46. Charms and magic
When they think a child has been overlooked they fetch a strip of leather from the Chamār’s house, make it into a little bag, fill it with scrapings from a clean bit of leather, and hang it round the child’s neck. If a child is ill they sometimes fetch from the Chamār’s house water which has been used for tanning and give it him to drink. If a man is possessed by an evil spirit, they will take some coins, silver for preference, and wave them round his head with a lamp, and take them out and bury them in a waste place. They throw one or two more rupees on the surface of the soil in which they have buried the coins. Then they think the spirit will leave the sufferer, and if any one picks up the coins on the surface of the ground the spirit will possess him. Hindus who find such buried coins frequently refuse to take them, even though they may be valuable, from fear of being possessed by the spirit. Occasionally a man of a treacherous disposition may transfer an evil spirit, which is haunting him, with a daughter in marriage. The husband’s family suspect this if a spirit begins to trouble them. A Vaddai or magician is called, and he tries to transfer the spirit to a fowl or goat by giving the latter some rice to eat. If the spirit then ceases troubling they conclude that it was transferred by the bride’s father, and go to him and reproach him. If he admits that he had a spirit in his family which has given no trouble lately, they ask him to take it back, even though he may not have intended its transfer. The goat or fowl to which the spirit was transferred is then sacrificed in its name and the meat is eaten only by the father-in-law’s family, to whom the spirit thus returns. A miniature hut is built for the spirit in his yard, and a pot, a lamp and a knife are placed in the hut for its use, and an offering of a goat is made to the spirit occasionally at festivals.
In order to injure an enemy they will make an image of him in clay, preferably taken from underneath his footprint, and carry it to the cemetery. Here they offer red lead, red thread, bangles, and various kinds of grain and pulse to the ghosts and say to them, “Male and female deities, old and newly buried, maimed and lame, spirits of the wind, I pronounce this charm with your help.” Then they pierce the figure with arrows in the chest and cut it with a knife in the region of the liver and think that their enemy will die. Another method is to draw the likeness of an enemy on cloth with lime or charcoal, and bury it in a pot in front of his house on a Sunday or Tuesday night so that he may walk on it in the morning, when they hope that the same result will be achieved.
In order to breed a quarrel in an enemy’s house they get the feathers of a crow, or the seeds of the amaltās,73 or porcupine needles, and after smoking them over a fire in which some nails have been placed, tie them to the eaves of his house, repeating some charm. The seeds of the amaltās rattle in their pods in the wind, and hence it is supposed that they will produce a noise of quarrelling. Porcupine’s quills are sharp and prickly, and crow’s feathers are perhaps efficacious because the crow is supposed to be a talkative and quarrelsome bird. The nails in the fire, being sharp-pointed, may be meant to add potency to the charm. One who wishes to transfer sickness to another person obtains a cloth belonging to the latter and draws two human figures on it, one right side up and the other upside down, in lamp-black. After saying charms over the cloth he puts it back surreptitiously in the owner’s house. When people are ill they make a vow to some god that if they recover they will sacrifice a certain number of animals proportionate to the severity of the illness. If the patient then recovers, and the vow is for a larger number of animals than he can afford, he sets fire to a piece of forest so that a number of animals may be burnt as an offering to the god, and his vow may thus be fulfilled. This practice has no doubt gone out owing to the conservation of forests.
47. Omens
If a Gond, when starting on a journey in the morning, should meet a tiger, cat, hare, or a four-horned deer, he will return and postpone his journey; but if he meets one of these animals when he is well on the way it is considered to be lucky. Rain falling at a wedding or some other festival is believed to be unlucky, as it is as if somebody were crying. In Mandla, if a cock crows in the night, a man will get up at once, catch it and twist its neck, and throw it over the house as far away as he can. Apparently the cock is supposed to be calling to evil spirits. If a hen cackles, or lays eggs at night, it is also considered inauspicious, and the bird is often killed or given away. They think they can acquire strength by carrying the shoulder-bones of a tiger on their shoulders or drinking a little of the bone-dust pounded in water. If there is disease in the village, the Bhumka or village priest performs the ceremony of Gaon bāndhna or tying up the village. Accompanied by a party of men he drives a pig all round the village boundary, scattering grains of urad pulse and mustard seed on the way. The pig is then sacrificed, its blood is sprinkled on all the village gods, and it is eaten by the party. No man or animal may go outside the village on the day of this ceremony, which should be performed on a Sunday or Wednesday. When cattle disease breaks out the Bhumka makes an arch of three poles, to which is hung a string of mango leaves, and all the cattle of the village are driven under it to avert the disease.
48. Agricultural superstitions
When there is drought two boys put a pestle across their shoulders, tie a living frog to it with a rag, and go from house to house accompanied by other boys and girls singing:
Mendak Bhai pāni de,
Dhān, kodon pakne de,
Mere byāh hone de,
or ‘Brother Frog give rain; let the rice and kodon ripen; let my marriage be held.’ The frog is considered to be able to produce rain because it lives in water and therefore has control over its element. The boy’s point in asking the frog to let his marriage be held is that if the rains failed and the crops withered, his parents would be unable to afford the expense. Another method of obtaining rain is for two naked women to go and harness themselves to a plough at night, while a third naked woman drives the plough and pricks them with a goad. This does not appear capable of explanation on any magical basis, so far as I know, and the idea may possibly be to force the clemency of the gods by showing their extraordinary sufferings, or to show that the world is topsy-turvy for want of rain. A leather rope is sometimes tied to a plough and harrow, and the boys and girls pull against one another on the rope in a tug-of-war. If the girls win they think that rain will soon come, but if the boys win that it will not. In order to stop excessive rain, a naked bachelor collects water from the eaves in a new earthen pot, covers the pot with a lid or with mud, and buries it beneath the earth; or the pot may be filled with salt. Here it may perhaps be supposed that, as the water dries up in the pot or the salt gets dry, so the rain will stop and the world generally become dry. The reason for employing women to produce rain, and men to stop it, may be that women, as they give milk, will be more potent in obtaining the other liquid, water. Nakedness is a common element in magic, perhaps because clothes are considered a civilised appanage, and unsuitable for a contest with the powers of nature; a certain idea of impurity may also attach to them. If a crow in carrying a straw to build its nest holds it in the middle, they think that the rains will be normal and adequate; but if the straw is held towards one end, that the rains will be excessive or deficient. If the titahri or sandpiper lays four eggs properly arranged, they think that sufficient rain will fall in all the four monsoon months. If only one, two or three eggs are laid, or only this number properly placed in the nest and the others at the side, then the rains will be good only in an equivalent number of months.
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