169 
Rajendralala Midra —On the Temples of Dcoglicir. [No. 2 
natha of our day is the lihgam aforesaid. Deoghar as a name of the place 
is, however, quite modern. In Sanskrit works we find in its place Harda- 
pitha, Haridrapltha, Ravana-kanana, Ketaki-vana, Haritaki-vana, and Vai- 
dyanatha. In Bengal the place was generally known under the last name, 
but the East Indian Railway Company having opened a station near it 
and assigned to the town that has grown up around it the name of Bai- 
dyanatha, the people, for the sake of distinction, have used the name of 
Deoghar. In the Post Office seal the name is Baidyanath Deoghar. 
The story as related in the Vaidyanatha-mahatmya of the Siva Purana 
is embellished with many tedious and circumstantial details which it is not 
necessary to notice here, particularly as those details are not borne out by 
the Padma Purana, which alters them to a considerable extent. As both 
the versions are fictitious—the results of wild, uncontrolled fancy—they are 
of no interest except to the pious Hindu. 
The story runs that Ravana tried hard to remove the lihgam from the 
spot where it had been placed, but failed. The divinity would on no ac¬ 
count move from the place. The Titan, growing desperate, used violence ; 
but that served only to knock off a bit from the top of the lihgam, but 
not to move the divinity from the position it had taken. This showed the 
folly of the course Ravana had adopted, and he fell at the feet of the lih¬ 
gam, and begged for pardon. He made amends, too, for his sacrilegious 
violence by daily coming to the place and worshipping the divinity with 
sacred water brought from the source of the Ganges on the Himalaya moun¬ 
tains. The latter part of the operation was subsequently dispensed with by 
the excavation of a well in which the waters of all the sacred pools on 
the face of the earth were deposited. 
<q*TT f^TJPrf q*T %*T I 
Tqit*T TfSfifiT rffcfiV II V* '• 
TprirT ^ViqfTq ^ II H 
jrI f%qfq q>m TT^nr: *^q*Trqr«r i 
qT^fw: II || 
rf^T 'q WEf fsrsrfq^ YrpTT I 
SFUTRJ fjlfWTqrpfq ^rfq%q*f || || 
rw qiSY qwfa 'q I 
^fqfwT ii u 
Vaidyanatha-mahatmya of the S'iva Purapa. Chapter 4. 
