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A systematic survey of popular religious beliefs and folk traditions across northern India, tracing how nature spirits, village and heroic godlings, disease deities, and cults of the sainted and malevolent dead shape rural practice. The author compiles customs, legends, rituals and local cultic forms, highlights the assimilation of major deities with indigenous practices, and documents magical usages and everyday superstitions. Organized in thematic chapters, the study blends ethnographic observation with citations and examples to reveal patterns of worship, the roles of ritual specialists, and the social functions of these popular cults.
Besides this sainthood which is based on sanctity of life and approved thaumaturgic powers, the right of deification is conferred on persons who have been eminent or notorious in their lives, or who have died in some extraordinary or notorious way. All or nearly all the deified saints of Northern India may be grouped under one or other of these categories.