Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 59
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
________________
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ August, 1930
foreign to Islam. Along the lower Indus the chief distributor of the legend of Khizr-for his name naturally assumed the Persian form-was a local animistic sprite usually called Udêro Lal, and further north in the Panjab the great spreader was the equally animistic Gøgå, who is as nebulous as Khizr himself. Once no doubt a Rajput, and therefore a Hindu, opponent of the early Musalman invaders of India, Gûgå succeeded-perhaps by confusion with some North Indian aboriginal godling-to the story connected with Vâsuki, the king of the Någas or mythical serpents of the very ancient days of Vedic India, and as a Hindu godling he is now the Snake-god par excellence, whose cult is universal. But in mediæval times Gûgå put on a fresh development as patron saint of the converts to Islam, acquired a suitable legend to account for his conversion and became identified with Khier in several aspects became indeed the chief cause of the spread of the cult of Khiar in North India, at any rate as far as the western confines of Bengal proper.
With the cult of Khizr came, somewhere about the ninth or tenth century, the festival of the Bêrês or Lighted Toyboats, nowadays so prominent on the Indian rivers and reservoirs of water from the Indus to the Hugli. This festival held in the early autumn, is not connected in origin with the winter festival of the Diwali or Lamps, but it—or a festival like it, held at the other equinox in spring—is to be found down the whole length of the Irrawaddy in Burma. Wherever it is held it is a beautiful sight and is naturally popular, and the point for the present purpose is that it, too, has been a great distributor of the cult of Khizr.
Next we find that the mediæval Indian Muslim saints, of whom the more popularand indeed many others have been identified with Khizr, have served to spread and popularize his fame. Of these may be mentioned Sakhi Sarwar in the Panjab, Ghazi Miyân in Oudh and Shah Madar about Cawnpore. They are all thoroughly of the class known as be-shara, outside the canonical law, and all have, as it were, a family history. By popularly accepted legend Sakhi Sarwar was a holy man from Baghdad in Irak or Mesopotamia ; Ghåzi Miyên was a nephew of the great Islamic raider from Afghanistan, Mahmud of Ghazni, and by repute the first Muslim saint to live in India, and Shah Madar was a converted Jew from Aleppo in Syria a form indeed of the Wandering Jew. And here let me digress a moment to say that the tale of the Wandering Jew is not by any means a mere mediæval legend, as has been said in one authoritative work. The story spread no doubt into Western Europe not earlier than the thirteenth century onwards, but it can-like that of al-Khidr, who by the way is also among the mysterious wanderers--be traced in something of the same form in Western Asia to the days of Muhammad. Speaking generally, the idea of the mysterious wanderer is also common in the oldest known literatures. Have not the Jews, Christians and Muslims the legend of Cain, the son of Adam? “And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth," ories Cain, in " the First Book of Moses, called Genesis."
But getting the Wandering Jew aside here, enticing as he always is, and returning to the medieval Muslim saints of India, it may be said that the legends about the majority of them are usually wide of the facts, which seem to be much the same in reality in each case. A
holy' man came into India wandering from somewhere--no one really knew whenceestablished himself in some convenient place, acquired a wide renown for holiness and died in the odour of sanctity. It was greatly-and indeed obviously-to the interest of his descendants and entourage to set up a shrine in his honour, so as to attract pilgrims, and create a legend; and it can be shown that this was actually done in the above cases. It can be shown also that the same thing has been done for many another saint of local celebrity in India, and such practices and such legends (mahatmya) are very common among Hindus. The importance of the saints specially considered above for the present purpose is that they have all been identified with Khizr and have thus familiarised the people with his fame, till every
