The Lasundra kund near Lasundra in the Kaira District[462] and the Tulsi-shyāma kund on Mount Girnār[463] contain hot waters. There is also a hot kund called Devki-unai, about thirty miles to the south of Surat.[462] There the waters remain hot throughout the whole of the year, except on the fifteenth day of the bright half of Chaitra. On this day, the waters cool, and people can bathe in the kund. Many pilgrims visit the place on this occasion, to offer money, cocoanuts, and red lac to the unai mātā, whose temple stands near the kund. It is said that King Rāma built this kund while performing a local sacrifice, and brought water up from the pātāl (nether regions) by shooting an arrow into the earth.[464]
Other holy kunds are: the Bhīm kund, the Gomukhi-gangā, and the Kamandalu kund on Mount Girnār near the temple of Bhimnāth Mahādeo; the Rādhā kund, the Lalita kund, and the Krishna-sarovar in Dwārkā; the Rāma-sarovar, the Sītā kund and the Devki-unai kund in Ayodhya (Oudh);[465] and the Suraj kund[466] and the Hanumāndhāra[467] kund on Mount Girnār.
Waterfalls are not very familiar to the people of Gujarāt. There is a belief, however, that barren couples obtain issue if they bathe in a waterfall, and offer a cocoanut.[468]
If a river source issues from an opening, in the shape of a go-mukh (cow’s-mouth), the stream is called dhodh, and is considered as sacred as the holy Ganges. A bath in such a dhodh has the same efficacy for absolving persons from their sins.[469]
When a person dies an accidental death and before the fulfilment of his worldly desires, his soul receives avagati (i.e., passes into a degraded or fallen condition), and it is not released from this state till Shrāddhas have been duly performed in its name, and the objects of its desire dedicated to it with proper ritual. The same fate befalls those souls which do not receive the funeral pindas with the proper obsequies. Such fallen souls become ghosts and goblins,[470] and are to be found where water is, i.e., near a well, a tank, or a river.[471]
Those who meet death by drowning become goblins, residing near the scene of their death, and are a source of danger to all who approach the water; for instance, in Monāpuri and Sāsai, there are two ghunas (mysterious watery pits) haunted by bhuts (ghosts) which take the lives of one or two buffaloes every year.[472] Mātās[473] and Shankhinis also haunt wells, springs, and tanks and either drown, or enter the persons of those who go near their resorts.
Persons who are possessed in this manner, can be freed by bhuvas,[473] who give them a magic thread to wear.[474]
There is a vāv called Nīlkanth vāv near Movaiya, in which a Pinjari (a female cotton-carder) is said to have been drowned, and to have been turned into a ghost, in which form she occasionally presents herself to the people.[475]
Another ghost haunts an old vāv, called Madhā, in Vadhwān and drowns one human being every third year as a victim. But a male spirit named Kshetrapāl resides in the kotha (or entrance) of the vāv, and saves those who fall near the entrance. A person is, however, sure to be drowned if he falls in any other part of the vāv.[476] A ghost also resides in the vāv at Hampar near Dhrāngadhrā and terrifies the people at times.[476]
The goddess Rainadevi resides in water, and is worshipped by virgins on the fifteenth day of the bright half of Āshādh, when they grow javārās (tender wheat-plants) in an earthen vessel and present them to her, remaining awake for the whole of the night to sing songs in her honour.[469]