236 An Account of Copil muni and its Antiquities. [No. 3, 



factorily explain how the Copotuc came to assume the virtues of 

 the sacred Ganges. The priest further related that the daughter 

 of one Bungsi Chakrabati came one evening to light up the temple 

 of Copileshuri, but both the girl and the goddess thereupon disap- 

 peared from the temple. The bereaved father having searched for 

 his child in vain, at last fell in dhurna before the temple. On the 

 third day, the goddess appeared to him in his dream, and said, she 

 had destroyed the girl for presuming to enter her temple in an 

 impure dress, and that her own stone image having deserted the 

 new temple so profaned, had retired to the ancient temple built by 

 Copil, which was to be found beneath the waters of Copotuc, but 

 that she would continue to accept the offerings made in the former 

 before an image built of clay. The priest further related a story 

 about Bagnath Mohunt to the effect that he sent something which 

 cannot be mentioned with decency, enclosed in an earthen pot I 

 present to the emperor of Dilhi ; but when the enraged monarch 

 ordered it to be thrown open, he was surprised to see it hlled with 

 the sweetest things in the world. Some of the jagirs granted to 

 Bagnath on that occasion are held by his descendants up to this 

 day. 



Around the tomb of Ja'far-Aulia, a Muhammad an saint who died 

 about seventy years ago, and a few yards from those of the [ 

 Copil and Bagnath, was gathered this day a large crowd of pilgrims, 

 chiefly women, who had come to bathe in the stream. These wo- 

 men kept up singing the whole night through, almost disturbing 

 the bones of the mighty saint. 



At night, I received visits from a large number of respectable men 

 of the surrounding villages. In reply to my inquiries about the 

 origin of the fair, one of them stated that Copil's mother having 

 expressed a desire to go on a pilgrimage to the Ganges at the time 

 of Baroni, when that sacred river is thought to become sj^ecially 

 sacred, Copil said she need not take so much trouble, as lie could 

 bring the goddess herself to grace the stream flowing beneath her 

 cottage. Accordingly on the day of Baroni, Copil invoked the 

 Ganga, and the goddess testified her presence in the Copetuc by 

 thrusting her hand out of the water, the rest of her body remain- 

 ing buried under the waves. It is said that at the request of Co- 



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