The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Chapter 203: Places Infested by Bhûts: Burial Places.

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About This Book

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.

Places Infested by Bhûts: Burial Places.

There are, of course, certain places which are particularly infested by Bhûts. To begin with, they naturally infest the neighbourhood of burial places and cremation grounds. This idea is found all over the world. Virgil says:—

Moerim, saepe animas imis excire sepulcris,

Atque satas alio vidi traducere messes;

and Shakespeare in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,”—

Now it is the time of night
That graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth its sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide.