Jalpes

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.

Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.

Jalpes

Village in the head-quarters subdivision of Jalpaiguri District, Eastern Bengal and Assam, situated in 26 31' N. and 88° 52' E. Population (1901), 2,088. It contains a temple of Siva, which was built on the site of an earlier temple by one of the Cooch Behar Rajas about three centuries ago. This, the most conspicuous ruin in the District, is a massive red-brick building, surmounted by a large dome with an outer diameter of 34 feet, round the base and top of which run galleries ; it stands on a mound surrounded by a moat near the bank of the river Jarda. A flight of steps leads down to the basement, which is sunk some depth in the mound and contains a very ancient lingam. This lingam is in the hymns to Siva called anadi (‘ without beginning '), and is referred to in the Kalika Purina, which says that somewhere in the north-west of Kamarupa Mahadeo appeared himself in the shape of a vast lingam. An old-established fair is held at Jalpes on the occasion of the Sivaratri festival in February ; it lasts for about a fortnight and is attended by the people from all parts of the District as well as from Dinajpur, Rangpur, and elsewhere. Bhotias come from Darjeeling, Buxa, and Bhutan with ponies, skins, cloth, and blankets, and take away cotton and woollen cloths, betel-nut, and tobacco.