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 its interests, and that all affairs of importance were transacted is his name.  ‘He is’, said the old man, ’a very jealous spirit, and will not admit of any living man being considered for a moment as a proprietor or joint proprietor of the estate.  It has been held by me and my ancestors immediately under Government for many generations; but the lease deeds have always been made out in his name, and ours have been inserted merely as his managers or bailiffs—­were this good old rule, under which we have so long prospered, to be now infringed, we should all perish under his anger.’  Mr. Fraser found, upon inquiring, that this had really been the case; and, to relieve the old man and his family from their fears, he had the papers made out afresh, and the ghost inserted as the proprietor.  The modes of flattering and propitiating these beings, natural and supernatural, who are supposed to have the power to do mischief, are endless.[4]

While I was in charge of the district of Narsinghpur, in the valley of the Nerbudda, in 1823, a cultivator of the village of Bedu, about twelve miles distant from my court, was one day engaged in the cultivation of his field on the border of the village of Barkhara, which was supposed to be haunted by the spirit of an old proprietor, whose temper was so froward and violent that the lands could hardly be let for anything, for hardly any man would venture to cultivate them lest he might unintentionally incur his ghostship’s displeasure.  The poor cultivator, after begging his pardon in secret, ventured to drive his plough a few yards beyond the proper line of his boundary, and thus add half an acre of Barkhara to his own little tenement, which was situated in Bedu.  That very night his only son was bitten by a snake, and his two bullocks were seized with the murrain.  In terror he went of to the village temple, confessed his sin, and vowed, not only to restore the half-acre of land to the village of Barkhara, but to build a very handsome shrine upon the spot as a perpetual sign of his repentance.  The boy and the bullocks all three recovered, and the shrine was built; and is, I believe, still to be seen as the boundary mark.