Note 56 — Chapter IV · THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTED DEAD.

It has often been remarked that the five Pândavas have strangely passed out of the national worship. At the last census in the North-Western Provinces only four thousand people gave them as their personal deities, and in the Panjâb only one hundred acknowledged them. Now in the west the title of Pânch Pîr is sometimes given to five Râjput heroes, Râmdeo, Pâbu, Harbu, Mallinâth and Gûga,56 and it is at least a plausible theory that the five Pîrs may have originally been the five Pându brothers, whose worship has, in course of time, become degraded, been annexed by the lower Musalmâns, and again taken over by their menial Hindu brethren.