200 Rajendralala Mitra—T In the Temples of Deoghar. [No. 2, 
These dates show very clearly that the temples of Deoghar are all very 
modern. But from what has been stated above with reference to inscrip¬ 
tion No. 2, it will be seen that I make an exception in favour of the principal 
temple. According to the inscription No. 1, it should date from 1596 A. D. ; 
but I do not wish to submit to its authority. If we are to believe that there 
was no temple before the date of Purana Malla, why should Raghunatha 
request him to build the temple? and what did Judan, the father of 
Raghunatha, obtain and worship ? There must have been something which 
Mukunda and his ancestors had worshipped, and which was made over 
to Judan alias Chandra Muni, long before the advent of Purana Malla in 
Deoghar. Tlie testimony of the Vaidyanatha Mahatmyas, both of the 
Padma Purana and of the Siva Purana, is worthless. The Mahatmyas did 
not originally form a part of the Puranas to which they are affiliated, and 
are obviously of a recent date. I have seen no old MS. of those works, and 
the quotations above given have been taken from a Benares lithograph of the 
first, dated Samvat 1931, and from a print of the second, dated Sam vat 1938, 
and both have obviously been tampered with. The Mahatmya affiliated to the 
Padma Purana refers to the temples of Savitri, Ganesa, and Kali, and they 
were, as shown above, built in 1692, 1762 and 1712 respectively, and it must 
therefore either be more recent, or quite corrupt. There are, however, several 
authentic works on pilgrimages dating from the 12th to the 14th centuries, 
and they refer to the sanctity of Vaidyanatha. Authentic portions of the 
Puranas also refer to it, and they are unquestionably anterior to the 10th 
century, and in their time Vaidyanatha must have attained considerable 
celebrity to be fit for record. And the questions, therefore, arise, did 
Vaidyanatha then and up to the time of Purana Malla remain only as a 
stump of stone projecting four inches above the level of the ground, in 
an open field, and unprovided with any shelter ? or, was there a temple over 
it, which was replaced by a larger one by Purana Malla; or does the record refer 
to something connected with the temple, and not to the temple itself ? The 
first question is so futile that it must be at once rejected. A place of great 
sanctity, highly eulogised in the Puranas, and strongly recommended as a 
place of pilgrimage, could not have remained in the form of a stump of four 
inches on the bare earth in on open field for centuries without a covering, du¬ 
ring the Hindu period, after the downfall of Buddhism: some pilgrim or other 
would have soon provided it with a temple. There are tens of thousands 
of lingams in all parts of India, but out of them only twelve have been 
selected to be specially sacred and by far the most ancient. As shown 
above, the Hindus and their S'astras are unanimously of opinion that Vaidya¬ 
natha is one of these twelve, and contemporaneous with the Mabakala of 
Oujein, dating over 2000 years, of Somanatlia of Saurashtra, of Ramesa 
near Cape Comorin noticed in the Ramayana, of Bhuvanesvara in Orissa, 
