The Pânch Pîr and the Pândavas.
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.