Page:Report of a Tour Through the Bengal Provinces of Patna, Gaya, Mongir and Bhagalpur; The Santal Parganas, Manbhum, Singhbhum and Birbhum; Bankura, Raniganj, Bardwan and Hughli in 1872-73.djvu/138

114 Párvati retained some importance even so late as Akbar. There is mention of Dariyâpur in Stewart’s Bengal, page 155, where it is described as situated 50 miles from Patna, which is very near the actual distance viâ Bihár. Since then the place has lost its importance, and is now only a second-rate village.

There is another legend which makes Párvati a place of importance in the age of the Pandus. According to it, when the sacrificial horse was let loose, Rájá Sankhadhwaj of this place seized the horse and prepared to fight. Before joining battle, however, he performed a jug. The Rájá's Guru demanded that orders be given for every one to be ready and present at a given spot by a certain hour. The Rájá's son Surat Dhwaj was newly married, and his bride happened to arrive that very day, and at her entreaty Surat Dhwaj delayed a short time. The Brahman demanded the punishment of the young man, and accordingly he was thrown into a caldron of boiling oil, but he came out unhurt. The Guru suspected the oil was not hot enough, so he heated it well, and to try the heat threw in a piece of the husk of a cocoanut; the violence of the heat caused the husk to be thrown up against the Guru’s face, blinding his right eye and burning away the right half of his face. The Rájá’s son, it was found, had escaped because he had prayed to Mahadeo and had held a tulsi leaf in his mouth when jumping into the caldron!  

Afsand is a very small village 3 miles to the south by a little east of Párvati; here are several ancient remains, the principal of which is a high conical mound, the ruin apparently of a temple; there are also several statues, but mostly Brahmanical, among them a large varaha, the finest in Bengal I have yet seen, and a few, a very few, Buddhist statues. There was once an important inscription here which was removed by Captain Kittoe, and which he sent back to be replaced here, or rather to be let into a pillar or pedestal here, but it now exists no longer. I have been able to trace it to the Magistrate’s kachari at Nawâda; beyond this there is no clue; the loss of this inscription is much to be regretted, as it was an important one, and was not so clearly copied and read to render its loss now of no consequence; this 