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The Ballad of Raja Malhi Prakash and Sirmour's History - Some Scrambled Thoughts

I was just walking through some documents I had saved over the years, when it struck me that there has been very little new research work or relook into the history of the hill states. One particular format has been the examination of oral ballads, very few of which seem to be available in popular culture today. However, that was certainly not the case in the British era, when much field work seems to have been done by scholars of Europe on the subject, as they panned across the state of the Lahore kingdom and their adjunct territories. Sirmour was a Small Princely state along the Yamuna river's course While their purpose may have been malevolent in nature, many interesting insights got captured over the course of their work, and replication or improvement on the same seems to be rather scarce, especially in the context of what the European scholars used to call the "Punjab Hill States". One such case was on Sirmour, where very little information can be found in the publi...
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Preta Palu Tradition of the Hill Rajas

Former Royal Priest of Nepal Keshari Raj Pandey performing Katto (credit: Outlook India)

When the monarch of Nepal Sri Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev had passed away intragic circumstances back in 2001, a wave of shock went across the world for the goriness and the strangeness of the incident. Subsequently the funeral rites were conducted. What followed thereafter had sent  murmurs across several groups, wondering what was going on.

An interesting ritual post funeral that took place over time was taken up by the Brahmin Head Priest of the royal family. To quote the Independent story from the United Kingdom of the time.
  
"A Brahmin priest put on the robes of Nepal's murdered King Birendra, mounted an elephant and went into symbolic exile to rid the country of the curse of his death as the official period of mourning ended yesterday."

Further explaining the 'bizarre' ritual, the Independent wrote:

"The Hindu ceremony, known as katto, is performed only after the death of the monarch. First, in a tent specially erected by the river, the priest, whose usual brahminical diet is strictly vegetarian, consumed an "impure" meal containing animal marrow. Then, over his white cotton clothes, he pulled on the elaborate, medieval court dress of the dead king, including a replica of his crown with its long, curling bird of paradise plume, and a pair of heavy black spectacles similar to the late king's.


Possessions of the king were wrapped in cloth television sets, ceiling fans, bedding, baskets of food and strapped to the back of a caparisoned elephant. Then the priest, too, was heaved aboard, and with a mahout (elephant minder) in front, wrapped in a saffron sash, and with a bearer behind grasping a large, fringed parasol, he set off. The elephant waded into the shallow and smelly Bagmati, bearing the king's soul into exile for ever. The brahmin chosen for the job is supposed never to return."

Nothing StrangeAbout It

Looking at the old gazettes of the 1920s it seems that the practice was under different names and with variations rather important to some hill state monarchs across the Himalayan region.

The 1920  Gazetter of Suket State actually had recorded a funerary ceremony called Preta Palu, calling it a "peculiar practice observed among the Hill Rajas". As the Gazetter explained, upon the death of the Raja, a low class Brahman would be called from outside the State's boundaries. He would be fed food from the right hand of the deceased Raja. He would then remain in the kingdom for a year, eat and drink like the late Raja, sleep on his bed and even be treated by the khidmatgars of the Raja. At the end of the year, he would be escorted out of the state on horse back and would be allowed to get off the horse till the state boundary was crossed.

The Brahmin was called a Preta Palu, or a sustainer of the unripe aatma (Preta). The Mandi State Gazetter made some interesting observations on this practice, a screenshot of which is given for the readers' interest.


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