Note 196.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Gansám, a divinity worshipped by the Muásís and Gonds of Bengal, is said to have been a Gond chief who was devoured by a tiger just after his marriage at an early age. “Cut off at such a moment, it was unreasonable to suppose that his spirit would rest. One year after his death he visited his wife, and she conceived by him; and the descendants of the ghostly embrace are, it is said, living to this day at Amodah in the Central Provinces.” As a result of other apparitions to many of his old friends he persuaded them to inaugurate a regular worship of him, and two festivals in the year were established in his honour.196.1 Not in all cases, however, do the deceased husband’s visits to his widow result in the birth of a child. The legend of Záhir Pir, the saint of a Mohammedanized caste of scavengers about Benares, relates that he was involved in strife with his mother’s sister’s sons, who disputed his succession to his father’s kingdom, and slew them. For this he was cursed by his mother never to see her face again. In his anguish he called upon Mother Earth to receive him into her bosom. On her refusal, because, being a Hindu, he was not burnt, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and accepted Islam. Afterwards renewing his petition, the earth opened and disclosed a chapel as for a hermit. Záhir Pir entered on his charger, and the earth closed above him and his devotions. Siryal, his widow, reduced with his mother to poverty, mourned him and cried: “Mother Earth, give me back my husband!” By God’s command the earth yielded him up to visit her nightly; but every morning at daybreak he flew away on his winged charger. Siryal had discarded her jewels as became a widow when she lost her husband. Now that she received these secret visits she resumed them as a matron. When her mother-in-law upbraided her, saying: “What means this wanton finery?” she returned: “To thee thy son is dead: to me my husband is alive.” In explanation of the riddle she placed her beneath the bedstead at night that she might see her son. But when Záhir Pir came at midnight his aged mother had fallen into a deep sleep, which was undisturbed by the caresses above her; nor was it until he had quitted the bed and vaulted into the saddle that Siryal could rouse her. She started up and clutched his bridle. Even then her curse prevented her from seeing her son’s face. “I do but obey thy bidding,” he groaned, turning his face away. “Look back! thy house is burning.”197.1 So among the Calmucks we hear of a khan who, being married to a wife whom he did not love, resorted to a girl living a little distance away. His visits resulted in her pregnancy; but before the birth of her child he died. Death does not prevent him from carrying her off to his funeral rites, nor from afterwards paying her marital visits on the fifteenth of every month, and spending the night with her, disappearing in the morning. When she urges him to stay, so that his mother may see him and be convinced of her truth, he gives her directions to go to the place of the dead and fetch his heart. This she accomplishes, and thus recovers him as her husband permanently.197.2 The islanders of the East Indian Archipelago are profoundly convinced that various kinds of spirits can have similar intercourse with human beings. The spirits of the dead are not excepted from this belief; and albinos are held to be their offspring by a living mother. A famous priest-king of the Toba-bataks, called Singa Mangaraja, owed his birth to this cause.197.3