Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 2 (2nd edition).pdf/117

 BAJ?A BANK/. Still

bearing westwards,

we come

107

between This is of the Giimti, and the main channel by which to a narrow stream creeping

steep banks fringed with brushwood and broken by ravines. the Kalyani, an affluent

j7ii/s is drained. In the great flood of 1871, a torrent 90 yards broad and 5 fathoms deep, discharging more than 50,000 cubic feet a second, poured along it. Between the Kalyani and the Gumti

the chain of

lies

The

the richest section of the District.

unlike that of the plain already described,

general aspect

is

not

but the crops are better

watered and heavier, the patches of waste land fewer, the groves and villages

somewhat more

The Giimti is a winding river, 40 many sudden twists and gentle curves

frequent.

yards broad, fordable, flowing with

along a deep channel 50 feet below the crest of the bank from which you look down upon it. Innumerable ravines cut up the country along course,

its

History Its

.

and penetrate deep

—The

legends have

into the inland plateau.

Bara Banki have been little studied. be gathered, its ancient places are not yet

early annals of still

to

Memories of pre-historic times still linger here and there. on the ‘Day of Snakes,’ worshippers assemble at Majitha near Nawabganj, at Purai near Siddhaur, and at the Dighi Tank at Aliabad, to offer milk and rice at these legendary haunts of the kindly

explored.

In June,

serpent kings (Nagas). throats,

are believed to

Physical blessings, such as the cure of goitred

be

in

their

gift.

A

historical

underlies this survival of a primitive aboriginal religion

significance

— the worship of

the serpent in the ^sculapian character, recalling a long distant past,

when the now mythical Nagas were a ruling and civilised race. At Aliabad and Siddhaur, high mounds of curious shape, fragments of stone temples, and bricks of unusual size, belong perhaps to the period when

the Buddhist

King Asoka (250

u.c.)

erected stupas at such places

near which Buddha had preached the law for seven days in favour of the serpent-king (General Cunningham’s Ancient Geography of India, The p. 361). period of Buddhist ascendancy seems to have been synchronous with the sway of a once powerful but now degraded tribe, the Bhars. Here, and in the neighbouring Districts of southern and eastern Oudh, the land is thickly strewn with relics of their wealth and power, in the shape of tanks and wells and embankments, and the deserted sites {dihs) of brick-built forts and towns. In western Oudh, Thatheras, Jhojhas, Arakhs, and Rajpasias occupy the corresponding page in local history. The revival of Brahmanism was apparently accompanied by the forcible displacement of these low-caste Buddhist tribes by Kshattriya warriors. A murderous struggle was still going on when the Muhammadan The exhaustion of Bhars and Kshattriyas alike, invasions took place. and the difflculty of rallying both against the common foe, contributed as the serpent-tank (Ndga-hrada) of Ahichhatra,

‘

’

i.

to the invader’s success.

An

outline of the

Muhammadan

conquest of