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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.
And so with the ears, which are believed to communicate direct with the brain, and are kept by the rustic carefully muffled up on chilly mornings. Hence the custom of Kanchhedan, or ear-piercing, which is in Northern India about the only survival of the world-wide rite of mutilation when males attain puberty, and of wearing ear-rings and similar ornaments, which is habitual with all classes of Hindus, and specialized among the Kanphata Jogis, who take their name from this practice.