ชื่ออักษร : S

S

Shanti Devi

In 1936, a pamphlet was printed by the Baluja Press in Delhi, India, setting forth the results of an inquiry into the case of Shand Devi by Lala Desh bandhu Gupta (Managing Director of the Daily Tej,) Pandit Neki Ram Sharma (a leader in the Nationalist movement,) and Mr. Tara Chand Mathur (an Advocate.) The chief facts recorded in their statements are as follows.

They concern a girl, Kumari Shangti Devi, born October 12, 1926 in Delhi, daughter of B. Rang Bahadur Mathur. From the age of about four, she began to speak of a former life of hers in Muttra - a town about 100 miles from Delhi - saying that she was then a Choban by caste, that her husband was a cloth merchant, that her house was yellow, etc. Later, she told a grand-uncle of hers, Mr. Bishan Chand, that her husband's name in her previous life had been Pt. Kedar Nath Chaubey. The uncle mentioned this to Mr. Lala Kishan Chand, M.A., a retired Principal, who asked to meet the girl. She then gave him the address of "Kedar Nath," to whom he wrote. To his surprise, it turned out that Kedar Nath Chaubey actually existed; and, in his reply to the letter, he confirmed various of the details Shand Devi had given and suggested that a relative of his in Delhi, Pt. Kanji Mal, interview the girl. When he came to see her, she recognized him as a cousin of her former husband and gave convincing replies to questions of his concerning intimate details.

Pt. Kedar Nath Chaubey then, on November 13, 1935, came to Delhi with his present wife and his ten year old son by his former wife. Shanti Devi recognized Kedar Nath and was greatly moved, answering convincingly various questions asked by him about private matters of her former life as his wife, and mentioning that she had buried Rs. 150. in a certain room of her house in Muttra. After they left, she kept asking to be taken to Muttra, describing various features of the town. On November 24, 1935, she and her parents, and the three inquirers who author the pamphlet, went to Muttra. On the railway platform an elderly man in the group of people there paused for a moment in front of her, and she recognized him, saying that he was her "Jeth," i.e., the elder brother of her former husband.

The party then took a carriage, whose driver was instructed to follow whatever route the girl told him. She mentioned that the road to the station had not been asphalted when she lived in Muttra, and she pointed out various buildings which had not existed then. She led the party to the lane in which was a house she had formerly occupied. In the lane, she met and recognized an old Brahmin, whom she correctly identified as her father-in-law. She identified the old house, now rented to strangers. Two gentlemen of Muttra, who then joined the party, asked her where the "Jai-Zarur" of the house was - a local expression which the party from Delhi did not understand. She, however, understood it and pointed out the privy which, in Muttra, that term is used to designate.

After leaving the old house, and as she led the way to the newer one still occupied by Chaubey Kedar Nath, she recognized her former brother now twenty-five years old, and her uncle-in-law. At the house, she was asked to point out the well she had mentioned in Delhi. There is now no well in the courtyard there, but she pointed out the place where it had been. Kedar Nath then lifted the stone with which it had since been covered. She then led the way to the room she said she had formerly occupied, where she had buried the money. She pointed to the spot, which was then dug up, and, about a foot down, a receptacle for keeping valuables was found, but no money was in it. Kedar Nath Chaubey later disclosed that he had removed it after the death of his first wife, Lugdi, at the age of 23, on October 4, 1925, following the birth of her son on September 25. Later, Shanti Devi recognized her former father and mother in a crowd of over fifty persons.

The pamphlet reproduces also the confirmatory testimony of Kedar Nath's cousin in Delhi, Choubey Kenji Mal, including a statement of the questions he asked Shanti Devi when he interviewed her, and of her replies.

A number of Indian cases, similar in essentials to those of Shanti Devi and of Katsugoro, are described and the relevant attestations of witnesses quoted, in a booklet, Reincarnation, Verified Cases of Rebirth after Death, by Kr. Kekai Nandan Sahay, B.A., LL.B., Vakil High Court, Bareilly, India, no date (about 1927)(3).

(3) For a photostatic copy of this now rare booklet, the present writer is indebted to the kindness of Dr. Ian Stevenson, of the University of Virginia Medical School.