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Sonepur Animal Fair a Big
Draw SONEPUR (Bihar): Thousands of animal sellers and buyers converged here on Tuesday, November 19, to trade in more than one million animals as a month-long annual fair, considered largest of its kind in Asia, got under way. Sonepur, about 40 km from Patna, became a centre for animal trade in the fourth century BC. Chandragupta Maurya, the Indian emperor who ruled the country from Patna, erstwhile Pataliputra, bought elephants and horses for his army from Sonepur. The glory of the royal era is now a thing of the past and so, elephants and horses have slowly been joined by cattle, mules, dogs, monkeys and even birds. The number of traders attending this fair keeps going down every year. Elephants and horses brought here - though very few these days - still attract buyers from as far as Bollywood and circus owners in Kerala. Elephant owners said despite the current slump, they expected a good price for their animals. The prices of elephants last year varied from Rs. 350,000 to and Rs 700,000. The cattle traders are not so upbeat. Many who came from States like Punjab said they had trouble reaching the fair. "We faced a lot of problem while travelling through Uttar Pradesh. They force us to give money and harass us. They create problems for us in taking the cows, alleging that we are taking to slaughter them. (In several States cow slaughter is banned) They don't see that our cows are milch cows and not meant for slaughter," said Paramjeet, a cow seller from Punjab. Interestingly, even though the fair is but a pale shadow of its old self, its popularity has not waned. Millions of visitors come every year, looking for goods of all kinds from needles to elephants. But mostly they want to have a good time. The fair attracts not only buyers and sellers of animals from all over the country but also Hindu devotees who believe that a dip in the adjoining Ganga river on Kartik Poornima (or the Full Moon day) marking the beginning of the fair, is auspicious. -ANI |
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