January, 1873.] DEMON,OLOGY IN GUJARAT. 13 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 tho 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 Kanfin- gos add that this happened forty years after the defeat at Bahraich of Sayyid Salar, thus making the date 1073 A. D. Pandit Sfiraj Narayan Acharya of the Sultan- pdr 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 Tharfts descended from the hills and oc¬ cupied Ayudhya. The dispossessed Buddhist called in Rajjl Srichandra of Srinagar in the hills about Badrinath, who drove back the Tharfis, 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 Sombafisi of Kanauj took Sahet Mahet, and the Surajbafisis of Suhil Dal’s family fled to the neighbourhood of Simla where their des* cendants still live. Suhil Dal’s family were Jains. Lassen in his account of the later dynasties of Kanauj* describes an inscription which records that Srichandradeva, the first of the great Rah tor princes, who came to the throne in 1072 A. D., was protector of the sacred places of Ayudhya and Kosliala (f. e. Sravasti).f Here we have three sources of information, which comparison almost conclusively shows to be quite distinct. From them we gather that the king of Sravasti who defeated the Muham¬ madans was a Jain (the pandit, confirmed by that part of the local tradition which does not allow him to eat after sunset) ; that his dynas¬ ty 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 &obhavanath. This can hardly be other than Sam- bhavanath, the third Tirthaiikara, 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 grand¬ father of Suhil Dal, and localizes his conflict with Aijuna, described in the Drigvijaya section of the Mahabh&rata, at Chandravatipura or Sahet Mahet. The epic hero’s death at the hand of Babhruvahana is localized at Manikpur, about a hundred miles south of Sahet Mahet. The fact is worth recording, but any remarks on it would lead to mere conjecture. NOTES ON WITCHCRAFT AND DEMONOLOGY IN GUJARAT. BY CAPT. E. WEST, ASSISTANT POLITICAL AGENT, KOLHAPUR. Durino some years residence in Gujarat the writer of these notes had frequently occasion to take official cognizance of cases where witch¬ craft 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 memo¬ randa thus made the following notes are taken.
- Lassen’s account (Tnd. Alt. III., 751)'is—“ With respect to
the victories ascribed to Laxmanasena we should men¬ tion that contemporaneously with him the Kahtors Chan- dradeva and Madanap&la 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 bis 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 ru'od over the country to the east of Kanauj, or Koshala with its capital of Ayudhya.” In a note he refers to an inscription in At. Soc. Ben. down. 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 Vero, is of the male sex, the others being females and bearing respectively the names Meladi, Shiko- tar, Dhera, and Dakun. The symptoms that shew vol. X., where Chandradeva is called the protector of the sacred places of K<Ui, Koshala, Ac. Lassen’s explanation of the pilgrimage is exceedingly probable; it is a common proverb “ Na Chhatri ka bhagat, na mOs&l ka dhanukh you can’t make a saint of a Chhatri, or a bow of a rice-peBtle ; 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, Mtsc. Essays, voi. II. p. 286. As. Resear. XV. pp. 447, 457; and Jour. As. 8oc. Benp. vol. X. p. 101.—Ed. t See my Introduction to the Temples of 8'atrunjaya, p. 4. —Ed.
