11. Instances of haunting and laying ghosts.
The following account in the Rāsmāla[20] 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.
On the third day after the Chāran’s death his Bhūt (ghost) threw the Rāni downstairs so that she was very much injured. Many other persons also beheld the headless phantom in the palace. At last he entered the chief’s head and set him trembling. At night he would throw stones at the palace, and he killed a female servant outright. At length, in consequence of the various acts of oppression which he committed, none dared to approach the chief’s mansion even in broad daylight. In order to exorcise the Bhūt, Jogis, Fakīrs and Brāhmans were sent for from many different places; but whoever attempted the cure was immediately assailed by the Bhūt in the chief’s body, and that so furiously that the exorcist’s courage failed him. The Bhūt would also cause the chief to tear the flesh off his own arms with his teeth. Besides this, four or five persons died of injuries received from the Bhūt; but nobody had the power to expel him. At length a foreign Jyotishi (astrologer) came who had a great reputation for charms and magic, and the chief sent for him and paid him honour. First he tied all round the house threads which he had charged with a charm; then he sprinkled charmed milk and water all round; then he drove a charmed iron nail into the ground at each corner of the mansion, and two at the door. He purified the house and continued his charms and incantations for forty-one days, every day making sacrifices at the cemetery to the Bhūt’s spirit. The Joshi lived in a room securely fastened up; but people say that while he was muttering his charms stones would fall and strike the windows. Finally the Joshi brought the chief, who had been living in a separate room, and tried to exorcise the spirit. The patient began to be very violent, but the Joshi and his people spared no pains in thrashing him until they had rendered him quite docile. A sacrificial fire-pit was made and a lemon placed between it and the chief. The Joshi commanded the Bhūt to enter the lime. The possessed, however, said, ‘Who are you; if one of your Deos (gods) were to come, I would not quit this person.’ Thus they went on from morning till noon. At last they came outside, and, burning various kinds of incense and sprinkling many charms, the Bhūt was got out into the lemon. When the lemon began to jump about, the whole of the spectators praised the Joshi, crying out: ‘The Bhūt has gone into the lemon! The Bhūt has gone into the lemon!’ The possessed person himself, when he saw the lemon hopping about, was perfectly satisfied that the Bhūt had left his body and gone out into the lemon. The Joshi then drove the lemon outside the city, followed by drummers and trumpeters; if the lemon left the road, he would touch it with his stick and put it into the right way again. On the track they sprinkled mustard and salt and finally buried the lemon in a pit seven cubits deep, throwing into the hole above it mustard and salt, and over these dust and stones, and filling in the space between the stones with lead. At each corner, too, the Joshi drove in an iron nail, two feet long, which he had previously charmed. The lemon buried, the people returned home, and not one of them ever saw the Bhūt thereafter. According to the recorder of the tale, the cure was effected by putting quicksilver into the lemon. When a man is attacked with fever or becomes speechless or appears to have lockjaw, his friends conclude from these indications that he is possessed by a Bhūt.
In another case some Bhāts had been put in charge, by the chief of a small State, of a village which was coveted by a neighbouring prince, the Rāna of Dānta. The latter sent for the Bhāts and asked them to guard one or two of his villages, and having obtained their absence by this pretext he raided their village, carrying off hostages and cattle. When the Bhāts got back they collected to the number of a hundred and began to perform Dharna against the Rāna. They set out from their village, and at every two miles as they advanced they burned a man, so that by the time they got to the Rana’s territory seven or eight men had been burnt. They were then pacified by his people and induced to go back. The Rāna offered them presents, but they refused to accept them, as they said the guilt of the death of their fellows who had been burned would thereby be removed from the Rāna. The Rāna lost all the seven sons born to him and died childless, and it was generally held to be on account of this sin.[21]