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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1906.
but Shi'as never visit them, although the saints were Hussaini Sayyids. The descendants of Pir Såbig and Plr Ramdin are known as the pirs, or religious guides, of the Biland Khêls and comprise no less than fifty families. They own one-fifth of the Biland Khêl possessions, and are a powerful community.
The Kábul Khel and other Waziria, when proceeding to the Shawâl and other places in summer, lesve their grain, hay, and household property within the precincts of these shrines and find them intact on their return in winter. The shrines are covered over with domes shaped like canopies, and are consequently called the dud-gumbat zidrat, or shrines with two domes.
The story about the miraculous power of the saints is as follows:- The Biland Khêls, being in want of water for the irrigation of their lands, begged Pir Sabiq and Pir Râmdin to dig them a canal from the Kurram river, and this the saints andertook to do. Though they had no money, they commenced excavation, and when in the evening the labourers came to them for wages, they directed them to go to a certain rock, where they were paid. Nobody could tell how they came by the money. One day, while excavating, the labourers found their way blocked by a huge stone, which they could neither remove nor blow up. The saints thereupon ordered them to leave it alone and retired. In the morning, when the labourers returned to work they found that the rock, which had to them appeared an insurmountable obstacle, had been riven asunder by the saints, who had made a passage for the water to flow through. Two years after the completion of this canal, the saints died. The Biland Khéls, who are their chief disciples, attribate their prosperity to their patronage and the proximity of the two shrines. To cut trees in tho vicinity is looked upon as sacrilege.
2.- Bamdin Ziarat.
This shrine lies midway between Biland Khel Village and the shrines of Pirs Sabiq and Råmdin. This Ramdin was a descendant of Pir Sabiq, and should not be confounded with the Pir Ramdin who was Pir Sabiq's contemporary. He was a great Arabic and Persian scholar, and endowed with saintly powers before he came of age. When a child of four, as he was seated one day on a low wall, repeating verses from the Qurdn and meditating on their import, he happened in his abstraction to kick the wall with his heels, which began to move, and had gone seven or eight paces before the saint became aware of what had happened and stopped it. The wall can be seen even to this day.
One day he went to a hill, sat down under & pleman tree and began to repeat verses from the sacred book. The shade of the tree pleased him so much that he determined to plant one like it near his own house. Having finished his reading, he walked home and was surprised to find the tree following him. He turned round and ordered it to stop. The tree is now known as the raudn pleman or walking pleman' and is held in high esteen by the surrounding tribes. Its twigs, when worn round the neck, are said to cure jaundice. A stone enclosure about fifty yards in diameter surrounds it, and to this the Kábul Khel Waziris bring diseased cattle there. The moment they taste the earth of the enclosure they are cured.
8.- Bar Prêkarai Faqir.
The Shrine of the Beheaded Saint. This shrine lies about four miles from Biland Khol Village. The saint is said to have been a cowherd, and one day, while grazing his herds on a hill-top, he was attacked by a gang of Mall Khel Taris, who killed him and carried off his cattle. Tradition says that the severed
