Note 51 — Chapter IV · THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTED DEAD.

This and many other instances of the same kind illustrate in an admirable way the extreme receptivity of the popular belief. We have here a body of saints, many of whom were deadly enemies of the Hindu faith, who are now worshipped by Hindus. This is well put by Sir A. Lyall—“The ’Urs, or annual ceremony of these saints, like the martyr’s day of St. Edmund or St. Thomas of Canterbury, has degenerated into much that is mere carnal traffic and pagan idolatry, a scandal to the rigid Islâmite. Yet, if he uplifts his voice against such soul-destroying abuses, he may be hooted by loose-living Musalmâns as a Wahhâbi who denies the power of intercession, while the shopkeepers are no better than Ephesian goldsmiths in crying down an inconvenient religious reformer.”51 And the same writer illustrates the fusion of the two creeds in their lower forms by the fact that the holy Hindu now in the flesh at Askot has only recently taken over the business, as it were, from a Muhammadan Faqîr, whose disciple he was during his life, and now that the Faqîr is dead, Narsinh Bâwa presides over the annual veneration of his slippers. Similarly at the Muharram celebration and at pilgrimages to tombs, like those of Ghâzi Miyân, a large number of the votaries are Hindus. In many towns the maintenance of these Muhammadan festivals mainly depends on the assistance of the Hindus, and it is only recently that the unfortunate concurrence of these exhibitions with special Hindu holidays has, it may be hoped only temporarily, interrupted the tolerant and kindly intercourse between the followers of the rival creeds.