Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/678

 600

GUN

and Naga relics, traditions and worship grouped about them, this hasty generalization would receive a broader basis than I can claim for it at present.

The massacre of the Kurmis by the Benares Edja Gauri Shankar more than seven hundred years ago, seems further to confirm my theory as to the Buddhist character of the fortified settlement at Bhankargarh. If the Nag mound was one of Asoka's stupas it must have been a seat of religious worship and culture. Just as at Ahichhatra (loc. cit.) the stupa near the serpent tank gathered round it, " twelve monasteries containing about athousand monks," so, to compare great things with small, it is probable that the stupa near Bhankargarh had its monastery and its monks, perhaps The date assigned to the storming of Bhankarits college or sangharama. garh and the wholesale massacre of its Kurmi garrison by a Brahman conqueror from Benares points conclusively to the destruction and expulsion of the Buddhist monks which began with the sacking and burning of the monasteries of Sarnath in the eleventh or twelfth century, and crushed Buddhism in India for ever,, (see Sherring's Sacred City of the Hindus, page 268, Cunningham's Bhilsa Topes, Chapter XII., Wheeler's History III., 359.)

The recovery of Bhankargarh from the Brahmans, a generation later, with the aid of a force from Delhi marks probably a successful incursion of the Chauhan of Delhi into the realms of the Rathor of Kanauj, when they were still at feud, " while the Musalmans were pouring through the gates of India."

The only other tradition which I had time to note tells of the settlement of Jagsara, the displacement of Gaurs by a branch of the Bais of Daundia thousand or twelve Khera, and the origin of the Bharawan taluqa. hundred years ago, it runs, the greater part of the pargana was held by Jhojhas. Then it came under the sway of a Kanauj rdja,^ Mandhata, who settled at Jagsara and held a Jagg, or memorial celebration of the marriage of Rama and Si ta. At Parsa, close by, was his kitchen (Parwas.) His dominOne day an astrologer foretold that he would be ion lasted a long time. struck by a thunder-bolt. And when the raja asked how he might escape so terrible a doom, he was told to build a hundred and one wells and dig a hundred and one tanks. And he followed this counsel, and in one of the weUs he set up a golden image of himself. And some say the image was made of wheaten flour (ata) and he and his pandit lived and prayed in the well. And at last the bolt fell, and struck the image and hurled it down to the nether hell (patal.) Then the raja made over his realm to the Gaurs into whose clan he had married, and left Jagsara and settled himAnd when he had died at Manw^n self at Manwan across the Gumti. the Gaurs succeeded to his domain. And while they held the land a Bais of Daundia Khera, a descendant in the fifth generation of Raja Tilok Chand, Chandar by name, who had married into the family of the GamRaja came and settled among them. So sturdy was he and astute that he acquired great power and influence among them. And at the last he rose to be the leader of their army, and seized their domain and lorded oyer it himself.

A

Ram