Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/129

 SHEIKH ZEAOOLLAH. (140)

HEIKH ZEAOOLLAH is a Mahomedan of the Sheikh sect, and resides at Coel (Allyghur), where the family have been located for eight or nine hundred years. They are landholders, but their chief occupation is that of managers of the shrine of the saint Shah Jumal Shumsool-arfeen, from whom they claim descent. They have seldom been known to leave their homes. They are Soonnee Mahomedans, and a very numerous fraternity in this district; generally well conducted, but fanatical, like most Mussulman priests. Their diet is beet^ mutton, fish, fowl, vegetables, and bread; and they frequently attain the age of seventy to eighty years.

Sheikh Zeaoollah is fifty-six years of age, five feet eight inches in height, with dark complexion and black eyes; hair and beard black, but varying towards grey. The class to which he belongs is very numerous in India, and is generally in good circumstances. Wherever a saint resided during his life, there he usually died and was buried. If by the holiness of his life or his pretensions to work miracles he had gained many and rich disciples, and had himself amassed wealth, a mausoleum, in most instances during his life, was raised to his memory, or in simpler form, a wayside shrine. Or his disciples travelled into districts around and collected funds for the purpose. Then followed endowments of the shrine by royal persons in many instances, who gave lands, percentages upon government collections, and money grants at festivals, or as it might be; and these Ave re followed by individual grants, of which those in land were most secure, and less liable to alienation. His descendants became priests of the shrine, and inheritors of the endowments, which keep them comfortably in all cases; while many of the more important shrines possess noble revenues. Usually the priests are the distributors of all incomes, in shares to the members of the family, for the uses and maintenance of the shrines and charitable purposes; and it is creditable to them as a class, that the original designs of the grants are, on the whole, especially among Mahomedans, fairly carried out. In connection with these saint's shrines