On the Mâtra hill lives a Deo or demon known as Darrapât Deo
- Date of account
- Second edition published 1896
- Source
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2)
- Reference
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2) · selected passage 23
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
On the Mâtra hill lives a Deo or demon known as Darrapât Deo
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyOn the Mâtra hill lives a Deo or demon known as Darrapât Deo. When Râvana abducted Sîtâ he is said to have kept her on this hill for some time, and her palanquin, turned into stone, is there to this day. No one ascends the mountain through fear of the demon, except an Ojha or sorcerer, who sacrifices a goat at the foot of the hill before he makes the attempt. So, in Garhwâl the peak of Barmdeo is sacred to Devî, and none can intrude with impunity. A Faqîr who ventured to do so in the days of yore was pitched across the river by the offended goddess. [146] On another Mirzapur hill, Chainpur, lives Kotî Rânî, who is embodied in the locusts which usually are found there. Similarly Pahâr Pando is a mountain deity of the Dharkârs, a sub-caste of the Doms. Bansaptî Mâî, who is half a forest and half a mountain goddess, lives on Jhurma hill, and if any one dares to sing in her neighbourhood, he becomes sick or mad. These mountain demons often take the form of tigers and kill incautious intruders on their domains. On the Aunri hill are two dreaded demons, Deorâsan and Birwat, the latter a Bîr or malignant ghost of some one who died a violent death.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.