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
