1876.] P. Camegy—The Mars of Audi and Banaras. 299 



of Ujjain. Its position on the Sarjii, and the survival through many 

 vicissitudes of the shrine of Nagesar Nath Mahadeo led to its identi- 

 fication. But it was probably long after this, and perhaps some ten centu- 

 ries ago, that the great Brahmanical revival, which had Ajmir for its centre, 

 commenced, and which in time reached eastwards even to Ayodhya. 



It was, as we have been informed, when the power of the Gaya dynasty 

 waned, that Ayodhya became the apple of discord between the rulers of 

 Kanauj and Sahet-Mahet, and then it was that Chandardeo Bathor 

 (regenerated Buddhist) and Siri Chandar (Buddhist and Ex-Surajbans 

 Chhatri) referred their pretensions thereto to the issue of the sword, when 

 a great battle was fought at the modern Satrik, which ended in the down- 

 fall of the latter, (the former vanquisher of Sayyid Salar) and the overthrow 

 of his creed and capital. Time, the early half of the eleventh century. 

 Thus came it to pass that those whom the Chinese pilgrims had found to 

 be Buddhists in Dihli, in Ajmir, and in Kanauj, in the 4th and 6th centuries 

 of our era, were found by the Muhammadans six hundred years later, restored 

 nominally at any rate to the Yedic faith of their fathers. The Buddhists 

 were believed to be disregarders of caste distinctions, but this was not 

 universal, and for a time at any rate the perverts from Brahmanism to 

 Buddhism maintained their caste distinctions ; because the Chinese pilgrims 

 refer to Kusala, " with its Kshatriya king of the Buddhist faith" ; another 

 king is mentioned as a Kshatriya " and a zealous Buddhist" ; and of a third 

 it is said that though a Brahman he patronizes the Buddhist religion. Lastly, 

 the pilgrims were "particularly struck with the minute observances of 

 caste". It would thus appear that in the 4th and 6th centuries caste dis- 

 tinctions were not entirely disregarded by the perverts ; they were indeed 

 in some instances maintained till the Brahmanical revival ; for it is believed 

 that the rulers of Dihli continued to call themselves Tomars and Bathors 

 both before and after that event. 



But whether it was during the Buddhist supremacy or at a later time 

 when religion and its accessaries became greatly neglected, there can be no 

 doubt that for a considerable period before the Muhammadan conquest the 

 distinctions of caste had altogether disappeared, and the soil of north- 

 east Audh and Banaras had become possessed by a single god-neglecting, 

 caste-disregarding race, whom it is the fashion amongst the natives of the 

 day, who are mostly their descendants, to treat with the utmost disdain. 



Here I answer the question put at the beginning of this paper, this 

 god-neglecting caste -disregarding race were the Bhars ! 



There is nothing either astonishing or improbable in this, for we have 

 the authority of the great lawgiver Manu that " all those tribes of men, 

 who sprang from the mouth, the arm, the thigh, and the foot of Brahma, 

 but who became outcastes by having neglected their duties, are called Dasyus, 







j j9 



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