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/166

142 What this establishment was named it is, perhaps, impossible now to determine with certainty; but if I may be permitted to speculate, I should think it to have been the site of the famous Uttániya monastery of Winjjha. Winjjha is the Páli equivalent of Vindhya; the passages in Turnour referring to it are—p. 115—"the monarch departing out of his capital and preceding the river procession with his army through the wilderness of Winjjha, reached Tanialitta on the 7th day," and in p. 171 "From various foreign countries many priests repaired hither "There Uttaro attended accompanied by sixty thousand priests from the Uttaniya temple in the wilderness of Winjjha."

It is evident that the wilderness of Winjjha lay on the route from Pátaliputra to Tamluk. I have indicated some of the routes from Tamluk to various places. The principal route would, it appears to me, have to pass through, or close to, modern Bankurah; from here there was a choice of several routes. Clearly the route to Bhâgalpur would branch off northwards from there, passing through Seuri, under Mandar, close past Bhaskinâth; it is remarkable that an old track yet exists from Bhaskinâth to Deoghar Byjnâth, whence it goes on skirting the eastern spurs of the Kawalkol range, past Afsand, Parvati, Bihar to Patna. I should consider that this was the route taken by the king when he passed through the wilderness of Winjjha, for it appears to me pretty certain that the wilderness of Winjjha can only refer to the wild country now known in part as the Santál Parganas.

If this be admitted, we have but one place in the Winjjha forests where Buddhist temples existed, as testified by existing Buddhist relics, and this place is Deoghar Baijnâth.

It is remarkable that close to the city of Deoghar and still closer to the temples is a small village named Utmuria; this may be a corruption of the original of the Páli Uttama. I put forward this suggestion merely in the absence of any more positive; it is possible that an examination of the 3-line inscription from the Buddhist statue noticed before may throw new light on the subject.

I have described but one of the temples in the enclosure, as that is the best of the group, and may be regarded as the type of the others; it is needless to describe each of the uninteresting edifices in detail. I shall now give the legends and stories connected with the place.

The great temple is the chief of the group, and enshrines a lingam; this is said to have a small depression at its