it. 'As
for himself, whenever he found any one of the villages upon his
estate haunted by the spirit of an old "patel" (village proprietor),
he always made a point of giving him a _neat little shrine_, and
having it well endowed and attended, to keep him in good humour; this
he thought was a duty that every landlord owed to his tenants.'
Ramchand, the pundit, said that 'villages which had been held by old
Gond (mountaineer) proprietors were more liable than any other to
those kinds of visitations; that it was easy to say what village was
and was not haunted, but often exceedingly difficult to discover to
whom the ghost belonged. This once discovered, his nearest surviving
relation was, of course, expected to take steps to put him to rest;
but', said he, 'it is wrong to suppose that the ghost of an old
proprietor must be always doing mischief--he is often the best friend
of the cultivators, and of the present proprietor too, if he treats
him with proper respect; for he will not allow the people of any
other village to encroach upon their boundaries with impunity, and
they will be saved all the expense and annoyance of a reference to
the "adalat" (judicial tribunals) for the settlement of boundary
disputes. It will not cost much to conciliate these spirits, and the
money is generally well laid out.'

Several anecdotes were told me in illustration; and all that I could
urge against the probability or possibility of such Visitation
appeared to them very inconclusive and unsatisfactory. They mentioned
the case of the family of village proprietors in the Sagar district,
who had for several generations, at every new settlement, insisted
upon having the name of the spirit of the old proprietor inserted in
the lease instead of their own, and thereby secured his good graces
on all occasions. Mr. Fraser had before mentioned this case to me. In
August, 1834, while engaged in the settlement of the land revenue of
the Sagar district for twenty years, he was about to deliver the
lease of the estate made out in due form to the head of the family, a
very honest and respectable old gentleman, when he asked him
respectfully in whose name it had been made out. 'In yours, to be
sure; have you not renewed your lease for twenty years?' The old man,
in a state of great alarm, begged him to have it altered immediately,
or he and his family would all be destroyed--that the spirit of the
ancient proprietor presided over the village community and