| The outraged
peak thereupon raised his crest so high as to obscure the rays of the sun. The latter
(Surjya) in dire distress made a pilgrimage to the banks of this stream, and there
implored Siva to restore his vanished light. His entreaty was heard, and the swelling
Vindhyas forced to subside to his normal altitude. The
legend of the Jiban Kundu is as follows: In old days there lived an aged couple named
Sarva and Charumati, who were pious, virtuous, and as liberal as their narrow means
allowed. Being without kith or kin they forsook the world and retired to a forest to
worship God in the calm of
religious seclusion.
But their daydreams were rudely dispelled by the advent of
a tiger, which slew and partially devoured the unhappy Sarva.
His wife in her grief entreated Siva to restore here husband, and was directed to collect
his bones and to wend her way to Bakreswar and plunge them into this spring. She obeyed
and was overjoyed to see the mortal remains suddenly endowed with life. The same
experiment has since
been tried, admittedly without success; but mothers, whose children die young, bathe in
this spring in order to lengthen the days of those with whom they may subsequently be
blessed.
The pious fable of the Bhairav Kundu is that the gods Brahma and Siva had each five faces,
a fact, which moved the former to assert equality with the latter. Siva in anger at this
presumption tore off one of his matted locks, from which emerged a deity Batuka Bhairav.
The new comer
humbly asked wherefore his creator had made him, and was told that it was his duty as a
good son to cut off Brahma's foremost head with his finger. No sooner said than done; but
the amputated head clung tightly to the executioner's finger, and pilgrimages to the
uttermost end of
Bharat were powerless to remove this incubus. |
