Jakh Botera

[1][2] The legend associates Jakhs with historical town of Punvaranogadh, the ruins are located about two miles to the north-west of present-day village of Manjal, Kutch district, Gujarat.

[3] Punvaranogadh was built around 878 by Punvar, son of Ghaa or Ghav, the chief of Kera, Kutch and possibly a nephew of Lakho Phulani.

Soon after, seven devotees of Jakhs renowned for their virtues and miracles came from Rum-Sham (possibly Anatolia and Syria or Byzantine), and settled in a high hill near Punvaranogadh.

Jakhs heard the prayer, and, with an earthquake that shook the hills, appeared with seventy-one brothers and a sister, Sayari or Sairi.

Called on to give up the holy men, Punvar refused and by the help of the gods and a magic amulet suffered nothing from the arrows of Jakhs.

Then Sayari, taking the form of a mosquito, bit Punvar on the arm so that he drew of his amulet, and, in the siege, a stone falling from the roof broke his head.

In their honour the Sanghars made images of the seventy-two horsemen, set them on a railed platform on Punvaranogadh with their faces towards the south and started annual fair dedicated to them.

[7] Several of the hills near get their names from their quaking before Jakhs; Nanao, "the sinker"; Dhrabvo, the shaker ; Lakhadiyo, unstable as water ; Addho Chini, the eleft[check spelling].

They would strike the Kutch people as ruddy not as white, and, by their conquest of Sindh and their attacks on western India, the Arabs were too well known to become centres of legend.

It therefore seems probable that these Yakshas were the Persians who, at that time the chief seafaring nation in the Indian seas, in the sixth century, conquered the lower Indus, but did not settle withdrawing as soon as the local ruler agreed to pay tribute.

He miraculously received the names of Jakhs on the Lanki hill close to Sinduri stepwell near Bharapar village on the way to Kera from Bhuj.

Saint Mekan Dada and the ruler of former Cutch State, Deshalji II construed temples in their dedication.