Note 21 — THE TRUST PROPERTY

The incidents described in this story, now happily a thing of the past, were by no means rare in Bengal at one time. Our author, however, slightly departs from the current accounts. Such criminally superstitious practices were resorted to by miserly persons under the idea that they themselves would re-acquire the treasure in a future state of existence. ‘When you see me in a future birth passing this way, you must make over all this treasure to me. Guard it till then and stir not,’—was the usual promise exacted from the victim before he became yak. Many were the ‘true’ stories we heard in childhood of people becoming suddenly rich by coming across ghostly custodians of wealth belonging to them in a past birth.