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JANUARY, 1873.]
twilight commenced, and the bells struck one watch of the night. An investigation into the difference between the apparent time and that struck by his servants inspired the king with a determination to see his brother's lovely wife, and his incestuous passion was punished by the ruin of his state. Amidst a terrific storm the city was turned bottom upwards. The Kânûngos add that this happened forty years after the defeat at Bahraich of Sayyid Sâlâr, thus making the date 1073 A. D.
Pandit Sûraj Nârâyan Áchârya of the Sultanpúr district, a good Sanskrit scholar, gave me the following information without allowing me to discover the sources from which he drew it. After the fall of the Buddhist dynasty of Kanauj, the Thârûs descended from the hills and occupied Ayudhya. The dispossessed Buddhist called in Raja Srichandra of Srinagar in the hills about Badrinath, who drove back the Thârâs, and, marching north, founded Chandravatipura, now known as Sahet Mahet. His grandson was the celebrated Suhil Dal who defeated the Muhammadans. Not long afterwards Chandra Deva Sombañsi of Kanauj took Sahet Mahet, and the Surajbañsis of Suhil Dal's family fled to the neighbourhood of Simla where their descendants still live. Suhil Dal's family were Jains.
DEMONOLOGY IN GUJARAT.
Lassen in his account of the later dynasties of Kanauj describes an inscription which records
NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT AND DEMONOLOGY IN GUJARAT. POLITICAL AGENT, KOLHAPUR.
BY CAPT. E. WEST, ASSISTANT DURING some years residence in Gujarat the writer of these notes had frequently occasion to take official cognizance of cases where witchcraft was supposed to have been at work, and made at the time some brief memoranda of the popular opinions on this subject as elicited in the investigation into these cases. From the memoranda thus made the following notes are taken.
Lassen's account (Ind. Alt. III., 751) is-" With respect to the victories ascribed to Laxmanasena we should mention that contemporaneously, with him the Rahtors Chandradeva and Madanapala reigned at Kanauj, and their reigns extended, roughly speaking, from 1072 to 1120 A.D. Of the first it is related that he conquered Kanauj, and made a pilgrimage to Benares, a town which must have. belonged to his kingdom, as we cannot assume that aims of piety took him to the town of a hostile ruler. It is therefore possible that Laxmanasena gained a victory over Chandradeva, without subduing the kingdom; on this supposition Laxmanasena must have ruled over the country to the east of Kanauj, or Koshala with its capital of Ayudhya."
In a note he refers to an inscription in As. Soc. Ben. Journ.
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that Srichandradeva, the first of the great Rahtor princes, who came to the throne in 1072 A. D., was protector of the sacred places of Ayudhya and Koshala (i. e. Śrâvasti).†
Here we have three sources of information, which comparison almost conclusively shows to be quite distinct. From them we gather that the king of Śrâvasti who defeated the Muhammadans was a Jain (the pandit, confirmed by that part of the local tradition which does not allow him to eat after sunset); that his dynasty was overthrown by Srichandradeva of Kanauj (the pandit and the inscription); and that this happened in 1073 A. D. or about then (the inscription and the local tradition).
It is perhaps worth mentioning that a small and comparatively modern Jain temple in Sahet Mahet is said by the villagers to be sacred to Sobhavanâth. This can hardly be other than Śambhavanâth, the third Tirthankara, who was born at Sawanta, and whose two predecessors and two successors were all born at or near Ayudhya. A curious tradition makes Sudhaniya the grandfather of Suhil Dal, and localizes his conflict with Arjuna, described in the Drigvijaya section of the Mahabharata, at Chandrâvatipura or Sahet Mahet. The epic hero's death at the hand of Babhruvahana is localized at Mânikpur, about a hundred miles south of Sahet Mahet. The fact is worth recording, but any remarks on it would lead to mere conjecture.
There are five demons par excellence who are supposed to get possession of unhappy human beings, either of their own accord or through the incantations and machinations of enemies of the sufferers. One of these, who is called Nar Sing Véro, is of the male sex, the others being females and bearing respectively the names Melâdî, Shikotar, Dhéra, and Dâkun. The symptoms that shew
vol. X., where Chandradeva is alled the protector of the sacred places of Kasi, Koshala, c.
Lassen's explanation of the pig image is exceedingly probable; it is a common proverb Chhatri ka bhagat, na müsal ka dhanukh :" you can't make a saint of a Chhatri, or a bow of a rice-pestle; but the traditions of the Kanauj rule in Koshala are too distinct and universal to permit me to accept the conjectural conquest by Laxmanasena. A copper-plate of Jaichand of Kanauj has been discovered in Ayudhya.
Lassen Alterthumsk. III. p. 751 and Conf. Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, vol. II. p. 286. As. Resear. XV. pp. 447, 457; and Jour. As. Soc. Beng. vol. X. p. 101.-ED.
See my Introduction to the Temples of 8'atrunjaya, p. 4. -ED.
