1870.] An Account of Copilmuni and its Antiquities. 235 



An Account of Copilmuni and its Antiquities, in connection with the 

 Fair held there in March, 1868, being extracts from my Diaries of a 

 cold weather tour in Sub-Division Khulnea in Jessore. — By Ba- 

 boo Kashbihari Bose, Sub-Divisional Officer, Banka, Bhagal- 



PTJR. 



March. 20th, 1868. — I examined many respectable people about 

 the origin of the fair, but no one could give a satisfactory 

 account. They have lived up to old age, as their fathers did be- 

 fore them, without troubling themselves about the inquiry. They 

 even wondered why I took the trouble of asking them about it. 

 According to them, the fair is held because it has been held 

 before. I called and examined the mohunts of the place, who are 

 the descendants of Bagnath Mohunt, a recluse of great sanctity who 

 is said to have buried himself alive near the temple or rather the 

 hermitage of Copil ; but they could give me no other information 

 than that the fair used to be held before the time of their great 

 ancestor, though on a smaller scale than at present, 



March 21st, 1868. — On my way back, I found a large number 

 of pilgrims going to bathe in the Oopotuc, which, during the Ba- 

 roni festival, is considered to assume the sacred virtues of the 

 Ganges. The vast multitude of pilgrims that come to bathe in the 

 stream at this time of the year, . has no doubt given rise to the 

 mela, or fair. But the difficulty lies in accounting for the Oopotuc 

 being considered at the time of the Baroni to be as sacred as the 



On my return to my tent, I received a visit from the priest of the 

 temple of Copileshuri, the goddess who is supposed to preside over 

 the destiny of Copilmuni. He was unwilling to relate the tradi- 

 tions connected with the fair, they being, he said, idle stories 

 which were not fit for the ear of a hakim. Being, however, pres- 

 sed on the subject, he stated that it was on the thirteenth day after 

 the full moon, (the clay of the Baroni festival) that Oopil became 

 Sidha, or had his prayers accepted in heaven, and it was to 

 commemorate that event that he instituted the fair, which had 

 continued to be held on that day. This account does not satis- 



