To show that my opinion is fairly entitled to some consideration, I may mention that for a year and half I was employed as an engineer in the Patna, Gaya, and Bihar districts, and consequently have had opportunities of making myself acquainted with the engineering features of the country. According to my observations then made, and information from competent authority, I consider that at some remote period the Son flowed in a south-east course from the present village of Tarârh near Dâu̇dnagar, passing close to the villages of Rámpur-Chai and Kayal, and not far from the great plain (Tanr) of Deokund or Deokurh, as it is indiscriminately pronounced by the people. Tarârh or Tartârah in Hindustani means the high bank of a river, and the name clearly refers to the village having once been on the high banks of a river. Immediately close to Tarârh and between it and Dâu̇dnagar, recent excavations and works for the Son Canal have proved the country to have been once the bed of a great river; extensive pieces of water still exist, both at Chai and at Kayal, the remains probably of the old Son. At Deokund an annual fair or mela is held. From Kayal I consider it probable that the Son continued in a north-east direction, entering the bed of the present Punpun at the village of Son-Bhadr.
Son-Bhadr is a great place of pilgrimage, and although the village of Son-Bhadr is not now a place of pilgrimage, I have ascertained by long and patient enquiry from varidus people that Son-Bhadr is the name given to the ford or ferry where pilgrims to Gaya (from the west) have to cross the Son; the name is now applied to a part of the Son near the present Grand Trunk Road, where pilgrims halt to bathe, and make offerings to the pitris, and this offering here is considered the first or initiatory step to the fulfilment of the pilgrimage to Gaya. The present Son-Bhadr is not entered in the best map extant, as it is not now a mouzah but merely a ghât; but the Son-Bhadr village alluded to above is an actual village situated on the banks of the Punpun.[1] I cannot give the etymology of the name with certainty, but I think it not improbable that it is derived from the words Sona and Bhadra, meaning the "auspicious Sona." Sona means "red, to become red," and the name may originally have been
- ↑ I conclude, therefore, that the village owes its name to having sprung up at the site of the old crossing of the Son, and Las naturally retained its name even though the place is no longer the crossing used. The modern crossing having come into use since the existence of the village on its banks, the village naturally retains its old name, and the crossing alone is called Son-Bhadr.
