Report of a Tour through the Bengal Provinces/Siláo
SILÁO.
Siláo is a large village about 3 miles from Baragaon. It is at the present day noted for a kind of native sweetmeat, and for its parched rice, and from personal knowledge I can bear out in regard to these items the fame it enjoys. It is, however, not devoid of objects of interest, as there are two tombs and a masjid with numerous inscriptions in Persian and Arabic characters. The masjid is of the ordinary kind, without cloisters attached; it is built of stone and mortar, and the floor in front is paved with stone. The whole of the stone was derived from Hindu buildings. The pavement is indeed one mass of imbedded pillars, and proves that the buildings destroyed to furnish the profusion of materials must have been numerous and extensive. Most of these, however, are plain, and there are very few sculptured stones to be seen in Siláo.
Tradition ascribes the building of the masjid to a very early period, making it contemporary with the masjid and dargah at Bihár. There is a silly legend related of a herdsman having once, to avoid the destruction of his calves by disease, vowed to make an offering of the entire milk of his flock to the local saint. This was done in the same way as the offering of the rice and milk to Buddha at Buddha Gaya, by feeding a certain number of cows on the milk of the whole, and on their produce feeding a fewer number, till at last only one cow was fed on the concentrated essence of the milk of all the cows, and of her milk khír was duly cooked; but the poor Muhammadan saint did not get off as satisfactorily as Buddha, for the herdsman having in his hurry begun reciting the necessary prayers while the khír was still boiling hot, the unfortunate saint found himself sorely punished, for the boiling compost at once miraculously transferred itself to the mouth of the saint, I have no doubt to his great astonishment.
The foundation of Siláo is ascribed to Vikramâditya even by the Muhammadans of the place (two of these volunteered to be my guides to the masjid and tombs), and the excellence of the sweets and of the parched rice is ascribed to consummate halwais settled here by him, whose descendants now carry on the trade. I was inclined at first to look upon the tradition as absurd, but General Cunningham’s surmise communicated to me, while at Simla, that Siláo might be found to be a contraction of Vikramasila, recurred to my memory, and I at once perceived the signification of the tradition. This place then is the ancient Vikramasila, and people naturally soon contrived a tradition to account for the name. At present, when the "Vikrama" portion of the name is forgotten, the tradition naturally appears quite unintelligible.