About the Bahi Registers.

What is a Bahi? A bahi is a traditional handwritten register or record book. In India's pilgrimage centres, hereditary priests have maintained family bahis for generations, recording ancestry, family relationships, ancestral villages and important family events. Bahi is pronounced approximately "BAA-hee".

For centuries, hereditary priests (often called Pandas) in Haridwar and other pilgrimage centres have kept these hand-bound family ledgers, documenting visits, births, marriages and deaths across generations. Each priestly clan typically holds registers for specific regions, communities or villages.

Haridwar is one of the best-known centres for hereditary family registers, but similar records may also be maintained in other pilgrimage centres — including Pehowa, Kurukshetra, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Gaya, Nashik, Trimbakeshwar, Ujjain and Rameswaram — depending on the family's ancestral region and traditions.

Our launch service specialises in Haridwar records. Where the information supplied suggests that a family's records may be held elsewhere, we will explain this during the case review and advise on the available options.

These records are traditional, hereditary family records. They are not government databases and they are not legal certificates. Not every family has a register, not every register can be located, not every priest permits photography, and not every priest accepts remote updates.

Where a register is located, it can be one of the most meaningful pieces of family history a family will ever see — often the only surviving record of a village name or a great-great-grandparent's signature.