Indian Antiquary Vol 61

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 102

90
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1932
complex story of Pir Patho-Guru Gorakhnath 22 (of Pir Art, a few miles south of Tatta), the Pir-Guru made Guru Dayânâth his disciple by cutting his ear and putting an ivory ornament in it. Placing a black thread turban on his head, he sent him back to Dinodar (Girnar) in Cutch. In the same story there is reference to his magical possessions,-a bullock which filled its own pakhal, a beggar's bowl which collected offerings, a rag rope which would bind a man, and a cudgel which would beat him. The story of men being changed into stones rings very true. At Jung Shâh's tomb (near Jungshâhî station) people still point to a large thin vertical slab of stone as having been Jung Shah's camel. Along the edge of the Kohistân generally, other upright slabs may be found marking prehistoric sites. In one group of these, near the "altar" in the Mol valley, still stands a small dolmen ; other groups I have found in the foot-hills west of Kotri. Those in the Mol valley one could connect definitively with a primitive fire dance in honour of Vetál and with Buddhist customs ("if you go there" at midday or after dark, the ghosts will throw lighted torches at you "). The tales reported by Ibn Batuta had been transmuted ere ever he came there, and what better form could a tale take than to point an Islamic moral: even Hsüan-toang says the Sindhi loved a wondrous tale.
No such stones now remain at or near Thambhanwâro Masjid-but once more one may point to the large strange stone embedded in the north wail.
The building was clearly not reconstructed by Muhammadans. The mihráb, the recess in the west wall, is no part of the essential structure of the building. It is thus extremely probable that this was the building shown to Ibn Batâta as the “ king's house," and that it was after he visited the place, after Mari Morâți was built, that the central dais was removed. Whether this 'cell' of dressed stone was then converted into a mosque by the fashioning of the mihráb, whether that had happened on some previous occasion, whether the whole was originally built as a temple or unorthodox Muslim place of prayer, is hard to determine now. It is significant that the Andhan ji Mâți, which is not oriented correctly, was never supplied with a mihráb.
In all probability, then, the building was originally a temple for a very restrained type of Hinduism (such as the worship of the river god). It certainly always looked like a temple (deul, i.e., deválaya), and assuming there was no village around it, it would, in so featureless a country as the delta of the Indus, be a notable landmark for miles around, worthy of preservation, even by Muslims, as an object of utility, and verily, as Ibn Batâta shows us, an object lesson.
33 The cult of Pir Patho embodies Buddhist, Hindu and Islamie lore, and represents now part of the Multáni revival. In the Tuhfatu'l-kirdm Pir Patho is called Shaikh Patho deoll. One story mentions his settlement at Pir Arr in 547 A.x. (1152 A.D.) and another that he died in 606 A.H. (1209 A.D.). Yet ho is also equated with a pro-Islamio Raja Gopichand of Sehwan, of whom a purely Buddhist story of a great renunciation is told.
Two miles east of Charo is an isolated hill known as Pir Patho's hill, and between Karachi and Son Miani is yet another place' of Pir Pacho-Raja Gopichand. The geography of the cult indicates an interest. ing coastal ramification.