardh^na, who is accredited with the suppression of Brahmanism at Ajodhya, and with the establishment of the non-caste system adopted by society generally when the population at large were great "

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denominated Bhars".

(Historical sketch of Tahsil Fyzabadj p, 24).

I can only account for the migration of Kurmis from Fyzabad to Bharaiya by supposing that they came hither on the wave of religious and political conquest which rolled from Gya to Pataliputra (Patna), from Pataliputra to Ajodhya, and from Ajodhya to Kanauj, Westwards the star of empire took its way at the time when Buddhist supremacy was still mounting. Westwards, from Ajodhya in the east, the Kurmis of our humble legend followed in the wake of the Buddhist emperor, and obtained land and protection in the neighbourhood of his great capital at Kanauj on condition of their throwing up and garrisoning one of a chain of earthworks to link Kanauj with the great fortress of Ajodhya.