Villages Overturned.
Of these villages which were overturned by a curse we have many examples all over the country. The ruins at Bakhira Dih in Basti are said to have been a great city which was overthrown because a Râja seduced a Brâhman girl. At Batesar in Agra is the Aundha Khera, which records a similar catastrophe. So Bângarmau in Unâo is called the Lauta Shahr or “overthrown city,” because Mîrân Sâhib destroyed it to punish the curiosity of the Râja who wanted to know why the robes of the saint which a washerman was washing gave forth a divine perfume. So the town of Kâko was overwhelmed by the saint Bîbî Kamâlo because the Buddhist Râja gave her a dish cooked of the flesh of rats, which came to life when she touched them. At Besnagar in Bhopâl the king and his subjects clung to a heavenly chariot and were carried to the skies and their city was overthrown, and the saint Qutb Shâh overturned the city of Sunit because the Râja used to kill a child daily to cure an ulcer with which he was afflicted.[74]
Abû ’Ali Qalandar is hardly known beyond the Panjâb. He came from Persia and died at Pânipat in 1324 A.D. He is usually known as Bû ’Ali Qalandar, and it is said that he used to ride about on a wall. He prayed so constantly that it was laborious to get water for his ablutions each time; so he stood in the Jumnâ, which then ran past the town. After standing there seven years the fishes had gnawed his legs and he was so stiff that he could hardly move, so he asked the Jumnâ to step back seven paces. She, in her hurry to oblige the saint, went back seven Kos or ten miles, and there she is now.[75]
Many other saints are said to have had similar power over rivers. So recently as 1865 A.D., a miraculous bridge of sand was built over the Jumnâ at Karnâl by the prayer of a Faqîr, of such rare virtue that lepers passing over and bathing at both ends were cured; but the people say that the bridge had got lost when they came there.[76] It was only the prayers of the saint Farîd-ud-din Shakkarganj which stopped the westward movement of the Satlaj, and the intercession of a holy Rishi changed the course of the river at Bâgheswar.[77]
Bû ’Ali gave the Pânipat people a charm which dispelled all the flies from the town, but they grumbled and said that they rather liked flies; so he brought them back a thousandfold. He was buried first at Karnâl, but the Pânipat people claimed his body, and opened his grave, whereupon he sat up and looked at them till they became ashamed. They then took away some bricks for the foundation of a shrine; but when they got to Pânipat and opened the box, they found his body in it; so he is now buried in both places, and there is a shrine erected over the place where he used to ride on the wall.