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                          THE POPULAR RELIGION
                            AND FOLK-LORE OF
                             NORTHERN INDIA

                                   BY

                            W. CROOKE, B.A.
                          BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE



                             IN TWO VOLUMES

                                VOL. I.

                 A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ILLUSTRATED

                              WESTMINSTER
                       ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO.
                       2, Whitehall Gardens, S.W.

                                  1896







PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.


The success of this book has been much beyond my expectations. That
a considerable edition has been exhausted within a few months after
publication proves that it meets a want.

I have now practically re-written the book, and have taken
the opportunity of introducing a considerable amount of fresh
information collected in the course of the Ethnographical Survey of
the North-Western Provinces, the results of which will be separately
published.

For the illustrations, which now appear for the first time, I am
indebted to the photographic skill of Mr. J. O'Neal, of the Thomason
Engineering College, Rurki. I could have wished that they could have
been drawn from a wider area. But Hardwar and its shrines are very
fairly representative of popular Hinduism in Northern India.


W. Crooke.

Saharanpur,
February, 1895.



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Many books have been written on Brahmanism, or the official religion
of the Hindu; but, as far as I am aware, this is the first attempt
to bring together some of the information available on the popular
beliefs of the races of Upper India.

My object in writing this book has been threefold. In the first place
I desired to collect, for the use of all officers whose work lies
among the rural classes, some information on the beliefs of the people
which will enable them, in some degree, to understand the mysterious
inner life of the races among whom their lot is cast; secondly, it
may be hoped that this introductory sketch will stimulate inquiry,
particularly among the educated races of the country, who have,
as yet, done little to enable Europeans to gain a fuller and more
sympathetic knowledge of their rural brethren; and lastly, while I
have endeavoured more to collect facts than to theorize upon them,
I hope that European scholars may find in these pages some fresh
examples of familiar principles. My difficulty has arisen not so much
from deficiency of material, as in the selection and arrangement of
the mass of information, which lies scattered through a considerable
literature, much of which is fugitive.

I believe that the more we explore these popular superstitions and
usages, the nearer are we likely to attain to the discovery of the
basis on which Hinduism has been founded. The official creed has
always been characterized by extreme catholicism and receptivity, and
many of its principles and legends have undoubtedly been derived from
that stratum of the people which it is convenient to call non-Aryan
or Dravidian. The necessity, then, of investigating these beliefs
before they become absorbed in Brahminism, one of the most active
missionary religions of the world, is obvious.

I may say that the materials of this book were practically complete
before I was able to use Mr. J. S. Campbell's valuable collection of
"Notes on the Spirit Basis of Belief and Custom;" but, in revising
the manuscript, I have availed myself to some extent of this useful
collection, and when I have done so, I have been careful to acknowledge
my obligations to it. Even at the risk of overloading the notes
with references, I have quoted the authorities which I have used,
and I have added a Bibliography which may be of use to students to
whom the subject is unfamiliar.

The only excuse I can plead for the obvious imperfections of this
hasty survey of a very wide subject is that it has been written in
the intervals of the scanty leisure of a District Officer's life in
India, and often at a distance from works of reference and libraries.


W. Crooke.

Mirzapur,
February, 1893.







CONTENTS.



    CHAPTER I.                                              PAGE

    The Godlings of Nature                                     1

    CHAPTER II.

    The Heroic and Village Godlings                           83

    CHAPTER III.

    The Godlings of Disease                                  123

    CHAPTER IV.

    The Worship of the Sainted Dead                          175

    CHAPTER V.

    Worship of the Malevolent Dead                           230







FOLK-LORE OF NORTHERN INDIA.


CHAPTER I.

THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.


                En men gaian eteux' en d' ouranon, en de thalassan
                eelion t' akamanta selenen te plethousan,
                en de ta teirea panta, ta t' ouranos estephanotai
                Pleiadas th' Hyadas te, to te sthenos Orionos
                Arkton th', hen kai amaxan epiklesin kaleousin,
                het autou strephatai kai t' Oriona dokeuei,
                oie d' ammoros esti loetron Okeanoio.

                                                   Iliad, xviii. 483-88.


Among all the great religions of the world there is none more catholic,
more assimilative than the mass of beliefs which go to make up what
is popularly known as Hinduism. To what was probably its original
form--a nature worship in a large degree introduced by the Aryan
missionaries--has been added an enormous amount of demonolatry,
fetishism and kindred forms of primitive religion, much of which
has been adopted from races which it is convenient to describe as
aboriginal or autochthonous.

The same was the case in Western lands. As the Romans extended their
Empire they brought with them and included in the national pantheon the
deities of the conquered peoples. Greece and Syria, Egypt, Gallia and
Germania were thus successively laid under contribution. This power
of assimilation in the domain of religion had its advantages as well
as its dangers. While on the one hand it tended to promote the unity
of the empire, it degraded, on the other hand, the national character
by the introduction of the impure cults which flourished along the
eastern shores of the Mediterranean. [1]

But, besides these forms of religion which were directly imported
from foreign lands, there remained a stratum of local beliefs
which even after twenty centuries of Christianity still flourish,
discredited though they may be by priests and placed under the ban
of the official creed. Thus in Greece, while the high gods of the
divine race of Achilles and Agamemnon are forgotten, the Nereids,
the Cyclopes and the Lamia still live in the faith of the peasants of
Thessaly. [2] So in modern Tuscany there is actually as much heathenism
as catholicism, and they still believe in La Vecchia Religione--"the
old religion;"--and while on great occasions they have recourse to the
priests, they use magic and witchcraft for all ordinary purposes. [3]

It is part of the object of the following pages to show that in
India the history of religious belief has been developed on similar
lines. Everywhere we find that the great primal gods of Hinduism have
suffered grievous degradation. Throughout the length and breadth
of the Indian peninsula Brahma, the Creator, has hardly more than
a couple of shrines specially dedicated to him. [4] Indra has, as
we shall see, become a vague weather deity, who rules the choirs of
fairies in his heaven Indra-loka: Varuna, as Barun, has also become a
degraded weather godling, and sailors worship their boat as his fetish
when they commence a voyage. The worship of Agni survives in the fire
sacrifice which has been specialized by the Agnihotri Brahmans. Of
Pushan and Ushas, Vayu and the Maruts, hardly even the names survive,
except among the small philosophical class of reformers who aim at
restoring Vedism, a faith which is as dead as Jupiter or Aphrodite.



The Deva.

The general term for these great gods of Hinduism is Deva, or "the
shining ones." Of these even the survivors have in the course of the
development of the religious belief of the people suffered serious
change. Modern Vaishnavism has little left of the original conception
of the solar deity who in the Rig Veda strides in three steps through
the seven regions of the universe, and envelops all things in the dust
of his beams. To his cult has, in modern times, been added the erotic
cycle of myths which centre round Krishna and Radha and Rukmini. The
successive Avataras or incarnations mark the progressive development of
the cultus which has absorbed in succession the totemistic or fetish
worship of the tortoise, the boar, the fish and the man-lion. In
the same way Rudra-Siva has annexed various faiths, many of which
are probably of local origin, such as the worship of the bull and
the linga. Durga-Devi, again, most likely is indebted to the same
sources for the blood sacrifices which she loves in her forms of Kali,
Bhawani, Chandika or Bhairavi. A still later development is that of
the foul mysteries of the Tantra and the Saktis.



The Deota.

But in the present survey of the popular, as contrasted with the
official faith, we have little concern with these supremely powerful
deities. They are the gods of the richer or higher classes, and to
the ordinary peasant of Northern India are now little more than
a name. He will, it is true, occasionally bow at their shrines;
he will pour some water or lay some flowers on the images or fetish
stones which are the special resting-places of these divinities or
represent the productive powers of nature. But from time immemorial,
when Brahmanism had as yet not succeeded in occupying the land, his
allegiance was bestowed on a class of deities of a much lower and
more primitive kind. Their inferiority to the greater gods is marked
in their title: they are Devata or Deota, "godlings," not "gods." [5]



Godlings Pure and Impure.

These godlings fall into two well marked classes--the "pure" and the
"impure." The former are, as a rule, served by priests of the Brahman
castes or one of the ascetic orders: their offerings are such things
as are pure food to the Hindu--cakes of wheaten flour, particularly
those which have been still further purified by intermixture with
clarified butter (ghi), the most valued product of the sacred
cow, washed rice (akshata) and sweetmeats. They are very generally
worshipped on a Sunday, and the officiating high-caste priest accepts
the offerings. The offerings to the "impure" godlings contain articles
such as pork and spirits, which are abomination to the orthodox
Hindu. In the Central Indian hills their priest is the Baiga, who
rules the ghosts and demons of the village and is always drawn from
one of the Dravidian tribes. In the plain country the priest is a
non-Aryan Chamar, Dusadh, or even a sweeper or a Muhammadan Dafali
or drummer. No respectable Hindu will, it is needless to say, partake
of a share of the food consecrated (prasad) to a hedge deity of this
class. Much of the worship consists in offering of blood. But the
jungle man or the village menial of the plains can seldom, except in
an hour of grievous need, afford an expensive animal victim, and it
is only when the village shrine has come under the patronage of the
official priests of the orthodox faith, that the altar of the goddess
reeks with gore, like those of the Devis of Bindhachal or Devi Patan.

But as regards the acceptance of a share of the offering the line is
often not very rigidly drawn. As Mr. Ibbetson writing of the Panjab
says: [6] "Of course, the line cannot always be drawn with precision,
and Brahmans will often consent to be fed in the name of a deity,
while they will not take offerings made at his shrine, or will allow
their girls, but not their boys, to accept the offering, as, if the
girls die in consequence, it does not much matter." In fact, as we
shall see later on, the Baiga or devil