Patna: On the eve of the mega Bihar Diwas function in Patna, the Legislative Council remembered another Patna tucked away in rural Scotland.

JDU member Ram Vachchan Rai quoted newspaper reports about the small Scottish town which celebrated Bihar Diwas recently.

"I would like to thank the people of Scotland for celebrating Bihar Diwas for the first time," Rai said, giving details of how Patna came into existence and pointed out that it was chief minister Nitish Kumar who introduced Bihar Diwas to celebrate the carving out of a separate legislative wing of Bihar from Bengal Presidency in 1912.

According to media reports, the town of Patna located in East Ayrshire region of Scotland celebrated its historic links with Bihar by holding a function last Saturday at which Indian high commissioner to the UK, Y.K. Sinha, was the chief guest.

The event was sponsored by the Patna Community Association along with local groups and was marked by a cultural performance by an Indian dance group and an audio visual show on Bihar and its capital city.

The Scottish government was represented by social security minister Jeane Freeman.

Sinha, who himself hails from Bihar, gave a lecture on his life in Patna and promised to support organisations and events which linked the two Patnas and do everything possible to strengthen the relationship between the places located in two different continents and two different worlds.

Patna, the state capital, has grown manifold in its size and population compared to what it was in 1802 when its namesake village in East Ayrshire was founded thousands of miles away on the banks of the Doon, a small river that flows through the village. Scotland's Patna has a population of less than 4,000 while Bihar's Patna is home to over 2 million people.

According to historical records, the village was founded by Scottish agriculturist William Fullarton, who was born in Bihar's Patna and spent his formative years there.

His father was an employee with the British East India Company and served in India from 1744-1766. Fullarton had a coal business in this part of Scotland. In fond memory of his birthplace, Fullarton gave the area a new name, Patna, and developed it to provide housing for people who worked on his estate and coalfields. It has remained a pristine village, around 650km north of London, all these years since inception.

It is not yet known whether any person of Bihar origin at all lives there on the banks of the Doon.

The river is popular among anglers for its quiet flow within the village limits - not like the bustling city that has grown through the pages of history on the Ganga. A short distance away from Patna and along the Doon is the village of Alloway, the birthplace of Robert Burns, widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland.

Most people of Bihar were unaware of its colonial cousin until a few years ago. It was former minister Nitish Mishra who visited the Scottish Patna in 2012 and brought it to the notice of the people.