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Nundolal Dey —Notes on Ghirand in the District of Saran. [No 2, 
son while coming to the town to marry the daughter of Krishna Sarma, 
the priest of the king, was carried away by a lion which promised to re¬ 
lease him in case he obtained the right half of Maynradhvaja’s body. 
Mayuradhvaja promised to give the right side of his body, and his head 
was cnt off by his wife and his son Tamradhvaja, by means of a saw ( ara)i 
as preliminary to sever the right side of his body ; but the old Brahman 
seeing that tears were trickling down the left eye of the severed head, 
refused to accept the right side of the body as, he stated, it was not 
given freely but in anguish, whereupon the severed head replied that 
the left side cried because it would perish uselessly without being of any 
service to a Brahman. Krishna became highly satisfied with the an¬ 
swer : he revealed himself and restored the body to its former condition. 
Though the tradition may differ from the real story, yet the fact re¬ 
mains that in Chirand there is a tradition that someone’s body was cut 
off at this place and that in connection with some religious notion. 
Four temples have been built on the high mound of earth, which 
was the site of the ancient fort, on account of the sanctity of the place, 
containing the images of Ramachandra and Krishna. 
Dr. Hoey has identified Chirand with the ancient Vaisali, 1 and he 
has given his reasons for such identification. There can be no doubt, 
however, that Chirand was an ancient Buddhist town, for images of 
Buddha and other figures of the Buddhistic period have been exhumed 
from this place from time to time. I myself obtained there three figures 
when I visited it in May, 1902. 1 found them all stowed away in a 
corner of one of the temples called Aini Rdma-Kd-Mathid , and I was 
told that they had been obtained while digging the earth. One was the 
figure of Buddha in a meditative posture made of white marble; the 
second, a small figure of a woman holding a lotus made of basaltic stone ; 
and the third, also a small figure of a woman but much worn out, made 
of red sandstone. 
At the time of Buddha the river Granges was the boundary between 
the two kingdoms of Yaisali and Magadha, Vaisali being situated on the 
northern side of the river and Magadha on the southern. The capital 
of the kingdom of Vaisali was also called Vaisali, and the capital of 
Magadha was Pataliputra. It is related in Buddhist works that Ananda, 
the favourite disciple and cousin of Buddha and the second patriarch 
of the Buddhist hierarchy after Buddha’s death, entered into Nir¬ 
vana while he was crossing the river Ganges on his way from Magadha 
to Vaisali. After his death his body was divided into two equal parts : 
1 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LXIX ,—Identification of Kusi- 
nara , Vaisali and other places. 
