NEW DELHI, India, Jan. 18.—Thousands of pilgrims are flocking to Delhi to pay homage to an eight year old girl, Shanti Devi, who claims to have been reincarnated.

She recites details of a previous life on earth which she claims ended just before her present life began.

The child has given startling evidence to support this belief. In her past life, she says, she was the wife of a merchant of Muttra, United Provinces. She was very much in love with her husband, she says, and often used to make him potato cakes, a delicacy of which he was particularly fond.

These and many other descriptions of her “past life” the little girl has related to her parents ever since she could talk. Her father, a Delhi merchant named Rang Bahadur, did not take her seriously until recently, when he suddenly insisted on going to Muttra to see her “husband” and her “son.”

She said she was particularly anxious to see the boy because it was at his birth that she died. On being refused permission to make the journey, little Shanti cried for hours and could not be consoled.

Distracted, a relative wrote to the man she described as her “husband” and asked if his wife had died some eight years ago and if there was any truth in the child’s claim of reincarnation.

He replied that they were possible and that his brother, who lived in Delhi, would come to see her. This brother did so, and directly Shanti saw him she “recognized” him as her brother-in-law. She talked with him about her past life, and her conversation was so circumstantial that her “husband” hurried from Muttra accompanied by several friends.

On seeing him, the child fell at his feet in order to “pay her respects as his wife.” She then embraced her “son.” She failed, however, to recognize her “husband’s” new wife.