It has often been remarked that the five Pândavas have strangely passed out of the national worship. At the last census in the North-Western Provinces only four thousand people gave them as their personal deities, and in the Panjâb only one hundred acknowledged them. Now in the west the title of Pânch Pîr is sometimes given to five Râjput heroes, Râmdeo, Pâbu, Harbu, Mallinâth and Gûga,[56] and it is at least a plausible theory that the five Pîrs may have originally been the five Pându brothers, whose worship has, in course of time, become degraded, been annexed by the lower Musalmâns, and again taken over by their menial Hindu brethren.
As a matter of fact, the system of worship does not materially differ from the cultus of the degraded indigenous godlings, such as Kârê Gôrê Deo, Bûrhê Bâba, Jokhaiya, and their kindred. The priests of the faith are drawn from the Dafâli or Musalmân drummer caste, who go about from house to house reciting the tale of Ghâzi Miyân and his martyrdom, with a number of wild legends which have in course of time been adopted in connection with him. An iron bar wrapped in red cloth and adorned with flowers represents Ghâzi Miyân, which is taken from door to door, drums are beaten and petty offerings of grain collected from the villagers. Low caste Hindus, like Pâsis and Chamârs, worship them in the form of five wooden pegs fixed in the courtyard of the house. The Barwârs, a degraded criminal tribe in Oudh, build in their houses an altar in the shape of a tomb, at which yearly in August the head of the family sacrifices in the name of the Pîrs a fowl and offers some thin cakes, which he makes over to a Muhammadan beggar who goes about from house to house beating a drum.
Ghâzi Miyân.
The whole worship centres round Ghâzi Miyân. His real name was Sayyid Sâlâr Masaud, and he was nephew of Sultân Mahmûd of Ghazni. He was born in 1015 A.D., was leader of one of the early invasions of Oudh, and is claimed as one of the first martyrs of Islâm in India. He was killed in battle with the Hindus of Bahrâich in 1034 A.D. Close to the battle-field was a tank with an image of the sun on its banks, a shrine sacred in the eyes of all Hindus. Masaud, whenever he passed it, was wont to say that he wished to have this spot for a dwelling-place, and would, if it so pleased God, through the power of the spiritual sun, destroy the worship of the material. He was, it is said, buried by some of his followers in the place which he had chosen for his resting-place, and tradition avers that his head rests on the image of the sun, the worship of which he had given his life to destroy.
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 Byâh 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.[57] Masaud, again, is the type of youth and valour in military Islâm, and to the Hindu mind assumes the form of one of those godlike youths, such as Krishna or Dûlha Deo, snatched away by an untimely and tragical fate in the prime of boyish beauty. So, though he was a fanatical devotee of Islâm, his tomb is visited as much by Hindus as by Muhammadans. Besides his regular shrine at Bahrâich, he has cenotaphs at various places, as at Gorakhpur and Bhadohi in the Mirzapur District, where annual fairs are held in his honour. The worship of Masaud, which is now discouraged by Muhammadan purists, embodied, even in early times, so much idolatry and fetishism as to be obnoxious to the puritanic party; it fell under the censure of the authorities, and Sikandar Lodi interdicted the procession of his spear.[58] Nowadays at his festivals a long spear or pole is paraded about, crowned at the top with bushy hair, representing the head of the martyr, which, it is said, kept rolling on the ground long after it was severed from the trunk.[59]
Sakhi Sarwar.
Sakhi Sarwar, or “generous leader,” the title of a saint whose real name was Sayyid Ahmad, is hardly popular beyond the Panjâb, where his followers are known as Sultânis, and are more than four hundred thousand in number.[60] No one knows exactly when he lived; some place him in the twelfth and others in the thirteenth century; but there are other traditions which would bring him down to the sixteenth. Whatever be the exact time of his birth and death, he was one of the class of Muhammadan saints, like Bahâ-ud-dîn and Shams Tabrîz, who settled and practised austerities in the country about Multân. Other names for him are Lâkhdâta or “the giver of lâkhs,” Lâlanwâla, “he of the rubies,” and Rohiânwâla, or “he of the Hills.” His life, as we have it, is but a mass of legends. He once cured a camel of a broken leg by riveting it together. Miraculously, as so many of these saints do, he gave two sons to one Gannu of Multân and married his daughter. The hill that overlooks his tomb at Nigâha in the Dera Ghâzi Khân District, at the edge of the Sulaimân mountains, is said to have been infested by a fearful giant. This monster used at night to stand on the hill-top and with a torch lure unwary travellers to their destruction. Against him Sakhi Sarwar and his four companions waged war, but all except the saint were killed; and such was the fall of the monster that the hill trembled to its base. Within an enclosure are seen the tombs of the saint, his lady, Bîbî Râê, and a Jinn who fell before the onset of the hero. To the east is the apartment containing the stool and spinning-wheel of Mâî ’Aeshan, Sakhi Sarwar’s mother. It is a curious instance of the combination of the two rival faiths, so constantly observable in this phase of the popular worship, that close to the shrine of Sakhi Sarwar is a temple of Vishnu, a shrine of Bâba Nânak, the founder of Sikhism, and an image of Bhairon, who appears in the legends as the servant or messenger of the saint. The tomb presents a curious mixture of Musalmân and Hindu architecture. It was recently destroyed by fire, and two rubies presented by Nâdir Shâh, and some valuable jewels, the gift of Sultân Zamân Shâh, were destroyed or lost.
The Sultâni sect, in large numbers, under the guidance of conductors known as Bharai, make pilgrimages to the tomb. Near it are two dead trees, said to have sprung from the pegs which were used to tether Kakkî, the saint’s mare. The walls are hung with small pillows of various degrees of ornamentation. Persons who suffer from ophthalmia vow gold or silver eyes for their recovery. They vow to shave the hair of an expected child at the temple, and its weight in gold or silver is presented to the saint. Some childless parents vow to him their first child, and on its birth take it to the temple with a cord round its neck. There are numbers of sacred pigeons attached to the shrine, which are supported by an allowance realized from certain dedicated villages. The marks of ’Ali’s fingers and the print of his foot are still shown to the devout in consideration of a fee to the guardians, and a visit is considered peculiarly efficacious for the cure of demoniacal possession, exhibiting itself in the form of epilepsy or hysteria.