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

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

Chapter 206: Ghosts and Burial Grounds.
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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.

Ghosts and Burial Grounds.

To return to the connection of ghosts with burial grounds. At Bishesar in the Hills, the Hindu dead from Almora are burnt. The spirits of the departed are supposed to lurk there and are occasionally seen. Sometimes, under the guidance of their leader Bholanâth, whom we have mentioned already, they come, some in palanquins and some on foot, at night, to the Almora Bâzâr and visit the merchants’ shops. Death is supposed to follow soon on a meeting with their processions. These ghosts are supposed to be deficient in some of their members. One has no head, another no feet, and so on; but they can all talk and dance.126