Another worthy, whose legend much resembles that of Harshu, is Ratan Pânrê, who is venerated by the Kalhans Râjputs of Oudh. The last of the race, Râja Achal Nârâyan Sinh, ravished the daughter of Ratan Pânrê. He pleaded in vain to the wicked Râja for reparation, and at last he and his wife starved themselves to death at the gate of the fort. He too, like Harshu, spared a princess of the Râja’s house, but he cursed the rest of his family with ruin. After he died his ghost went to the river Sarjû and claimed her assistance in revenging himself on the Râja. She at last consented to help him, provided he could get the Râja into his power by inducing him to accept some present from him. So he went to the Râja’s family priest and induced him to take from him a sacred cord with which he was to invest the Râja. When Achal Nârâyan Sinh heard to whom he was indebted for the gift he flung it away in terror. But soon after an angry wave rushed from the Sarjû, and on its crest sat the wraith of Ratan Pânrê. It swept away his palace and left not a soul of his household alive.[33]
Mahenî.
There is a similar case among the Hayobans Râjputs of Ghâzipur. In 1528 A.D. their Râja Bhopat Deva, or perhaps one of his sons, seduced Mahenî, a Brâhman girl, a relation of their family priest. She burned herself to death, and in dying, imprecated the most fearful curses on the Hayobans sept. In consequence of a succession of disasters which followed, the tribe completely abandoned their family settlement at Baliya, where the woman’s tomb is worshipped to this day. Even now none of the sept dares to enter the precincts of their former home. In the same way, in the case of Harshu Pânrê no pilgrim will eat or drink near his tomb, as the place is accursed through the murder of a Brâhman.[34]
There are numerous other cases of this deification of suicide Brâhmans in Northern India. The forms in which they sought vengeance by their death on their persecutors are diversified in the extreme. There is a case of a Brâhman in the Partâbgarh District who, when turned out of his land, to avenge himself, gathered a heap of cow-dung in the centre of one of the fields and lay down on it till he was devoured by worms. This happened sixty years ago, but his fields still stand a waste of jungle grass in the midst of rich cultivation, and neither Hindu nor Muhammadan dares to plough them.[35]
At the last census of the North-Western Provinces over four hundred thousand people recorded themselves as worshippers of various forms of the Brahm or malignant Brâhman ghost. Most of these are Râjputs, who were probably the most violent oppressors of Brâhmans in the olden days.
Nâhar Khân.
Another instance of the same type may be given from Râjputâna. Jaswant Sinh of Mârwâr had an intrigue with the daughter of one of his chief officers. “But the avenging ghost of the Brâhman interposed between him and his wishes; a dreadful struggle ensued, in which Jaswant lost his senses, and no effort could banish the impression from his mind. The ghost persecuted his fancy, and he was generally believed to be possessed of a wicked spirit, which when exorcised was made to say he would depart only on the sacrifice of a chief equal in dignity to Jaswant. Nâhar Khân, ‘the tiger lord,’ chief of the Kumpâwat clan, who led the van in all his battles, immediately offered his head in expiation for his prince; and he had no sooner expressed his loyal determination, than the holy man who exorcised the spirit, caused it to descend into a vessel of water, and having waved it round his head, they presented it to Nâhar Khân, who drank it off, and Jaswant’s senses were instantly restored. This miraculous transfer of the ghost is implicitly believed by every chief of Râjasthân, by whom Nâhar Khân is called ‘the faithful of the faithful,’ and worshipped as a local god.”[36]