NATURE 
577 
THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1807. 
RELIGIOUS SUPERSTITIONS OF NORTHERN 
INDIA. 
The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern 
India. By W. Crooke, B.A. Two volumes. Vol. i. 
pp. 294; vol. i. pp. 359. (Westminster: Archibald 
Constable and Co., 1896.) 
HESE two volumes are a reproduction, on a 
larger scale, of a work written in 1894, by Mr. W. 
Crooke, of the Bengal Civil Service. The author em- 
ployed the interval, so he tells us, in collecting fresh 
information in the course of the Ethnographical Survey 
of the North-west Provinces of India, the results of 
which will be separately published. This new edition 
contains a mass of most important and extremely in- 
teresting matter, ably dealt with by a thoroughly com- 
petent authority, in whom are combined the rare qualities 
of careful and accurate research with an intimate know- 
ledge of the habits and customs of the people of Northern 
India. The value of the work is further enhanced by 
excellently executed photographs of shrines and other 
sacred places, a complete bibliography, and a carefully- 
prepared index. 
The first volume deals chiefly with the “ godlings,” or 
inferior deities commonly worshipped by the masses, 
which are distinct from the high gods described in the 
Vedic hymns, and the Triad, or Trinity, whose attributes 
are set forth in the Puranas and other sacred works of 
the Brahmans. The reader is no doubt aware that the 
earlier and more philosophic forms of Hinduism are not 
now, if they ever were, the religion of the people. The 
older creed is buried under an enormous overgrowth of 
demonolatry, fetishism and kindred forms of primitive 
religion, not described in books, nor patronised by high- 
caste priests, but living in oral traditions, and forming 
the daily cult of almost all classes of society in modern 
India. It is this form of Hinduism, and the folk-tales 
*and customs associated with it, that the author has 
brought to light and placed. before the English reader. 
Religion, as the author shows, went through the same 
phases of growth in Christian Greece and Rome that 
’ Hinduism has undergone in India. 
The popular deities of modern India are described 
under five main headings—the godlings of nature, the 
heroic and village godlings, the godlings of disease, the 
sainted dead, and the malevolent dead. To illustrate 
each of these subjects the author has taken examples 
not only from those castes which call themselves Hindu, | 
but also from those tribes which it is convenient to de- 
scribe as aboriginal, or non-Aryan, and which have not 
yet been drawn within the vortex of Hinduism. Among 
the godlings of nature the author includes the Sun 
(Suraj Narayan), the Moon (Chandra or Sama), the 
demon of the moon’s eclipse (Rahu), the rainbow, the 
~ Milky Way. (kriown to some as the pathway of the snake, 
to others as the course of the heavenly Ganges), mother 
earth, thunder and lightning, the sacred junctions of 
rivers, sacred wells and lakes, hot springs, waterfalls, 
sacred mountains, hail and whirlwind, aerolites, &c. 
Among all those godlings of nature some stand higher 
NO. 1434, VOL. 55] 
| third account she is the 
in the list of benevolent deities than the great rivers, 
especially the Ganges and the Jumna. The Ganges, 
known as Ganga Mai, or “Mother Ganges,” in the 
mythologies has a divine origin. According to one 
account she flows from the toe of Vishnu, and was 
brought down from heaven by the incantations of the 
saint Bhagiratha, to purify the ashes of the 60,000 sons 
of King Sagara, who had been burnt up by the angry 
glance of Kapila, the sage. . By another story, she 
descends in seven streams from Siva’s brow, and by a 
daughter of Himavat, the 
impersonation of the Himalayan range. 
The heroic village godlings make a numerous class ; 
and Muhammadans, in spite of their professions of rigid 
orthodoxy, have sainted heroes, to whom they make 
offerings and prayers, no less than Hindus. In fact, the 
same hero is often worshipped by the followers of both 
creeds. Of this there are two notable examples. One 
is Khwaja Khizr, a saint of Islam, who presided over 
the well of immortality, and directed Alexander of 
Macedon in his vain search for the blessed waters. The 
fish is his vehicle, and hence the emblem of a fish became 
the family crest of the late royal house of Oudh. Out of 
this Muhammadan saint the Hindus have evolved a 
water-god, to whom they have given the name of Raja 
Kidar, by a process of change from Khwaja Khizr. In 
this capacity he has become the patron deity of all the 
boating and fishing castes, Hindu and Muhammadan. 
The other example is that of Ghazi Miyan, whose shrine 
is situated at Bahraich, in the north of Oudh. ‘“ His 
real name,” says the author, in page 207, “was Sayyid 
Salar Masaud, and he was nephew of Sultan Mahmid 
of Ghazni.” It would have been more correct, however, 
if he had said that his real name is Shahid (or “* Martyr”) 
-Masaud, which was corrupted in popular ignorance to 
Sayyid, or descendant of the prophet. Sultan Mahmud 
did not profess to be a Sayyid; and his nephew Salar 
received the title of “Shahid,” or Martyr, from the fact 
that in A.D. 1033 he was killed in battle by the Hindus of 
Bahraich. Mr. Crooke suggests the following hypothesis 
in explanation of the fact that his shrine is. worshipped 
by Hindus, to whom he was a bitter enemy, no less 
keenly than by Muhammadans. 
‘““There is some reason to believe that this cultus of 
Masaud may have merely succeeded to some local 
worship, such as that of the sun, and in this connection 
it is significant that the great rite in honour of the martyr 
is called the Byah or marriage of the saint, and this 
would associate it with other emblematical marriages of 
the earth, and sun or sky, which were intended to promote 
fertility. Masaud, again, is the type of youth and valour 
in military Islam, and to the Hindu mind assumes. the 
form of one of those godlike youths, such as Krishna or 
Diulha Deo, snatched away by an untimely and tragical 
fate in the prime of boyish beauty.” 
It says much for Mr. Crooke’s penetration that the 
hypothesis he has suggested is verified by the family 
records of a neighbouring Hindu Raja. What is now 
known as the shrine of Sayyid Salar was originally the 
temple of the Infant Sun, worshipped under the name 
of Baia Arka (“the rising sun”), It was near this spot 
that the filibuster was slain and buried. Amongst Hindus 
the propensity to hero-worship is so strong that vener- 
ation for the sun-godling was gradually absorbed in tha 
Cac 
