Note 20 — Bhāt

The following account in the Rāsmāla20 is an instance of suicide and of the actual haunting by the ghost: A Chāran asserted a claim against the chief of Siela in Kāthiāwār, which the latter refused to liquidate. The bard thereupon, taking forty of his caste with him, went to Siela with the intention of sitting Dharna at the chief’s door and preventing any one from coming out or going in until the claim should be discharged. However, as they approached the town, the chief, becoming aware of their intention, caused the gates to be closed. The bards remained outside and for three days abstained from food; on the fourth day they proceeded to perform trāga as follows: some hacked their own arms; others decapitated three old women of the party and hung their heads up at the gate as a garland; certain of the women cut off their own breasts. The bards also pierced the throats of four of their old men with spikes, and they took two young girls by the heels, and dashed out their brains against the town gate. The Chāran to whom the money was due dressed himself in clothes wadded with cotton which he steeped in oil and then set on fire. He thus burned himself to death. But as he died he cried out, “I am now dying; but I will become a headless ghost (Kuvīs) in the palace, and will take the chiefs life and cut off his posterity.” After this sacrifice the rest of the bards returned home.