Pabuji

Pabuji is a folk deity of Marwar, a Rathore Rajput hero whom tradition places around the fourteenth century at Kolu, in the desert country near Phalodi. He is worshipped above all as a protector of livestock and of those who live by them, and his following is strongest among the Rabari and other pastoral communities of Rajasthan. In his epic he is credited with bringing the first camels to Marwar, and the camel-herding castes honour him as their particular patron.

The legend

The core of the story is a vow kept at mortal cost. Pabuji had pledged to protect the cattle of a Charan woman; when raiders drove them off during his own wedding, he rose from the ceremony, rode out to recover the herd, and fell in the fighting that followed. Dying in defence of cows, the act through which many Rajasthani folk deities attain divinity, he was thereafter worshipped as a god.

The phad

Pabuji's worship is inseparable from one of India's most remarkable oral traditions. Hereditary singer-priests known as bhopas perform his epic through the night before a phad, a long painted cloth scroll that serves as a portable temple, illuminating episodes by lamplight while accompanying themselves on the ravanhattha fiddle. The performance is itself an act of worship, undertaken to invoke the deity's protection over herds and households. His principal temple stands at Kolu, where he is honoured with fairs and offerings.