ABSTRACT
In the Census of India conducted in 1911, we have a record of a killing in a Punjabi village that may have turned murder into historiography. The passage tells us Afridi Pathans of Tirah2 had no holy shrine within their precincts to serve as a site of worship, thus they had no dargah honoring a pir to whom they could apply for assistance in their daily lives. The Census recorded the story this way:
Smarting under a sense of incompleteness they induced by generous offers a saint of the most notorious piety to take up his abode amongst them. Then they made quite sure of his staying with them by cutting his throat; they buried him honourably; they built over his bones a splendid shrine at which they might worship him and implore his aid and intercession in their behalf, and thus they purged themselves of their reproach.3
