Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/278

 262 Ba lo ch i Fo Iklo re.

In various narratives, persons who wish to obtain the favour of the saint, go to the shrine and labour at fetching water for the pilgrims. Balach did this when his relations had been exterminated by the Bulethis. (I may mention that at Sakhi Sarwar there is only one well, 200 feet deep, and to supply many thousands of pilgrims with water is no easy task.) After three years the saint appeared to Balach in a dream, and told him to get a bow. At night he left his bow unstrung, but in the morning he found it strung, and the saint said : " Now thy bow is strung, go and fight thy enemies " ; which he did with great effect.^ In the same way, when Samri was carried off by Muhabbat Khan of Kilat, her husband went to the shrine of Jive Lai at Sehwan in Sindh, and fetched water for the pilgrims, until the saint told him what he was to do.^ This shrine, called Lai Shahbaz as well as Jive Lai, is also much resorted to by Baloches. A description of it is given by Sir Richard Burton in Sind Revisited?

A more modern shrine, now much resorted to, is that of Sulaiman Shah of Taunsa Sharif. This Saint was a Jaafir, one of the aboriginal tribes of the mountains, which have resisted absorption by both Baloch and Pathan ; and a fine white marble domed shrine has been in recent times erected to his memory. This is a strictly Muhammadan shrine of the nineteenth century, and not like the others, a relic of pre-Muhammadan religions. Perhaps the only shrine sacred to a thoroughly Baloch saint is Pir Sohri, situated at Sohrl Khushtagh [i.e., Sohri's slaughter) in the country of the Bughti tribe. Sohrl was himself a Bughti, and bestowed his only goat on the four companions of Muhammad, who presented themselves to him disguised as beggars. In recompense, he found a miraculous flock of goats in his enclosure, and was also given the power of finding water

' Folk- Lore, vol. iv., 201.

' Folk- Lore, iv., 519.

' Sind Revisited, 1S77, ch. xxv.