As Deo tells it: the king in the pool
East India · Deo, Bihar · 2 min read
Long ago there was a king named Aila, a son of Ila, who ruled this country. He was a good king and a fine hunter, but he suffered from a disease of the skin. White patches had spread across his body, and no physician could cure them.
One day he rode into the forest after a deer, further than he had ever gone, and lost his way. By evening he was alone, thirsty and tired, in a wild place with no village near it. He found a small pool of muddy water among the trees and knelt beside it to drink from his cupped hands.
Some of the water ran down his arms. When he looked at them, he could not believe it. Where the water had touched, the white patches had gone, and his skin was clear.
He did not stop to take off his clothes. He walked straight into the muddy pool and lay down in it, and when he came out, the disease had left him entirely.
The king spent that night beside the pool. As he slept, he had a dream.
"You have bathed in my water," said a voice. "I am here, in the pool. Take me out and give me a home."
In the morning his men found him, and he told them the dream. "Dig out the pool," he said. They dug, and in the mud at the bottom they found images of the Sun.
The king had the pool made into a tank with stone steps, and that tank is the Surya Kund that still lies beside the road at Deo. Then he looked for builders for a temple worthy of what he had found.
"No mason in this country can build what you want," people told him. And so, the town says, Vishvakarma, the craftsman of the gods, came down and built it himself, in a single night, out of black stone: a tall tower with an umbrella-shaped top and carving finer than any human hand could make.
When the people of the forest came to see it in the morning, they found it standing finished, with the images of the Sun inside.
The town that grew up round it took its name from the god: Deo. At Chhath, people come to the Surya Kund in their lakhs. They stand in the tank in the evening and offer to the setting Sun, with the temple behind them, and spend the night on its steps, and offer again at dawn.
As Deo tells it: the night the door turned
East India · Deo, Bihar · 1 min read
Sun temples face east, to catch the first light. The temple at Deo faces west, towards the setting Sun, and Deo has a second story to explain it.
Centuries after the temple was built, the town says, a conqueror came through the country with his army, breaking temples as he went. The tradition names him Aurangzeb. He camped outside Deo, and in the morning he rode to the temple to have it pulled down.
The priests came out and stood in front of the door. They begged him to spare it.
"Your god is very great, you say," said the conqueror. "Then let him show it. I will give him one night. If by morning the door of this temple has turned from the east to the west, I will leave it standing. If not, it comes down."
The priests agreed, because they had no choice. That night they did not sleep. They sat in front of the temple and prayed to the Sun until the stars went out.
In the morning the conqueror came back with his men. The door that had faced the east the day before now faced the west, towards the open country where the Sun goes down. He looked at it for a long time, and then he turned his army round and left Deo alone.
That is why, the people of Deo say, their temple faces the setting Sun, and why the evening offering of Chhath, which is made to the Sun as he goes down, belongs here more than anywhere else.