FOLK-LORE OF NORTHERN INDIA
BATHING IN THE GANGES, HARDWAR.
THE POPULAR RELIGION AND FOLK-LORE OF NORTHERN INDIA
BY
W. CROOKE, B.A.
BENGAL CIVIL SERVICE
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ILLUSTRATED
WESTMINSTER
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO.
2, Whitehall Gardens, S.W.
1896
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The success of this book has been much beyond my expectations. That a considerable edition has been exhausted within a few months after publication proves that it meets a want.
I have now practically re-written the book, and have taken the opportunity of introducing a considerable amount of fresh information collected in the course of the Ethnographical Survey of the North-Western Provinces, the results of which will be separately published.
For the illustrations, which now appear for the first time, I am indebted to the photographic skill of Mr. J. O’Neal, of the Thomason Engineering College, Rurki. I could have wished that they could have been drawn from a wider area. But Hardwar and its shrines are very fairly representative of popular Hinduism in Northern India.
W. Crooke.
Saharanpur,
February, 1895.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Many books have been written on Brâhmanism, or the official religion of the Hindu; but, as far as I am aware, this is the first attempt to bring together some of the information available on the popular beliefs of the races of Upper India.
My object in writing this book has been threefold. In the first place I desired to collect, for the use of all officers whose work lies among the rural classes, some information on the beliefs of the people which will enable them, in some degree, to understand the mysterious inner life of the races among whom their lot is cast; secondly, it may be hoped that this introductory sketch will stimulate inquiry, particularly among the educated races of the country, who have, as yet, done little to enable Europeans to gain a fuller and more sympathetic knowledge of their rural brethren; and lastly, while I have endeavoured more to collect facts than to theorize upon them, I hope that European scholars may find in these pages some fresh examples of familiar principles. My difficulty has arisen not so much from deficiency of material, as in the selection and arrangement of the mass of information, which lies scattered through a considerable literature, much of which is fugitive.
I believe that the more we explore these popular superstitions and usages, the nearer are we likely to attain to the discovery of the basis on which Hinduism has been founded. The official creed has always been characterized by extreme catholicism and receptivity, and many of its principles and legends have undoubtedly been derived from that stratum of the people which it is convenient to call non-Aryan or Drâvidian. The necessity, then, of investigating these beliefs before they become absorbed in Brâhminism, one of the most active missionary religions of the world, is obvious.
I may say that the materials of this book were practically complete before I was able to use Mr. J. S. Campbell’s valuable collection of “Notes on the Spirit Basis of Belief and Custom;” but, in revising the manuscript, I have availed myself to some extent of this useful collection, and when I have done so, I have been careful to acknowledge my obligations to it. Even at the risk of overloading the notes with references, I have quoted the authorities which I have used, and I have added a Bibliography which may be of use to students to whom the subject is unfamiliar.
The only excuse I can plead for the obvious imperfections of this hasty survey of a very wide subject is that it has been written in the intervals of the scanty leisure of a District Officer’s life in India, and often at a distance from works of reference and libraries.
W. Crooke.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
CHAPTER II.
[The Heroic and Village Godlings] 83
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
[The Worship of the Sainted Dead] 175
CHAPTER V.
[Worship of the Malevolent Dead] 230
FOLK-LORE OF NORTHERN INDIA.
CHAPTER I.
THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.
Ἐν μὲν γαῖαν ἐτεύξ’ ἐν δ’ οὐρανὸν, ἐν δὲ θάλασσαν
ἠέλιόν τ’ ἀκάμαντα σελήνην τε πλήθουσαν,
ἐν δὲ τὰ τείρεα πάντα, τά τ’ οὐρανὸς ἐστεφάνωται
Πληϊάδασ θ’ Ὑάδας τε, τό τε σθένος Ὠρίωνος
Ἄρκτον θ’, ἣν καὶ ἄμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν,
ἣτ αὐτοῦ στρέφαται καί τ’ Ὠρίωνα δοκεύει,
οἴη δ’ ἄμμορος ἐστι λοετρῶν Ὠκεανοῖο.
Iliad, xviii. 483–88.
Among all the great religions of the world there is none more catholic, more assimilative than the mass of beliefs which go to make up what is popularly known as Hinduism. To what was probably its original form—a nature worship in a large degree introduced by the Aryan missionaries—has been added an enormous amount of demonolatry, fetishism and kindred forms of primitive religion, much of which has been adopted from races which it is convenient to describe as aboriginal or autochthonous.
The same was the case in Western lands. As the Romans extended their Empire they brought with them and included in the national pantheon the deities of the conquered peoples. Greece and Syria, Egypt, Gallia and Germania were thus successively laid under contribution. This power of assimilation in the domain of religion had its advantages as well as its dangers. While on the one hand it tended to promote the unity of the empire, it degraded, on the other hand, the national character by the introduction of the impure cults which flourished along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.[1]
But, besides these forms of religion which were directly imported from foreign lands, there remained a stratum of local beliefs which even after twenty centuries of Christianity still flourish, discredited though they may be by priests and placed under the ban of the official creed. Thus in Greece, while the high gods of the divine race of Achilles and Agamemnon are forgotten, the Nereids, the Cyclopes and the Lamia still live in the faith of the peasants of Thessaly.[2] So in modern Tuscany there is actually as much heathenism as catholicism, and they still believe in La Vecchia Religione—“the old religion;”—and while on great occasions they have recourse to the priests, they use magic and witchcraft for all ordinary purposes.[3]
It is part of the object of the following pages to show that in India the history of religious belief has been developed on similar lines. Everywhere we find that the great primal gods of Hinduism have suffered grievous degradation. Throughout the length and breadth of the Indian peninsula Brahma, the Creator, has hardly more than a couple of shrines specially dedicated to him.[4] Indra has, as we shall see, become a vague weather deity, who rules the choirs of fairies in his heaven Indra-loka: Varuna, as Barun, has also become a degraded weather godling, and sailors worship their boat as his fetish when they commence a voyage. The worship of Agni survives in the fire sacrifice which has been specialized by the Agnihotri Brâhmans. Of Pûshan and Ushas, Vâyu and the Maruts, hardly even the names survive, except among the small philosophical class of reformers who aim at restoring Vedism, a faith which is as dead as Jupiter or Aphrodite.
The Deva.
The general term for these great gods of Hinduism is Deva, or “the shining ones.” Of these even the survivors have in the course of the development of the religious belief of the people suffered serious change. Modern Vaishnavism has little left of the original conception of the solar deity who in the Rig Veda strides in three steps through the seven regions of the universe, and envelops all things in the dust of his beams. To his cult has, in modern times, been added the erotic cycle of myths which centre round Krishna and Râdhâ and Rukminî. The successive Avatâras or incarnations mark the progressive development of the cultus which has absorbed in succession the totemistic or fetish worship of the tortoise, the boar, the fish and the man-lion. In the same way Rudra-Siva has annexed various faiths, many of which are probably of local origin, such as the worship of the bull and the linga. Durgâ-Devî, again, most likely is indebted to the same sources for the blood sacrifices which she loves in her forms of Kâlî, Bhawânî, Chandikâ or Bhairavî. A still later development is that of the foul mysteries of the Tantra and the Sâktis.
The Deotâ.
But in the present survey of the popular, as contrasted with the official faith, we have little concern with these supremely powerful deities. They are the gods of the richer or higher classes, and to the ordinary peasant of Northern India are now little more than a name. He will, it is true, occasionally bow at their shrines; he will pour some water or lay some flowers on the images or fetish stones which are the special resting-places of these divinities or represent the productive powers of nature. But from time immemorial, when Brâhmanism had as yet not succeeded in occupying the land, his allegiance was bestowed on a class of deities of a much lower and more primitive kind. Their inferiority to the greater gods is marked in their title: they are Devatâ or Deotâ, “godlings,” not “gods.”[5]
Godlings Pure and Impure.
These godlings fall into two well marked classes—the “pure” and the “impure.” The former are, as a rule, served by priests of the Brâhman castes or one of the ascetic orders: their offerings are such things as are pure food to the Hindu—cakes of wheaten flour, particularly those which have been still further purified by intermixture with clarified butter (ghî), the most valued product of the sacred cow, washed rice (akshata) and sweetmeats. They are very generally worshipped on a Sunday, and the officiating high-caste priest accepts the offerings. The offerings to the “impure” godlings contain articles such as pork and spirits, which are abomination to the orthodox Hindu. In the Central Indian hills their priest is the Baiga, who rules the ghosts and demons of the village and is always drawn from one of the Drâvidian tribes. In the plain country the priest is a non-Aryan Chamâr, Dusâdh, or even a sweeper or a Muhammadan Dafâli or drummer. No respectable Hindu will, it is needless to say, partake of a share of the food consecrated (prasâd) to a hedge deity of this class. Much of the worship consists in offering of blood. But the jungle man or the village menial of the plains can seldom, except in an hour of grievous need, afford an expensive animal victim, and it is only when the village shrine has come under the patronage of the official priests of the orthodox faith, that the altar of the goddess reeks with gore, like those of the Devîs of Bindhâchal or Devî Pâtan.
But as regards the acceptance of a share of the offering the line is often not very rigidly drawn. As Mr. Ibbetson writing of the Panjâb says:[6] “Of course, the line cannot always be drawn with precision, and Brâhmans will often consent to be fed in the name of a deity, while they will not take offerings made at his shrine, or will allow their girls, but not their boys, to accept the offering, as, if the girls die in consequence, it does not much matter.” In fact, as we shall see later on, the Baiga or devil priest of the aboriginal tribes, is gradually merging into the Ojha or meaner class of demon exorciser, who calls himself a Brâhman and performs the same functions for tribes of a somewhat higher social rank.
Sûraj Nârâyan, the Sun Godling.
The first and greatest of the “pure” godlings is Sûrya or Sûraj Nârâyan, the Sun godling. He is thus regarded as Nârâyana or Vishnu occupying the sun. A curiously primitive legend represents his father-in-law, Viswakarma, as placing the deity on his lathe and trimming away one-eighth of his effulgence, leaving only his feet. Out of the blazing fragments he welded the weapons of the gods. Sûrya was one of the great deities of the Vedic pantheon: he is called Prajapati or “lord of creatures:” he was the son of Dyaus, or the bright sky. Ushas, the dawn, was his wife, and he moves through the sky drawn by seven ruddy mares. His worship was perhaps originally connected with that of fire, but it is easy to understand how, under a tropical sky, the Indian peasant came to look on him as the lord of life and death, the bringer of plenty or of famine. If one interpretation of the rite be correct, the Holî festival is intended as a means of propitiating sunshine. He is now, however, like Helios in the Homeric mythology, looked on as only a godling, not a god, and even as a hero who had once lived and reigned on earth.
As far as the village worship of Sûraj Nârâyan goes, the assertion, which has sometimes been made, that no shrine has been erected in his honour is correct enough; and there is no doubt that images of Sûrya and Aditya are comparatively rare in recent epochs. But there are many noted temples dedicated to him, such as those at Taxila, Gwâlior, Gaya, Multân, Jaypur, and in the North-Western Provinces at Indor, Hawalbâgh, Sûrya Bhîta and Lakhmipur.[7] His shrine at Kanârak in Orissa near that of Jagannâth, is described as one of the most exquisite memorials of Sun-worship in existence.[8] Mr. Bendall recently found in Nepâl an image dedicated to him as late as the eleventh century.[9] There is a small shrine in his honour close to the Annapûrna temple in Benares, where the god is represented seated in a chariot drawn by seven horses, and is worshipped with the fire sacrifice (homa) in a building detached from the temple.[10]
In the time of Sankara Achârya (A.D. 1000) there were six distinct sects of Sun-worshippers—one worshipping the rising sun as identified with Brahma; the second the meridian sun as Siva; the third the setting sun as Vishnu; the fourth worshippers of the sun in all the above phases as identified with the Trimurti; the fifth worshippers of the sun regarded as a material being in the form of a man with a golden beard and golden hair. Zealous members of this sect refused to eat anything in the morning till they had seen the sun rise. The last class worshipped an image of the sun formed in the mind. These spent all their time meditating on the sun, and were in the habit of branding circular representations of his disc on their foreheads, arms and breasts.[11]
The Saura sect worship Sûryapati as their special god. They wear a crystal necklace in his honour, abstain from eating salt on Sundays and on the days when the sun enters a sign of the zodiac. They make a frontal mark with red sandars, and nowadays have their headquarters in Oudh.[12]
Another sect of Vaishnavas, the Nîmbârak, worship the sun in a modified form. Their name means “the sun in a Nîm tree” (Azidirachta Indica). The story of the sect runs that their founder, an ascetic named Bhâskarâchârya, had invited a Bairâgi to dine with him, and had arranged everything for his reception, but unfortunately delayed to call his guest till after sunset. The holy man was forbidden by the rules of his order to eat except in the day-time, and was afraid that he would be compelled to practise an unwilling abstinence; but at the solicitation of his host, the Sun god, Sûraj Nârâyan, descended on the Nîm tree under which the feast was spread and continued beaming on them until dinner was over.[13] In this we observe an approximation to the Jaina rule by which it is forbidden to eat after sunset, lest insects may enter the mouth and be destroyed. This over-strained respect for animal life is one of the main features of the creed. As a curious parallel it may be noted that when an Australian black-fellow wishes to stay the sun from going down till he gets home, he places a sod in the fork of a tree exactly facing the setting sun; and an Indian of Yucatan, journeying westward, places a stone in a tree, or pulls out some of his eye-lashes and blows them towards the sun.[14]
The great Emperor Akbar endeavoured to introduce a special form of Sun-worship. He ordered that it was to be adored four times a day: in the morning, noon, evening, and midnight. “His majesty had also one thousand and one Sanskrit names of the sun collected, and read them daily, devoutly turning to the sun. He then used to get hold of both ears, and turning himself quickly round, used to strike the lower ends of his ears with his fists.” He ordered his band to play at midnight, and used to be weighed against gold at his solar anniversary.[15]
Village Worship of Sûraj Nârâyan.
The village worship of Sûraj Nârâyan is quite distinct from this. Many peasants in Upper India do not eat salt on Sundays, and do not set their milk for butter, but make rice-milk of it, and give a portion to Brâhmans. Brâhmans are sometimes fed in his honour at harvests, and the pious householder bows to him as he leaves his house in the morning. His more learned brethren repeat the Gâyatrî, that most ancient of Aryan prayers: “Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhîmahi, Dhiyo yo nah prachodayât” (“May we receive the glorious brightness of this, the generator, the God who shall prosper our works!”). In the chilly mornings of the cold weather you will hear the sleepy coolies as they wake, yawning and muttering Sûraj Nârâyan, as the yellow gleam of dawn spreads over the Eastern sky. In fact, even in Vedic times there seems to have been a local worship of Sûrya connected with some primitive folk-lore. Haradatta mentions as one of the customs not sanctioned in the Veda, that when the sun is in Aries the young girls would paint the sun with his retinue on the soil in coloured dust, and worship this in the morning and evening;[16] and in Central India the sun was in the Middle Ages worshipped under the local form of Bhâilla, or “Lord of Life,” a term which appears to have been the origin of the name Bhilsa, known to more recent ages as a famous seat of Buddhism.[17]
At Udaypur in Râjputâna the sun has universal precedence. His portal (Sûryapul) is the chief entrance to the city; his name gives dignity to the chief apartment or hall (Sûryamahal) of the palace, and from the balcony of the sun (Sûrya-gokhru), the descendant of Râma shows himself in the dark monsoon as the sun’s representative. A large painted sun of gypsum in high relief with gilded rays adorns the hall of audience, and in front of it is the throne. The sacred standard bears his image, as does the disc (changî) of black felt or ostrich feathers with a plate of gold in its centre to represent the sun, borne aloft on a pole. The royal parasol is called Kiraniya, in allusion to its shape, like a ray (kiran) of the orb.[18]
Another famous centre of Sun-worship was Multân, where, as we have seen, a temple dedicated to him has been discovered, and where the tribes of the Bâlas and Kâthis were devoted to him. The worship continued till the idol was destroyed by orders of Aurangzeb.
Sun-worship among the non-Aryan Races.
The Aheriyas, a tribe of jungle-livers and thieves in the Central Duâb of the Ganges and Jumna, have adopted as their mythical ancestor Priyavrata, who being dissatisfied that only half the earth was at one time illuminated by the rays of the sun, followed him seven times round the earth in his flaming car, resolved to turn night into day. But he was stopped by Brahma, and the wheels of his chariot formed the seven oceans which divide the seven continents of the world.
In the lower ranges of the Himâlaya Sun-worship is conducted in the months of December and January and when eclipses occur. The principal observances are the eating of a meal without salt at each passage of the sun into a new sign of zodiac, and eating meals on other days only when the sun has risen.
Among the Drâvidian races, along the Central Indian hills, Sun-worship is widely prevalent. When in great affliction the Kharwârs appeal to the sun. Any open space in which he shines may be his altar. The Kisâns offer a white cock to him when a sacrifice is needed. He is worshipped by the Bhuiyas and Orâons as Borâm or Dharm Devatâ, “the godling of pity,” and is propitiated at the sowing season by the sacrifice of a white cock. The Korwas worship him as Bhagwân, or “the only God,” in an open space with an ant-hill as an altar. The Khariyas adore him under the name of Bero. “Every head of a family should during his lifetime make not less than five sacrifices to this deity—the first of fowls, the second of a pig, the third of a white goat, the fourth of a ram, and the fifth of a buffalo. He is then considered sufficiently propitiated for that generation, and regarded as an ungrateful god if he does not behave handsomely to his votary.” He is addressed as Parameswar, or “great god,” and his sacrifices are always made in front of an ant-hill which is regarded as his altar. The Kols worship Sing Bonga, the creator and preserver, as the sun. Prayer and sacrifice are made to him, as to a beneficent deity, who has no pleasure in the destruction of any of his subjects, though, as a father, he chastises his erring children, who owe him gratitude for all the blessings they enjoy. He is said to have married Chando Omal, the moon. She deceived him on one occasion, and he cut her in two; but repenting of his anger, he restores her to her original shape once a month, when she shines in her full beauty. The Orâons address the sun as Dharmi, or “the holy one,” and do not regard him as the author of sickness or calamity; but he may be invoked to avert it, and this appeal is often made when the sacrifices to minor deities have been unproductive. He is the tribal god of the Korkus of Hoshangâbâd; they do not, however, offer libations to him, as Hindus do; but once in three years the head of each family, on some Sunday in April or May, offers outside the village a white she-goat and a white fowl, turning his face to the East during the sacrifice. Similarly the Kûrs of the Central Provinces carve rude representations of the sun and moon on wooden pillars, which they worship, near their villages.[19]
Sun-worship in the Domestic Ritual.
It is needless to say that the custom of walking round any sacred object in the course of the sun prevails widely. Thus in Ireland, when in a graveyard, it is customary to walk as much as possible “with the sun,” with the right hand towards the centre of the circle.[20] Even to this day in the Hebrides animals are led round a sick person, following the sun; and in the Highlands it is the custom to make the “deazil” or walk three times in the sun’s course round those whom they wish well. When a Highlander goes to bathe or to drink water out of a consecrated spring, he must always approach by going round the place from east to west on the south side, in imitation of the daily motion of the sun.[21] We follow the same rule when we pass the decanters round our dinner tables. In the same way in India the bride and bridegroom are made to revolve round the sacred fire or the central pole of the marriage-shed in the course of the sun; the pilgrim makes his solemn perambulation (parikrama) round a temple or shrine in the same way; in this direction the cattle move as they tread out the grain.
One special part of the purificatory rite following childbirth is to bring the mother out and expose her to the rays of the sun. All through the range of popular belief and folk-lore appears the idea that girls may be impregnated by the sun.[22] Hence they are not allowed to expose themselves to his rays at the menstrual period. For the same reason the bride is brought out to salute the rising sun on the morning after she begins to live with her husband. A survival of the same belief may be traced in the English belief that happy is the bride on whom the sun shines. The same belief in the power of the sun is shown in the principle so common in folk-lore that to show a certain thing to it (in a Kashmîr tale it is a tuft of the hair of the kindly tigress) will be sufficient to summon an absent friend.[23]
The mystical emblem of the Swâstika, which appears to represent the sun in his journey through the heavens, is of constant occurrence. The trader paints it on the fly-leaf of his ledger; the man who has young children or animals liable to the Evil Eye makes a representation of it on the wall beside his door-post; it holds the first place among the lucky marks of the Jainas; it is drawn on the shaven heads of children on the marriage-day in Gujarât; a red circle with a Swâstika in the centre is depicted on the place where the gods are kept.[24] In those parts of the country where Bhûmiya is worshipped as a village guardian deity his votary constructs a rude model of it on the shrine by fixing up two crossed straws with a daub of plaster. It often occurs in folk-lore. In the drama of the “Toy Cart” the thief hesitates whether he shall make the hole in the wall of Charudatta’s house in the likeness of a Swâstika or of a water jar. A hymn of the Rigveda[25] speaks of the all-seeing eye of the sun whose beams reveal his presence, gleaming like brilliant flames to nation after nation. This same conception of the sun as an eye is common in the folk-lore of the West.[26]
Moon-worship.
The fate of Chandra or Soma, the Moon godling, is very similar. The name Soma, originally applied to the plant the juice of which was used as a religious intoxicant, came to be used in connection with the moon in the post-Vedic mythology. There are many legends to account for the waning of the moon and the spots on his surface, for the moon, like the sun, is always treated as a male godling. One of the legends current to explain the phases of the moon has been already referred to. According to another story the moon married the twenty-seven asterisms, the daughters of the Rishi Daksha, who is the hero of the curious tale of the sacrifice now located at Kankhal, a suburb of Hardwâr. Umâ or Pârvatî, the spouse of Siva, was also a daughter of Daksha, and when he, offended with his son-in-law Siva, did not invite him to the great sacrifice, Umâ became Satî, and in his rage Siva created Vîrabhadra, who killed the sage. Soma after marrying the asterisms devoted himself to one of them, Rohinî, which aroused the jealousy of the others. They complained to their father Daksha, who cursed the moon with childlessness and consumption. His wives, in pity, interceded for him, but the curse of the angry sage could not be wholly removed: all that was possible was to modify it so that it should be periodical, not permanent. In an earlier legend, of which there is a trace in the Rig Veda,[27] the gods, by drinking up the nectar, caused the waning of the moon. Another curious explanation is current in Bombay. One evening Ganesa fell off his steed, the rat, and the moon could not help laughing at his misfortune. To punish him the angry god vowed that no one should ever see the moon again. The moon prayed for forgiveness, and Ganesa agreed that the moon should be disgraced only on his birthday, the Ganesa Chaturthî. On this night the wild hogs hide themselves that they may not see the moon, and the Kunbis hunt them down and kill them.[28]
There are also many explanations to account for the spots in the moon. In Western lands the moon is inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back; but it is not clear of what offence this was the punishment. Dante says he is Cain; Chaucer says he was a thief, and gives him a thorn-bush to carry; Shakespeare gives him thorns to carry, but provides him with a dog as a companion. In Ireland children are taught that he picked faggots on a Sunday and is punished as a Sabbath-breaker. In India the creature in the moon is usually a hare, and hence the moon is called Sasadhara, “he that is marked like a hare.” According to one legend the moon became enamoured of Ahalyâ, the wife of the Rishi Gautama, and visited her in the absence of her husband. He returned, and finding the guilty pair together, cursed his wife, who was turned into a stone; then he threw his shoe at the moon, which left a black mark, and this remains to this day. The scene of this event has been localized at Gondar in the Karnâl District. By another variant of the legend it was Vrihaspati, the Guru or religious adviser of the gods, who found the moon with his wife. The holy man was just returning from his bath in the Ganges, and he threw his dripping loin-cloth at the moon, which produced the spots. In Upper India, again, little children are taught to call the moon Mâmû or “maternal uncle,” and the dark spots are said to represent an old woman who sits there working her spinning-wheel.
The moon has one special function in connection with disease. One of his titles is Oshadhipati or “lord of the medicinal plants.” Hence comes the idea that roots and simples, and in particular those that are to be used for any magical or mystic purpose, should be collected by moonlight. Thus in Shakespeare Jessica says,—
“In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Aeson.”
And Laertes speaks of the poison “collected from all simples that have virtue under the moon.”[29] Hence the belief that the moon has a sympathetic influence over vegetation. Tusser[30] advised the peasant,—
“Sow peason and beans, in the wane of the moon.
Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soon;
That they with the planet may rest and arise,
And flourish, with bearing most plentiful wise.”
The same rule applies all over Northern India, and the phases of the moon exercise an important influence on all agricultural operations.
Based on the same principle is the custom of drinking the moon. Among Muhammadans in Oudh, “a silver basin being filled with water, is held in such a situation that the full moon may be reflected in it. The person to be benefited by the draught is required to look steadfastly on the moon in the basin, then shut his eyes and quaff the liquid at a draught. This remedy is advised by medical professors in nervous cases, and also for palpitation of the heart.”[31] Somewhat similar customs prevail among Hindus in Northern India. At the full moon of the month Kuâr (September-October) people lay out food on the house-tops, and when it has absorbed the rays of the moon they distribute it among their relations; this is supposed to lengthen life. On the same night girls pour out water in the moonlight, and say that they are pouring out the cold weather, which was hidden in the water jar. The habit of making patients look at the moon in ghi, oil, or milk is common, and is said to be specially efficacious for leprosy and similar diseases.
There is now little special worship of Soma or Chandra, and when an image is erected to him it is generally associated with that of Sûrya. In the old ritual Anumati or the moon just short of full was specially worshipped in connection with the Manes. The full-moon day was provided with a special goddess, Râkâ. Nowadays the phases largely influence the domestic ritual. All over the world we find the idea that anything done or suffered by man on a waxing moon tends to develop, whereas anything done or suffered on a waning moon tends to diminish. Thus a popular trick charm for warts is to look at the new moon, lift some dust from under the left foot, rub the wart with it, and as the moon wanes the wart dies.[32] It is on the days of the new and full moon that spirits are most numerous and active. The Code of Manu directs that ceremonies are to be performed at the conjunction and opposition of the moon.[33] Among the Jews it would seem that the full moon was prescribed for national celebrations, while those of a domestic character took place at the new moon; there is some evidence to show that this may be connected with the habit of pastoral nations performing journeys in the cool moonlight nights.[34]
Horace speaks of rustic Phidyle,—
“Coelo supinas si tuleris manus,
Nascente Lunâ rustica Phidyle,”[35]
and Aubrey of the Yorkshire maids who “doe worship the new moon on their bare knees, kneeling upon an earth-fast stone.” Irish girls on first seeing the moon when new fall on their knees and address her with a loud voice in the prayer—“O Moon! Leave us as well as you found us!”[36] It is a common practice in Europe to turn a piece of silver, which being white is the lunar metal, when the new moon is first seen. So Hindus at the first sight of the new moon hold one end of their turbans in their hands, take from it seven threads, present them to the moon with a prayer, and then exchange the compliments of the season. In Bombay[37] on all new moon days Brâhmans offer oblations of water and sesamum seed to their ancestors, and those who are Agnihotris and do the fire sacrifice kindle the sacred fire on all new and full moon days. Musalmâns on the new moon which comes after the new year sprinkle the blood of a goat beside the house door. In Bombay a young Musalmân girl will not go out at the new moon or on a Thursday, apparently because this is the time that evil spirits roam abroad. In Upper India the houses of the pious are freely plastered with a mixture of earth and cow-dung, and no animal is yoked.
A curious idea applies to the new moon of Bhâdon (August). Whoever looks at the moon on this day will be the victim of false accusations during the following year. The only way to avoid this is to perform a sort of penance by getting someone to shy brickbats at your house, which at other times is regarded as an extreme form of insult and degradation. There is a regular festival held for this purpose at Benares on the fourth day of Bhâdon (August), which is known as the Dhela Chauth Mela, or “the clod festival of the fourth.”[38] We shall come across later on other examples of the principle that to court abuse under certain circumstances is a means of propitiating the spirits of evil and avoiding danger from them. This is probably the origin of the practice in Orissa—“On the Khurda estate the peasants give a curious reason for the absence of garden cultivation and fruit trees, which form a salient feature in that part of the country. In our own districts every homestead has its little ring of vegetable ground. But in Khurda one seldom meets with these green spots except in Brâhman villages. The common cultivators say that from time immemorial they considered it lucky at a certain festival for a man to be annoyed and abused by his neighbours. With a view to giving ample cause of offence they mutilate the fruit trees and trample the gardens of their neighbours, and so court fortune by bringing down the wrath of the injured owner.”[39] We shall see that this is one probable explanation of the indecency which prevails at the Holî festival.
Moon-worship appears to be more popular in Bihâr and Bengal than in the North-West Provinces or the Panjâb.[40] The fourth day of the waxing moon in the month of Bhâdon is sacred to the moon and known as Chauk Chanda. It is very unlucky to look at the moon on that day, as whoever does so will make his name infamous. The story runs that Takshaka, the king of the snakes, stole the ear-rings of King Aditi, who, being unable to discover the thief, laid it to the charge of Krishna, whose thefts of milk and cream from the Gopîs had made him sufficiently notorious. Krishna, mortified at this false accusation, recovered and restored the ear-ring, and as this was the day on which Krishna was wrongfully disgraced, the moon of that night is invested with associations of special sinfulness. Some people fast and in the evening eat only rice and curds. Brâhmans worship the moon with offerings of flowers and sweetmeats, and people get stones thrown at their houses, as further west on the day of the Dhela Chauth. On this day schoolboys visit their friends and make a peculiar noise by knocking together two coloured sticks, like castanets.
One idea lying at the base of much of the respect paid to the moon is that it is the abode of the Pitri or sainted dead. This is a theory which is the common property of many primitive races.[41] The explanation probably is that the soul of the dead man rises with the smoke of the funeral pyre, and hence the realm of Yama would naturally be fixed in the moon. This seems to be the reason why the early Indian Buddhists worshipped the moon. At the new moon the monks bathed and shaved each other; and at a special service the duties of a monk were recited. On full moon days they dined at the houses of laymen. On that night a platform was raised in the preaching hall. The superior brethren chanted the law, and the people greeted the name of Buddha with shouts of “Sâdhu” or “the holy one.”[42]
Eclipses and the Fire Sacrifice.
Hindus, like other primitive races, have their eclipse demons. “When once the practice of bringing down the moon had become familiar to the primitive Greek, who saw it done at sacred marriages and other rites, he was provided with an explanation of lunar eclipses; some other fellow was bringing down the moon for his private ends. And at the present day in Greece the proper way to stop a lunar eclipse is to call out ‘I see you!’ and thus make the worker of this deed of darkness desist. So completely did this theory, which we must regard as peculiarly Greek, establish itself in ancient Greece, that strange to say, not a trace of the earlier primitive theory, according to which some monster swallows the eclipsed moon, is to be found in classical Greek literature, unless the beating of metal instruments to frighten away the monster be a survival of the primitive practice.”[43]
In India, however, this earlier explanation of the phenomena of eclipses flourishes in full vigour. The eclipse demon, Râhu, whose name means “the looser” or “the seizer,” was one of the Asuras or demons. When the gods produced the Amrita, or nectar, from the churned ocean, he disguised himself like one of them and drank a portion of it. The sun and moon detected his fraud and informed Vishnu, who severed the head and two of the arms of Râhu from the trunk. The portion of nectar which he had drunk secured his immortality; the head and tail were transferred to the solar sphere, the head wreaking its vengeance on the sun and moon by occasionally swallowing them, while the tail, under the name of Ketu, gave birth to a numerous progeny of comets and fiery meteors. By another legend Ketu was turned into the demon Sainhikeya and the Arunah Ketavah or “Red apparitions,” which often appear in the older folk-lore.
Ketu nowadays is only a vague demon of disease, and Râhu too has suffered a grievous degradation. He is now the special godling of the Dusâdhs and Dhângars, two menial tribes found in the Eastern districts of the North-Western Provinces. His worship is a kind of fire sacrifice. A ditch seven cubits long and one and a quarter cubits broad (both numbers of mystical significance) is dug and filled with burning faggots, which are allowed to smoulder into cinders. One of the tribal priests in a state of religious afflatus walks through the fire, into which some oil or butter is poured to make a sudden blaze. It is said that the sacred fire is harmless; but some admit that a certain preservative ointment is used by the performers. The worshippers insist on the priest coming in actual contact with the flames, and a case occurred some years ago in Gorakhpur when one of the priests was degraded on account of his perfunctory discharge of this sacred duty. The same rule applies to the priest who performs the rites at the lighting of the Holî fire. It is needless to say that similar rites prevail elsewhere, chiefly in Southern India.[44]
In connection with this rite of fire-walking they have another function in which a ladder is made of wooden sword-blades, up which the priest is compelled to climb, resting the soles of his feet on the edges of the weapons. When he reaches the top he decapitates a white cock which is tied to the summit of the ladder. This kind of victim is, as we have already seen, appropriate to propitiate the Sun godling, and there can be little doubt that the main object of this form of symbolical magic is to appease the deities which control the rain and harvests.
Brâhmans so far join in this low-caste worship as to perform the fire sacrifice (homa) near the trench where the ceremony is being performed. In Mirzapur one of the songs recited on this occasion runs: “O devotee! How many cubits long is the trench which thou hast dug? How many maunds of butter hast thou poured upon it that the fire billows rise in the air? Seven cubits long is the trench; seven maunds of firewood hast thou placed within it. One and a quarter maunds of firewood hast thou placed within it. One and a quarter maunds of butter hast thou poured into the trench that the fire billows rise to the sky.” All this is based on the idea that fire is a scarer of demons, a theory which widely prevails. The Romans made their flocks and herds pass through fire, over which they leaped themselves. In Ireland, when the St. John’s Eve fire has burnt low, “the young men strip to the waist and leap over or through the flames, and he who braves the greatest blaze is considered the victor over the powers of evil.”[45]
By a curious process of anthropomorphism, another legend makes Râh or Râhu, the Dusâdh godling, to have been not an eclipse demon, but the ghost of an ancient leader of the tribe who was killed in battle.[46] A still grosser theory of eclipses is found in the belief held by the Ghasiyas of Mirzapur that the sun and moon once borrowed money from some of the Dom tribe and did not pay it back. Now in revenge a Dom occasionally devours them and vomits them up again when the eclipse is over.
Eclipse Observances.
Eclipses are of evil omen. Gloucester sums up the matter:[47] “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us; though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities mutinies; in countries discord; in palaces treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father.” The Hindu authority[48] writes much to the same effect. “Eclipses usually portend or cause grief; but if rain without unusual symptoms fall within a week of the eclipse, all baneful influences come to nought.”
Among high-caste Hindus no food which has remained in the house during an eclipse of the sun or moon can be eaten; it must be given away, and all earthen vessels in use in the house at the time must be broken. Mr. Conway[49] takes this to mean that “the eclipse was to have his attention called by outcries and prayers to the fact that if it was fire he needed there was plenty on earth; and if food, he might have all in the house, provided he would consent to satisfy his appetite with articles of food less important than the luminaries of heaven.” The observance is more probably based on the idea of ceremonial pollution caused by the actual working of demoniacal agency.
Food is particularly liable to this form of pollution. The wise housewife, when an eclipse is announced, takes a leaf of the Tulasî or sacred basil, and sprinkling Ganges water on it, puts the leaf in the jars containing the drinking water for the use of the family and the cooked food, and thus keeps them pure while the eclipse is going on. Confectioners, who are obliged to keep large quantities of cooked food ready, relieve themselves and their customers from the taboo by keeping some of the sacred Kusa or Dûb grass in their vessels when an eclipse is expected. A pregnant woman will do no work during an eclipse, as otherwise she believes that her child would be deformed, and the deformity is supposed to bear some relation to the work which is being done by her at the time. Thus, if she were to sew anything, the baby would have a hole in its flesh, generally near the ear; if she cut anything, the child would have a hare-lip. On the same principle the horns of pregnant cattle are smeared with red paint during an eclipse, because red is a colour abhorred by demons. While the eclipse is going on, drinking water, eating food, and all household business, as well as the worship of the gods, are all prohibited. No respectable Hindu will at such a time sleep on a bedstead or lie down to rest, and he will give alms in barley or copper coins to relieve the pain of the suffering luminaries.
So among Muhammadans,[50] a bride-elect sends offerings of intercession (sadqa) to her intended husband, accompanied by a goat or kid, which must be tied to his bedstead during the continuance of the eclipse. These offerings are afterwards distributed in charity. Women expecting to be mothers are carefully kept awake, as they believe that the security of the coming infant depends on the mother being kept from sleep. They are not allowed to use a needle, scissors, knife, or any other instrument for fear of drawing blood, which at that time would be injurious to both mother and child.
But among Hindus the most effectual means of scaring the demon and releasing the afflicted planet is to bathe in some sacred stream. At this time a Brâhman should stand in the water beside the worshipper and recite the Gâyatrî. At an eclipse of the moon it is advisable to bathe at Benares, and when the sun is eclipsed at Kurukshetra. Bernier[51] gives a very curious account of the bathing which he witnessed at Delhi during the great eclipse of 1666. In the lower Himâlayas the current ritual prescribes an elaborate ceremony, when numerous articles are placed in the sacred water jar; the image of the snake god, stamped in silver, is worshipped, and the usual gifts are made.[52]
In Ladâkh ram horns are fixed on the stems of fruit trees as a propitiatory offering at the time of an eclipse, and trees thus honoured are believed to bear an unfailing crop of the choicest fruit.[53]
Another effectual means of scaring the demon is by music and noise, of which we shall find instances later on. “The Irish and Welsh, during eclipses, run about beating kettles and pans, thinking their clamour and vexations available to the assistance of the higher orbs.”[54] So in India, women go about with brass pans and beat them to drive Râhu from his prey.
Of course, the time of an eclipse is most inauspicious for the commencement of any important business. Here again the learned Aubrey confirms the current Hindu belief. “According to the rules of astrology,” he says, “it is not good to undertake any business of importance in the new moon or at an eclipse.”
Star-worship.
The worship of the other constellations is much less important than those of the greater luminaries which we have been discussing. The Hindu names nine constellations, known as Nava-graha, “the nine seizers,” specially in reference to Râhu, which grips the sun and moon in eclipses, and more generally in the astrological sense of influencing the destinies of men. These nine stars are the sun (Sûrya), the moon (Soma, Chandra), the ascending and descending nodes (Râhu, Ketu), and the five planets—Mercury (Budha), Venus (Sukra), Mars (Mangala, Angâraka), Jupiter (Vrihaspati), and Saturn (Sani). This group of nine stars is worshipped at marriages and other important religious rites. Of the signs of the Zodiac (râsi-chakra) the rural Hindu knows little more than the names—Mesha (Aries), Vrisha (Taurus), Mithuna (Gemini), Karka (Cancer), Sinha (Leo), Kanya (Virgo), Tula (Libra), Vrischika (Scorpio), Dhanu (Sagittarius), Makara (Capricornus), Kumbha (Aquarius), and Mîna (Pisces). Practically the only direct influence they exercise over his life is that from the opening Râsi or sign in which he is born the first letter of the secret name which he bears is selected. Still less concern has he with the asterisms or Nakshatra, a word which has been variously interpreted to mean “coming or ascending,” “night guardians,” or “undecaying.” As already stated, they are said to have been the twenty-seven daughters of the Rishi Daksha, and wives of Soma or the moon. The usual enumeration gives twenty-eight, and they are vaguely supposed to represent certain stars or constellations, but the identification of these is very uncertain. One list, with some of the corresponding stars, gives Sravishthâ or Dhanishthâ (Delphinus), Sata-bhishaj (Aquarius), Pûrva Bhâdrapadâ, Uttara Bhâdrapadâ, Revatî, Asvinî (Aries), Bharanî (Musca), Krittikâ (the Pleiades), Rohinî (Aldebaran), Mriga-siras (Orion), Ârdrâ, Punarvasû, Pushya, Âsleshâ, Maghâ (Leo), Pûrvâ-Phalgunî, Uttara Phalgunî, Hasta (Corvus), Chitrâ (Spica Virginis), Svâtî (Arcturus), Visâkha (Libra), Anurâdhâ, Jyeshthâ, Mûla, Pûrva Âshâdhâ, Uttara Âshâdhâ, Abhijit (Lyra), and Sravana. These are used only in calculating the marriage horoscope, and the only one of them with which the fairly well-to-do rustic has much concern is with the unlucky Mûla. Should by an evil chance his son be born in this asterism, he has to undergo a most elaborate rite of purification.
Others stars have their legends. The Riksha or constellation of the Great Bear represents the seven deified Rishis—Gautama, Bhâradwaja, Viswamitra, Jamadagni, Vashishtha, Kasyapa and Atri. Dhruva, the Pole Star, was the grandson of Manu Swayambhuva, and was driven from his home by his step-mother. He, though a Kshatriya, joined the company of the Rishis and was finally raised to the skies as Grahadhâra, “the pivot of the plants.” So Canopus is the Rishi Agastya who was perhaps one of the early Aryan missionaries to Southern India and won a place in heaven by his piety. Orion is Mrigasiras, the head of Brahma in the form of a stag which was struck off by Siva when the deity attempted violence to his own daughter Sandhyâ, the twilight. Krittikâ or the Pleiades represent the six nurses of Kârttikeya, the god of war.
Part of the purificatory rite for a woman after her delivery is to bring her out at night and let her look at the stars, while her husband stands over her with a bludgeon to guard her from the assaults of demons. One interesting survival of the old mythology is that in Upper India women are fond of teaching their children that the stars are kine and the moon their shepherd, an idea which has formed the basis of much of the speculations of a school of comparative mythology now almost completely discredited.
The Rainbow.
There is much curious folk-lore about the rainbow. By most Hindus it is called the Dhanus or bow of Râma Chandra, and by Muhammadans the bow of Bâba Âdam or father Adam. In the Panjâb it is often known as the swing of Bîbî Bâî, the wife of the Saint Sakhi Sarwar. The Persians call it the bow of Rustam or of Shaitân or Satan, or Shamsher-i-’Ali—“the sword of ’Ali.” In Sanskrit it is Rohitam, the invisible bow of Indra. In the hills it is called Panihârin or the female water-bearer.
The Milky Way.
So with the Milky Way, of which an early name is Nâgavithi or the path of the snake. The Persians call it Kahkashân, the dragging of a bundle of straw through the sky. The Hindu calls it Akâsh Gangâ or the heavenly Ganges, Bhagwân kî kachahrî or the Court of God, Swarga-duâri or the door of Paradise; while to the Panjâbi it is known as Bera dâ ghâs or the path of Noah’s Ark. In Celtic legend it is the road along which Gwydion pursued his erring wife.
Earth-worship.
Next in order of reverence to the heavenly bodies comes the Earth goddess, Dharitrî or Dhartî Mâtâ or Dhartî Mâî, a name which means “the upholder” or “supporter.” She is distinguished from Bhûmi, “the soil,” which, as we shall see, has a god of its own, and from Prithivî, “the wide extended world,” which in the Vedas is personified as the mother of all things, an idea common to all folk-lore. The myth of Dyaus, the sky, and Prithivî, the earth, once joined and now separated, is the basis of a great chapter in mythology, such as the mutilation of Uranus by Cronus and other tales of a most distinctively savage type.[55] We meet the same idea in the case of Demeter, “the fruitful soil,” as contrasted with Gaea, the earlier, Titanic, formless earth; unless, indeed, we are to accept Mr. Frazer’s identification of Demeter with the Corn Mother.[56]
Worship of Mother Earth.
The worship of Mother Earth assumes many varied forms. The pious Hindu does reverence to her as he rises from his bed in the morning; and even the indifferent follows his example when he begins to plough and sow. In the Panjâb,[57] “when a cow or buffalo is first bought, or when she first gives milk after calving, the first five streams of milk drawn from her are allowed to fall on the ground in honour of the goddess, and every time of milking the first stream is so treated. So, when medicine is taken, a little is sprinkled in her honour.” On the same principle the great Kublai Khân used to sprinkle the milk of his mares on the ground. “This is done,” says Marco Polo,[58] “on the injunction of the idolaters and idol priests, who say that it is an excellent thing to sprinkle milk on the ground every 28th of August, so that the earth and the air and the false gods shall have their share of it, and the spirits likewise that inhabit the air and the earth, and those beings will protect and bless the Kaan and his children, and his wives, and his folk and his gear, and his cattle and his horses, and all that is his.”
The same feeling is also shown in the primitive taboo, which forbids that any holy thing, such as the blood of a tribesman, should fall upon the ground. Thus we are told that Kublai Khân ordered his captive Nayan “to be wrapped in a carpet and tossed to and fro so mercilessly that he died, and the Kaan caused him to be put to death in this way, because he would not have the blood of his Line Imperial spilt upon the ground, and exposed to the eye of heaven and before the sun.” Even some savages when they are obliged to shed the blood of a member of the tribe, as at the rite of circumcision, receive it upon their own bodies. The soul, in fact, is supposed to be in the blood, and any ground on which the blood falls becomes taboo or accursed.[59]
Throughout Northern India the belief in the sanctity of the earth is universal. The dying man is laid on the earth at the moment of dissolution, and so is the mother at the time of parturition. In the case of the dying there is perhaps another influence at work in this precaution, the idea that the soul must not be barred by roof or wall, and allowed to wing its course unimpeded to the place reserved for it.
In the eastern districts of the North-Western Provinces there is a regular rite common to all the inferior castes that a few days before a wedding the women go in procession to the village clay-pit and fetch from there the sacred earth (matmangara), which is used in making the marriage altar and the fireplace on which the wedding feast is cooked. There are various elements in the ritual which point to a very primitive origin. Thus, one part of the proceedings is that a Chamâr, one of the non-Aryan castes, leads the procession, beating his drum the whole time to scare demons. When the earth has been collected the drum is worshipped and smeared with red lead. There can be little doubt that the drum was one of the very primitive fetishes of the aboriginal races. One, and perhaps about the most primitive, form of it is the Damaru or drum shaped like an hour-glass which accompanies Siva, and next to this comes the Mândar, the sides of which are formed out of earthenware, and which is the first stage in the development of a musical instrument from a vessel covered with some substance which resounds when beaten. This latter form of drum is the national musical instrument of the Central Indian Gonds and their brethren. The Chamâr, again, digs the earth with an affectation of secrecy, which, as we shall see, is indispensable in rites of this class. The mother of the bride or bridegroom veils herself with her sheet, and the digger passes the earth over his left shoulder to a virgin who stands behind him and receives it in a corner of her robe.
Dust, again, which has been trodden on has mystic powers. In the villages you may see little children after an elephant has passed patting the marks of his feet in the dust and singing a song. Among the Kunbis of Kolâba, when the women neighbours come to inspect a newly-born child, they touch the soles of the mother’s feet, as if picking some dust off them, wave it over the child, and blow the dust particularly into the air and partly over the baby.[60] In Thâna, when a mother goes out with a young child on her hip, if she cannot get lamp-black to rub between its eyes, she takes dust off her left foot and rubs it on the child’s forehead.[61] So we read of the Isle of Man—“If a person endowed with the Evil Eye has just passed by a farmer’s herd of cattle, and a calf has suddenly been seized with a serious illness, the farmer hurries after the man with the Evil Eye to get the dust from under his feet. If he objects, he may, as has sometimes been very unceremoniously done, throw him down by force, take off his shoes and scrape off the dust adhering to their soles, and carry it back to throw over the calf. Even that is not always necessary, as it appears to be quite enough if he takes up dust where he of the Evil Eye has just trod.”[62]
Earth, again, is regarded as a remedy for disease. I have seen people in Ireland take a pinch of earth from the grave of a priest noted for his piety, and drink it dissolved in water. People suffering from a certain class of disease come to the tomb of the Saint Kadri at Yemnur in Dharwâr and smear their bodies with mud that they may be cured of the disease.[63] There are numerous instances of the use of earth as a poultice and an application for the cure of wounds and sores among the savage tribes of Africa and elsewhere.
It is on much the same principle that among some tribes in India Mother Earth is worshipped as a Kuladevatâ or household goddess and appealed to in times of danger. The Hindu troopers at the battle of Kâmpti, at the crisis of the engagement, took dust from their grooms and threw it over their heads. At Sûrat in 1640, in fear of drought, Brâhmans went about carrying a board with earth on it on their heads.[64] So wrestlers, when they are about to engage in a contest, rub earth on their arms and legs and roll on the ground. As in the classical legend of Antaeus, they believe that they derive strength from the touch of Mother Earth.
The same principle, also, appears to be at the bottom of many similar practices. Thus the Hindu always uses earth to purify his cooking vessels, which he regards with peculiar respect. Mourners of the Jaina creed on going home after a funeral rub their hands with earth and water to remove the death impurity. In his daily bath the pious Hindu rubs a little Ganges mud on his body. The Pârsis cover the parings of their hair and nails with a little earth so that demons may not enter into them. The Muhammadan uses earth for the purpose of purification when water is not procurable. For the same reason the ascetic rubs his body with dust and ashes, which, as we shall see, is a potent scarer of demons. Though here there is possibly another theory at work at the same time. The practice was common to the Greek as well as to the barbarian mysteries, and according to Mr. Lang, “the idea clearly was that by cleaning away the filth plastered over the body was symbolized the pure and free condition of the initiate.”[65]
Lastly, it is perhaps on the same principle that many universal burial customs have originated. The Muhammadan phrase for burial is mattî-denâ, “to give earth.” The unburied mariner asks Horace for the gift of a little earth. We ourselves consider it a pious duty to throw a little earth on the coffin of a departed friend. The same custom prevails among many Hindu tribes. The Chambhârs of Pûna throw handfuls of earth over the corpse; so do the Halâl-khors; the Lingâyats of Dharwâr follow the same practice. The Bani Isrâils at a funeral stuff a handful of earth into a pillow which is put under the head of the corpse.[66] The same conception was probably the basis of the universal custom of funeral oblations. Even nowadays in Scotland all the milk in the house is poured on the ground at a death, and the same custom is familiar through many Hebrew and Homeric instances. The same idea appears in the custom prevalent in the Middle Ages in Germany, that when a nun renounced the world and became civilly dead her relations threw dust on her arms.[67]
Earth-worship among the Drâvidians.
Among the Drâvidian races of Central India earth-worship prevails widely. In Chota Nâgpur the Orâons celebrate in spring the marriage of the earth. The Dryad of the Sâl tree (Shorea robusta), who controls the rain, is propitiated with a sacrifice of fowls. Flowers of the Sâl tree are taken to the village and carried round from house to house in a basket. The women wash the feet of the priest and do obeisance to him. He dances with them and puts some flowers upon them and upon the house. They first douse him with water as a means of bringing the rain, and then refresh him with beer.[68]
In Hoshangâbâd, when the sowing is over, its completion is celebrated by the Machandrî Pûjâ, or worship of Mother Earth, a ceremony intended to invoke fertility. “Every cultivator does the worship himself, with his family, servants, etc.; no Brâhman need join in it. At the edge of one of his fields intended for the spring harvest, he puts up a little semicircle or three-sided wall of clods about a foot high, meant to represent a hut. This is covered over with green Kâns grass (Imperata spontanea) to represent thatch. At the two ends of the hut two posts of Palâsa wood (Butea frondosa) are erected, with leaves round the head like those which are put up at marriage. They are tied to the thatch with red thread. In the centre of this little house, which is the temple of Machandrî, or Mother Earth, a little fire is made, and milk placed on it to boil in a tiny earthen pot. It is allowed to boil over as a sign of abundance. While this is going on, the ploughmen, who are all collected in a field, drive their bullocks at a trot, striking them wildly; it is the end of the year’s labour for the cattle. The cultivator meanwhile offers a little rice, molasses, and saffron to Machandrî, and then makes two tiny holes in the ground to represent granaries; he drops a few grains in and covers them over; this is a symbol of prayer, that his granary may be filled from the produce of the land.” Similar instances of symbolical magic will constantly occur in connection with similar rites. Then he puts a little saffron on the foreheads of the ploughman and the bullocks, and ties a red thread round the horns of the cattle. The animals are then let go, and the ploughmen run off at full speed across country, scattering wheat boiled whole as a sign of abundance. This concludes the rite, and every one returns home.[69]
Many similar usages prevail among the jungle tribes of South Mirzapur. The Korwas consider Dhartî Mâtâ one of their chief godlings. She lives in the village in the Deohâr or general village shrine under a Sâl tree. In the month of Aghan (November–December) she is worshipped with flowers and the offering of a goat. When she is duly worshipped the crops prosper and there are no epidemics. The Patâris and Majhwârs also recognize her as a goddess, and worship her in the month of Sâwan (August). The local devil priest or Baiga offers to her a goat, cock, and rich cakes (pûri). She is also worshipped in the cold weather before the grain and barley are sown, and again on the threshing-floor before the winnowing begins. The flesh of the animals is consumed by the males and unmarried girls; no grown-up girl or married woman is allowed to touch the flesh. The Ghasiyas also believe in Dhartî Mâtâ. She is their village goddess, and is presented with a ram or a goat or cakes. The offering is made by the Baiga, for whom the materials are provided by a general contribution in the village. The Kharwârs worship her at the village shrine before wood-cutting and ploughing begin. In the month of Sâwan (August) they do a special service in her honour, known as the Hariyârî Pûjâ, or “worship of greenery,” at the time of transplanting the rice. In Aghan (November) they do the Khar Pûjâ, when they begin cutting thatching-grass (khar). A cock, some Mahua (Bassia latifolia) and parched grain are offered to her. All this is done by the Baiga, who receives the offerings, and none but males are allowed to attend. Similarly the Pankas worship her before sowing and harvesting the grain. They and the Bhuiyârs offer a pig and some liquor at the more important agricultural seasons. The Kharwârs sometimes call her Devî Dâî, or “Nurse Devî,” and in times of trouble sprinkle rice and pulse in her name on the ground. When the crops are being sown they release a fowl as a scapegoat and pray—Hê Dhartî Mahtârî! Kusal mangala rakhiyo! Harwâh, bail, sab bachen rahen—“O Mother Earth! Keep in prosperity and protect the ploughmen and the oxen.” In much the same spirit is the prayer of the peasant in Karnâl to Mother Earth:—Sâh Bâdshâh sê surkhrû rakhiyê! Aur is men achchha nâj dê, to bâdshâh ko bhî paisa den, aur Sâh kâ bhi utar jâwê—“Keep our rulers and bankers contented! Grant us a plentiful yield! So shall we pay our revenue and satisfy our banker!”[70]
Secrecy in Worship of Mother Earth.
We shall meet other instances in which secrecy is an essential element in these rural rites. This condition prevails almost universally. Notable, too, is the rule by which married women are excluded from a share in offerings to the Earth goddess.
Thunder and Lightning.
As is natural, thunder and lightning are considered ill-omened. In the old mythology lightning (vidyut) was one of the weapons of the Maruts, and Parjanya was the deity who wielded the thunderbolt. Many legends tell that the soul of the first man came to earth in the form of the lightning. Thus Yama was the first man born of the thunderbolt, and he first trod the path of death and became regent of the dead. Many are the devices to scare the lightning demon. “During a thunderstorm it was a Greek custom to put out the fire, and hiss and cheep with the lips. The reason for the custom was explained by the Pythagoreans to be that by acting thus you scared the spirits in Tartarus, who were doubtless supposed to make the thunder and lightning. Similarly some of the Australian blacks, who attribute thunder to the agency of demons, and are much afraid of it, believe that they can dispel it by chanting some particular words and breathing hard; and it is a German superstition that the danger from a thunderstorm can be averted by putting out the fire. During a thunderstorm the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula run out of their houses and brandish their weapons to drive away the demons; and the Esthonians in Russia fasten scythes, edge upwards, over the door, that the demons, fleeing from the thundering god, may cut their feet if they try to seek shelter in the house. Sometimes the Esthonians, for a similar purpose, take all the edged tools in the house and throw them out into the yard. It is said that when the thunder is over, spots of blood are often found on the scythes and knives, showing that the demons have been wounded by them.
“So when the Indians of Canada were asked by the Jesuit missionaries why they planted their swords in the ground point upwards, they replied that the spirit of the thunder was sensible, and that if he saw the naked blades he would turn away and take good care not to approach their huts. This is a fair example of the close similarity of European superstitions to the superstitions of savages. In the present case the difference happens to be slightly in favour of the Indians, since they did not, like our European savages, delude themselves into seeing the blood of demons on the swords. The reason for the Greek and German custom of putting out the fire during a thunderstorm is probably a wish to avoid attracting the attention of the thunder demons. From a like motive some of the Australian blacks hide themselves during a thunderstorm, and keep absolutely silent, lest the thunder should find them out. Once during a storm a white man called out in a loud voice to a black fellow, with whom he was working, to put the saw under a log and seek shelter. He found that the saw had been already put aside, and the black fellow was very indignant at his master for speaking so loud. ‘What for,’ said he, in great wrath—‘what for speak so loud? Now um thunder hear and know where um saw is.’ And he went out and changed its hiding-place.”[71]
IMAGE OF GANGA MÂÎ.
All these precautions are well known to the people of Upper India. It is a very common habit to throw out axes and knives to scare the thunder demon, as we shall see is the case with the evil spirit of hail. The rule of keeping quiet and muttering incantations under the breath is also familiar to them. They are particularly careful lest a first-born son may lean against anything and thus attract the demon on himself. Thunder in a clear sky is much dreaded, an idea which often appears in classical literature.[72]
Earthquakes.
Earthquakes are also naturally an object of terror. Pythagoras believed that they were caused by dead men fighting beneath the earth. The common explanation of these occurrences in India is that Varâha, or the boar incarnation of Vishnu, who supports the earth, is changing the burden of the world from one tusk to another. By another account it is due to the great bull or elephant which supports the world. Derived from a more advanced theological stage is the theory that the earth shakes because it is over-burdened by the sins of mankind in this evil age. Colonel Dalton describes how a rumbling (probably caused by an earthquake) in the cave in which the bloodthirsty divinity of the Korwas was supposed to dwell, caused extreme terror among them.[73]
River-worship.
High on the list of benevolent deities of Northern India are the great rivers, especially the Ganges and the Jumnâ, which are known respectively as Gangâ Mâî or “Mother Ganges” and Jumnâ jî or “Lady Jumnâ.”
Gangâ, of course, in the mythologies has a divine origin. According to one account she flows from the toe of Vishnu, and was brought down from heaven by the incantations of the Saint Bhâgîratha, to purify the ashes of the sixty thousand sons of King Sâgara, who had been burnt up by the angry glance of Kapila, the sage. By another story she descends in seven streams from Siva’s brow. The descent of Gangâ disturbed the Saint Jahnu at his austerities, and in his anger he drank up the stream; but he finally relented, and allowed the river to flow from his ear. By a third account she is the daughter of Himavat, the impersonation of the Himâlayan range. Another curious tale, which must have been based on some Indian tradition, is found in Plutarch[74]—“The Ganges is a river of India, called so for the following reason:—The nymph Kalauria bore to Indus a son of notable beauty, by name Ganges, who in the ignorance of intoxication had connection with his mother. But when later on he learned the truth from his nurse, in the passion of his remorse he threw himself into the river Chliaros, which was called Ganges after him.” Another legend again is found in the Mahâbhârata.[75] The wise Santanu goes to hunt on the banks of the Ganges and finds a lovely nymph, of whom he becomes enamoured. She puts him under the taboo that he is never to say anything to displease her, an idea familiar in the well-known Swan Maiden cycle of folk-tales. She bears him eight sons, of whom she throws seven into the river, and her husband dares not remonstrate with her. When she is about to throw away the last child he challenges her to tell him who she is and to have pity upon him. She then tells him that she is Gangâ personified, and that the seven sons are the divine Vasavas, who by being thrown into the river are liberated from the curse of human life. The eighth remains among men as Dyaus, the sky, in the form of the eunuch Bhîshma.
GANGES WATER BEARERS.
It is remarkable that, as in Plutarch’s legend, the Jumnâ is connected with a tale of incest. Yamî or Yamunâ was the daughter of the Sun and sister of Yama, the god of death. They were the first human pair and the progenitors of the race of men. It is needless to say that similar traditions of brother and sister marriage are found in Egypt, Peru and elsewhere. Yamunâ, according to the modern story told on her banks, was unmarried, and hence some people will not drink from her because she was not purified by the marriage rite, and so the water is heavy and indigestible. Another tale tells how Balarâma, in a state of inebriety, called upon her to come to him that he might bathe in her waters; and as she did not heed, he, in his rage, seized his ploughshare weapon, dragged her to him, and compelled her to follow him whithersoever he wandered through the forest. The river then assumed a human form and besought his forgiveness; but it was some time before she could appease the angry hero. This has been taken to represent the construction of some ancient canal from the river; but Mr. Growse shows that this idea is incorrect.[76]
The worship of Mother Ganges is comparatively modern. She is mentioned only twice in the Rig Veda, and then without any emphasis or complementary epithet. Apparently at this time the so-called Aryan invaders had not reached her banks.[77] There are numerous temples to Gangâ all along her banks, of which those at Hardwâr, Garhmuktesar, Soron, Mathura, Prayâg, and Benares are perhaps the most important in Upper India. She has her special festival on the seventh of the month of Baisâkh (May-June), which is celebrated by general bathing all along the banks of the sacred stream. Ganges water is carried long distances into the interior, and is highly valued for its use in sacrifices, as a remedy, a form of stringent oath, and a viaticum for the dying. The water of certain holy wells in Scotland[78] and elsewhere enjoys a similar value.
But it is by bathing in the sacred stream at the full moon, during eclipses, and on special festivals that the greatest efficacy is assured. On these occasions an opportunity is taken for making oblations to the sainted dead whose ashes have been consigned to her waters. Bathing is throughout India regarded as one of the chief means of religious advancement. The idea rests on a metaphor—as the body is cleansed from physical pollution, so the soul is purified from sin. The stock case of the merit of this religious bathing is that of King Trisanku, “he who had committed the three deadly sins,” who is also known as Satyavrata. The legend appears in various forms. By one story he tried to win his way to heaven by a great sacrifice which his priest, Vasishtha, declined to perform. He then applied to Visvamitra, the rival Levite, who agreed to assist him. He was opposed by the sons of Vasishtha, whom he consumed to ashes. Finally, Trisanku was admitted to heaven, but he was forced by the angry saint to hang for ever with his head downwards. By another account he committed the deadly sins of running away with the wife of a citizen, offending his father, and killing in a time of famine Kâmadhenu, the wondrous cow of Vashishtha. By another story he killed a cow and a Brâhman and married his step-mother. At any rate he and the wicked Râja Vena were the types of violent sinners in the early legends; possibly they represent a revolt against the pretensions of the Brâhmans. At length the sage Visvamitra took pity upon him, and having collected water from all the sacred places in the world, washed him clean of his offences.
Springs Connected with the Ganges.
Many famous springs are supposed to have underground connection with the Ganges. Such is that of Chângdeo in Khândesh, of which Abul Fazl gives an account, and that at Jahânpur in Alwar.[79] It was at the village of Bastali in the Karnâl District that the sage Vyâsa lived, and there the Ganges flowed into his well to save him the trouble of going to the river to bathe, bringing with her his loin cloth and water-pot to convince him that she was really the Ganges herself.[80]
Sacred River Junctions.
When two sacred rivers combine their waters the junction (Sangama) is regarded as of peculiar sanctity. Such is the famous junction of the Ganges and Jumnâ at Prayâg, the modern Allahâbâd, which is presided over by the guardian deity Veni Mâdhava. The same virtue, but in a lesser degree, attaches to the junction of the Ganges and the Son or Gandak. In the Himâlayas cairns are raised at the junction of three streams, and every passer-by adds a stone. At the confluence of the Gaula and Baliya rivers in the Hills there is said to be a house of gold, but unfortunately it is at present invisible on account of some potent enchantment.[81] Bathing in such rivers is not only a propitiation for sin, but is also efficacious for the cure of disease. Even the wicked Râja Vena, who was, as we have seen, a type of old-world impiety, was cured, like Naaman the Syrian, of his leprosy by bathing in the Sâraswati, the lost river of the Indian desert.
Even minor streams have their sanctity and their legends. The course of the Sarju was opened by a Rishi, from which time dates the efficacy of a pilgrimage to Bâgheswar.[82] Râja Rantideva was such a pious king and offered up so many cattle in sacrifice, that his blood formed the river Chambal. Anasûyâ, the wife of Atri, was a daughter of the Rishi Daksha. She did penance for ten thousand years, and so was enabled to create the river Mandâkinî, and thus saved the land from famine. Her worship is localized at Ansuyaji in the Bânda District. The sacred portion of the Phalgu is said occasionally to flow with milk, though Dr. Buchanan was not fortunate enough to meet anyone who professed to have witnessed the occurrence.[83] The Narmadâ was wooed by the river Son, who proved faithless to her, and was beguiled by the Johilâ, a rival lady stream, who acted the part of the barber’s wife at the wedding. The Narmadâ, enraged at her lover’s perfidy, tore her way through the marble rocks at Jabalpur, and has worn the willow ever since.[84] She is now the great rival of Mother Ganges. While in the case of the latter only the Northern (or as it is called the Kâsi or Benares bank) is efficacious for bathing or for the cremation of the dead, the Narmadâ is free from any restriction of the kind. The same is the case with the Son, at least during its course through the District of Mirzapur. By some the sanctity of the Narmadâ is regarded as superior even to that of the Ganges. While according to some authorities it is necessary to bathe in the Ganges in order to obtain forgiveness of sins, the same result is attained by mere contemplation of the Narmadâ. According to the Bhâvishya Purâna the sanctity of the Ganges will cease on the expiration of five thousand years of the Kali Yuga, or the fourth age of the world, which occurred in 1895, and the Narmadâ will take its place. The Ganges priests, however, repudiate this calumny, and it may safely be assumed that Mother Ganges will not abandon her primacy in the religious world of Hinduism without a determined struggle.[85]
Ill-omened Streams.
But all rivers are not beneficent. Worst of all is the dread Vaitaranî, the river of death, which is localized in Orissa and pours its stream of ordure and blood on the confines of the realm of Yama. Woe to the wretch who in that dread hour lacks the aid of the Brâhman and the holy cow to help him to the other shore. The name of one stream is accursed in the ears of all Hindus, the hateful Karamnâsa, which flows for part of its course through the Mirzapur District. Even to touch it destroys the merit of works of piety, for such is the popular interpretation of its name. No plausible reason for the evil reputation of this particular stream has been suggested except that it may have been in early times the frontier between the invading Aryans and the aborigines, and possibly the scene of a campaign in which the latter were victorious. The Karamâ tree is, however, the totem of the Drâvidian Kharwârs and Mânjhis, who live along its banks, and it is perhaps possible that this may be the real origin of the name, and that its association with good works (karma) was an afterthought.
The legend of this ill-omened stream is associated with that of the wicked king Trisanku, to whom reference has already been made. When the sage Visvamitra collected water from all the sacred streams of the world, it fell burdened with the monarch’s sins into the Karamnâsa, which has remained defiled ever since. By another account, the sinner was hung up between heaven and earth as a punishment for his offences, and from his body drips a baneful moisture which still pollutes the water. Similar legends of the origin of rivers are not wanting in folk-lore. An Austrian story tells that all rivers take their origin from the tears shed by a giant’s wife as she laments his death.[86] The same idea of a river springing from a corpse appears in one of the tales of Somadeva and in the twelfth novel of the Gesta Romanorum.[87] Nowadays no Hindu with any pretensions to personal purity will drink from this accursed stream, and at its fords many low caste people make their living by conveying on their shoulders their more scrupulous brethren across its waters.
Origin of River-worship.
It is perhaps worth considering the possible origin of this river-worship. Far from being peculiar to Hinduism, it is common to the whole Aryan world. The prayer of the patient Odysseus[88] to the river after his sufferings in the deep is heard in almost the same language at every bathing Ghât in Upper India, from the source of Mother Ganges to where she joins the ocean. The river is always flowing, always being replenished by its tributary streams, and hence comes to be regarded as a thing of life, an emblem of eternal existence, a benevolent spirit which washes away the sins of humanity and supplies in a tropical land the chief needs of men. In a thirsty land the mighty stream of the Ganges would naturally arouse feelings of respect and adoration, not so much perhaps to those living on its banks and ever blessed by its kindly influence, as to the travel-worn pilgrim from the sandy steppes of Râjasthân or the waterless valleys of the Central Indian hills. We can hardly doubt that from this point of view Mother Ganges has been a potent factor in the spread of Hinduism. She became the handmaid of the only real civilization of which Hindustân could boast, and from her shrines bands of eager missionaries were ever starting to sow the seeds of the worship of the gods in the lands of the unbeliever.
The two great rivers of Upper India were, again, associated with that land of fable and mystery, the snowy range which was the home of the gods and the refuge of countless saints and mystics, who in its solitudes worked out the enigma of the world for the modern Hindu. They ended in the great ocean, the final home of the ashes of the sainted dead. Even the partially Hinduised Drâvidian tribes of the Vindhyan Plateau bring the bones of their dead relations to mingle with those of the congregation of the faithful, who have found their final rest in its waters since the world was young. The Ganges and the streams which swell its flood thus come to be associated with the deepest beliefs of the race, and it is hard to exaggerate its influence as a bond of union between the nondescript entities which go to make up modern Hinduism.
Again, much of the worship of rivers is connected with the propitiation of the water-snakes, demons and goblins, with which in popular belief many of them are infested. Such were Kâliyâ, the great black serpent of the Jumnâ, which attacked the infant Krishna; the serpent King of Nepâl, Karkotaka, who dwelt in the lake Nâgarâsa when the divine lotus of Adi Buddha floated on its surface.[89] At the temple of Triyugi Nârâyana in Garhwâl is a pool said to be full of snakes of a yellow colour which come out at the feast of the Nâgpanchamî to be worshipped. The Gârdevî, or river sprite of Garhwâl, is very malignant, and is the ghost of a person who has met his death by suicide, violence, or accident.[90] These malignant water demons naturally infest dangerous rapids and whirlpools, and it is necessary to propitiate them. Thus we learn that on the river Tâpti in Berâr timber floated down sometimes disappears in a subterraneous cavity; so before trying the navigation there the Gonds sacrifice a goat to propitiate the river demon.[91]
Another variety of these demons of water is the Nâga and his wife the Nâgin, of whom we shall hear more in connection with snake-worship. In the Sikandar, a tributary of the Son, is a deep water-hole where no one dares to go. The water is said to reach down as far as Pâtâla, or the infernal regions. Here live the Nâga and the Nâgin. In the middle of the river is a tree of the Kuâlo variety, and when ghosts trouble the neighbourhood an experienced Ojha or sorcerer is called, who bores holes in the bark of the tree and there shuts up the noxious ghosts, which then come under the rule of the Nâga and Nâgin, who are the supreme rulers of the ghostly band.
Another Mirzapur river, the Karsa, is infested by a Deo, or demon, known as Jata Rohini, or “Rohini of the matted locks.” He is worshipped by the Baiga priest to ensure abundant rain and harvests and to keep off disease. The Baiga catches a fish which he presents to the Deo, but if any one but a Baiga dares to drink there, the water bubbles up and the demon sweeps him away.
Like this Deo of Mirzapur, most of these water demons are malignant and wait until some wretched creature enters their domains, when they seize and drag him away. Some of them can even catch the reflection of a person as he looks into water, and hence savages all over the world are very averse to looking into deep water-holes. Thus, the Zulus believe that there is a beast in the water which can seize the shadow of a man, and men are forbidden to lean over and look into a deep pool, lest their shadow should be taken away. There is a tale of the Godiva cycle in which a woman at Arles is carried off by a creature called a Drac and made to act as nurse to the demon’s child.[92] In Scotland water-holes are known as “the cups of the fairies.” And there is the Trinity well in Ireland, into which no one can gaze with impunity, and from which the river Boyne once burst forth in pursuit of a lady who had insulted it.[93]
In India, also, dangerous creatures of this kind abound. There is in Mirzapur a famous water-hole, known as Barewa. A herdsman was once grazing his buffaloes near the place, when the waters rose in anger and carried off him and his cattle. Nowadays the drowned buffaloes have taken the shape of a dangerous demon known as Bhainsâsura, or the buffalo demon, who now in company with the Nâga and the Nâgin lives in this place, and no one dares to fish there until he has propitiated the demons with the offering of a fowl, eggs, and a goat. Another kind of water demon attacks fishermen; it appears in the form of a turban which fixes itself to his hook and increases in length as he tries to drag it to the shore.
There is, again, the water-horse, with whom we are familiar in the “Arabian Nights,” where he consorts with mares of mortal race. This creature is known in Kashmîr as the Zalgur.[94] The water-bull of Manxland is a creature of the same class, and they constantly appear through the whole range of Celtic folk-lore.[95] Such again is the Hydra of Greek mythology, and the Teutonic Nikke or Nixy, who has originated the legend of the Flying Dutchman, and in the shape of Old Nick is the terror of sailors. Like him is the Kelpie of Scotland, a water-horse who is believed to carry off the unwary by sudden floods and devour them. Of the same kindred is the last of the dragons which St. Patrick chained up in a lake on the Galtee Mountains in Tipperary.
Many pools, again, in Northern India are infested by a creature known as the Bûrna, who is the ghost of a drowned person. He is always on the look-out for someone to take his place, so he drags in people who come to fish in his domains.[96] He is particularly feared by the Magahiya Doms, a caste of degraded nomadic gipsies who infest Gorakhpur and Behâr.
Many of these demons, such as the Nâga and Nâgin, have kingdoms and palaces stored with treasure under the water, and there they entice young men and maidens, who occasionally come back to their mortal kindred and tell them of the wonders which they have seen. These are akin to Morgan la Fay of the Orlando Innamorato, La Motte Fouqué’s Undine, and they often merge into the mermaid of the Swan Maiden type of tale, who marries a mortal lover and leaves him at last because in his folly he breaks some taboo which is a condition of the permanence of their love.
But besides these dragons which infest rivers and lakes there are special water gods, many of which are the primitive water monster in a developed form. Such is Mahishâsura, who is the Mahishoba of Berâr, and like the Bhainsâsura already mentioned, infests great rivers and demands propitiation. According to the early mythology this Mahisha, the buffalo demon, was killed by Kârttikeya at the Krauncha pass in the Himâlaya, which was opened by the god to make a passage for the deities to visit the plains from Kailâsa. The Kols, again, have Nâga Era, who presides over tanks, wells, and any stagnant water, and Garha Era, the river goddess. “They,” as Col. Dalton remarks, “are frequently and very truly denounced as the cause of sickness and propitiated with sacrifices to spare their victims.”[97]
Floods and Drowning People.
Floods are, as we have seen, regarded as produced by demoniacal agency. In the Panjâb, when a village is in danger of floods, the headman makes an offering of a cocoa-nut and a rupee to the flood demon. As in many other places the cocoa-nut represents the head of a human victim, which in olden times was the proper offering. He holds the offering in his hand and stands in the water. When the flood rises high enough to wash the offering from his hand, it is believed that the waters will abate. Some people throw seven handfuls of boiled wheat and sugar into the stream and distribute the remainder among the persons present. Some take a male buffalo, a horse, or a ram, and after boring the right ear of the victim, throw it into the water. If the victim be a horse, it should be saddled before it is offered. A short time ago, when the town and temples at Hardwâr were in imminent danger during the Gohna flood, the Brâhmans poured vessels of milk, rice and flowers into the waters of Mother Ganges and prayed to her to spare them.
In the same connection may be noticed the very common prejudice which exists in India against saving drowning people. This is familiar in Western folk-lore. It is supposed to be alluded to in the “Twelfth Night” of Shakespeare, and the plot of Sir W. Scott’s “Pirate” turns upon it. Numerous instances of the same idea have been collected by Dr. Tylor and Mr. Conway.[98] Dr. Tylor considers that it is based upon the belief that to snatch a victim from the very clutches of the water spirit is a rash defiance of the deity which would hardly pass unavenged. Mr. Black[99] accounts for the idea on the ground that the spirits of people who have died a violent death may return to earth if they can find a substitute; hence the soul of the last dead man is insulted or injured by anyone preventing another from taking his place. This last theory is very common in Western folk-lore. Thus Lady Wilde writes from Ireland[100]:—“It is believed that the spirit of the dead last buried has to watch in the churchyard until another corpse is laid there, or to perform menial offices in the spirit world, such as carrying wood and water, till the next spirit comes from earth. They are also sent on messages to earth, chiefly to announce the coming death of some relative, and at this they are glad, for their own time of peace and rest will come at last.” So in Argyllshire,[101] it was believed that the spirit of the last interred kept watch around the churchyard until the arrival of another occupant, to whom its custody was transmitted. This, as we shall see in connection with the custom of barring the return of the ghost, quite agrees with popular feeling in India, and furnishes an adequate explanation of the prejudice against rescuing the drowning and incurring the wrath of the former ghost, who is thus deprived of the chance of release by making over his functions to a substitute.
Khwâja Khizr, the God of Water.
But besides these water spirits and local river gods, the Hindus have a special god of water, Khwâja Khizr, whose Muhammadan title has been Hinduised into Râja Kidâr, or as he is called in Bengal, Kâwaj or Pîr Badr. This is a good instance of a fact, which will be separately discussed elsewhere, that the Hindus are always ready to annex the deities and beliefs of other races.
According to the Sikandarnâma, Khwâja Khizr was a saint of Islâm, who presided over the well of immortality, and directed Alexander of Macedon in his vain search for the blessed waters. The fish is his vehicle, and hence its image is painted over the doors of both Hindus and Muhammadans, while it became the family crest of the late royal house of Oudh. Among Muhammadans a prayer is said to Khwâja Khizr at the first shaving of a boy, and a little boat is launched in a river or tank in his honour. The same rite is performed at the close of the rainy season, when it is supposed to have some connection with the saint Ilisha, that is to say the prophet Elisha. Elisha, by the way, apparently from the miraculous way in which his bones revived the dead, has come down in modern times to Italy as a worker of miracles, and is known to the Tuscan peasant as Elisaeus.[102]
Another legend represents Khwâja Khizr to be of the family of Noah, who is also regarded by rural Muhammadans as a water deity in connection with the flood. Others connect him with St. George, the patron saint of England, who is the Ghergis of Syria, and according to Muhammadan tradition was sent in the time of the Prophet to convert the King of Maushil, and came to life after three successive martyrdoms. Others identify him with Thammuz, Tauz, or Adonis. Others call him the companion of Moses, and the commentator Husain says he was a general in the army of Zu’l Qarnain, “he of the horns,” or Alexander the Great.[103]
Out of this jumble of all the mythologies has been evolved the Hindu god of water, the patron deity of boatmen, who is invoked by them to prevent their boats from being broken or submerged, or to show them the way when they have lost it. He is worshipped by burning lamps, feeding Brâhmans, and by setting afloat on a village pond a little raft of grass with a lighted lamp placed upon it. This, it may be noted, is one of the many ways in which the demon of evil or disease is sent away in many parts of the world.[104] Another curious function is, in popular belief, allotted to Khwâja Khizr, that of haunting markets in the early morning and fixing the rates of grain, which he also protects from the Evil Eye.[105]
The Folk-lore of Wells.
In this connection some of the folk-lore of wells may be mentioned. The digging of a well is a duty requiring infinite care and caution. The work should begin on Sunday, and on the previous Saturday night little bowls of water are placed round the proposed site, and the one which dries up least marks the best site for the well, which reminds us of the fleece of Gideon. The circumference is then marked and they commence to dig, leaving the central lump of earth intact. They cut out this clod of earth last and in the Panjâb call it Khwâjajî, perhaps after Khwâja Khizr, the water god, worship it and feed Brâhmans. If it breaks it is a bad omen, and a new site will be selected a week afterwards. Further east when a man intends to sink a well he inquires from the Pandit an auspicious moment for commencing the work. When that hour comes he worships Gaurî, Ganesa, Sesha Nâga, the world serpent, the earth, the spade and the nine planets. Then facing in the direction in which, according to the directions of the Pandit, Sesha Nâga is supposed to be lying at the time, he cuts five clods with the spade. When the workmen reach the point at which the wooden well-curb has to be fixed, the owner smears the curb in five places with red powder, and tying Dûb grass and a sacred thread to it, lowers it into its place. A fire sacrifice is done, and Brâhmans are fed. When the well is ready, cow-dung, milk, cow urine, butter and Ganges water, leaves of the sacred Tulasî and honey are thrown in before the water is used.
But no well is considered lucky until the Sâlagrâma, or spiral ammonite sacred to Vishnu, is solemnly wedded to the Tulasî or basil plant, representing the garden which the well is intended to water. The rite is done according to the standard marriage formula: the relations are assembled; the owner of the garden represents the bridegroom, while a kinsman of his wife stands for the bride. Gifts are given to Brâhmans, a feast is held in the garden, and both it and the well may then be used without danger. All this is on the same lines as many of the emblematical marriage rites which in other places are intended to promote the growth of vegetation.[106]
In Sirsa they have a legend that long ago, in time of drought, a headman of a village went to a Faqîr to beg him to pray for rain, and promised him his daughter in marriage if his prayer was successful. The rain came, but the headman would not perform his promise, and the Faqîr cursed the land, so that all the water became brackish. But he so far relented as to permit sweet water to flow on condition that it was given to all men free of cost. In one village the spring became at once brackish when a water-rate was levied, and turned sweet again when the tax was remitted. In another the brackish water became sweet at the intercession of a Faqîr. In the Panjâb there is a class of Faqîrs who are known as Sûnga, or “sniffers,” because they can smell out sweet water underground. They work on much the same lines as their brethren in England, who discover springs by means of the divining rod.[107] In one of the tales of Somadeva we have a doll which can produce water at will, which is like Lucian’s story of the pestle that was sent to fetch water. When the Egyptian sorcerer was away his pupil tried to perform the trick, but he did not know the charm for making the water stop, and the house was flooded. Then he chopped the pestle in two, but that only made matters worse, for both halves set to bring the water. This is somewhat like the magic quern of European folk-lore.[108]
The water of many wells is efficacious in the cure of disease. In Ireland, the first water drawn from a sacred well after midnight on May Eve is considered an effective antidote to witchcraft.[109] In India many wells have a reputation for curing barrenness, which is universally regarded as a disease, the work of supernatural agency. In India the water of seven wells is collected on the night of the Diwâlî, or feast of lamps, and barren women bathe in it as a means of procuring children. In a well in Orissa the priests throw betel-nuts into the mud, and barren women scramble for them. Those who find them will have their desire for children gratified before long.[110] For the same reason, after childbirth the mother is taken to worship the village well. She walks round it in the course of the sun and smears the platform with red lead, which is probably a survival of the original rite of blood sacrifice. In Dharwâr the child of a Brâhman is taken in the third month to worship water at the village well.[111] In Palâmau the Sârhul feast is observed in the month of Baisâkh (May), when dancing and singing goes on and the headmen entertain their tenants. The whole village is purified, and then they proceed to the village well, which is cleaned out, while the village Baiga does a sacrifice and every one smears the platform with red lead. No one may draw water from the well during the Sârhul.[112] Hydrophobia all over Northern India is cured by looking down seven wells in succession.
In the Panjâb the sites of deserted wells are discovered by driving about a herd of goats, which are supposed to lie down at the place where search should be made. Some people discover wells by dreams; others, as the Luniyas, a caste of navvies, are said, like the Faqîrs in Sirsa, to be able to discover by smell where water is likely to be found. I was once shown a well in the Muzaffarnagar district into which a Faqîr once spat, and for a long time after the visit of the holy man it ran with excellent milk. The supply had ceased, I regret to say, before my visit. The well of life which can survive even the ashes of a corpse is found throughout the Indian folk-tales.[113]
Sacred Wells.
Sacred wells, of course, abound all over the country. Many of them are supposed to have underground connection with the Ganges or some other holy river. Many of these are connected with the wanderings of Râma and Sîtâ after their exile from Ayodhya. Sîtâ’s kitchen (Sîtâ kî rasoî) is shown in various places, as at Kanauj and Deoriya in the Allahâbâd District.[114] Her well is on the Bindhâchal hill in Mirzapur, and is a famous resort of pilgrims. There is another near Monghyr, and a third in the Sultânpur District in Oudh. The Monghyr well has been provided with a special legend. Sîtâ was suspected of faithlessness during her captivity in the kingdom of Râvana. She threw herself into a pit filled with fire, where the hot spring now flows, and came out purified. When Dr. Buchanan visited the place they had just invented a new legend in connection with it. Shortly before, it was said, the water became so cool as to allow bathing in it. The governor prohibited the practice, as it made the water so dirty that Europeans could not drink it. “But on the very day when the bricklayers began to build a wall in order to exclude the bathers, the water became so hot that no one could dare to touch it, so that the precaution being unnecessary, the work of the infidels was abandoned.”[115]
At Benares are the Manikarnika well, which was produced by an ear-ring of Siva falling into it, and the Jnânavâpi, to drink of which brings wisdom. The well at Sihor in Râjputâna is sacred to Gautama, and is considered efficacious in the cure of various disorders. At Sarkuhiya in the Basti District is a well where Buddha struck the ground with his arrow and caused water to flow, as Moses did from the rock. There are, again, many wells which give omens. In the Middle Ages people used to resort to the fountain of Baranta in the Forest of Breclieu and fling water from a tankard on a stone close by, an act which was followed by thunder, lightning and rain.[116] At a Cornish well people used to go and inquire about absent friends. If the person “be living and in health, the still, quiet waters of the well pit will instantly bubble or boil up as a pot of clear, crystalline water; if sick, foul and puddled water; if dead, it will neither boil nor bubble up, nor alter its colour or stillness.”[117] Many other instances of the same fact might be given. So in Kashmîr, in one well water rushes out when a sheep or goat is sacrificed; another runs if the ninth of any month happen to fall on Friday; in a third, those who have any special needs throw in a nut; if it floats, it is considered an omen of success; if it sinks, it is considered adverse. At Askot, in the Himâlaya, there is a holy well which is used for divination of the prospects of the harvest. If the spring in a given time fills the brass vessel to the brim into which the water falls, there will be a good season; if only a little water comes, drought may be expected.[118]
Hot Springs.
Hot springs are naturally regarded as sacred. We have already noticed an example in the case of Sîtâ’s well at Monghyr. The holy tract in the hills, known as Vaishnava Kshetra, contains several hot springs, in which Agni, the fire god, resides by the permission of Vishnu. The hot springs at Jamnotri are occupied by the twelve Rishis who followed Mahâdeva from Lanka.[119]
Waterfalls.
Waterfalls, naturally uncommon in the flat country of Upper India, are, as might have been expected, regarded with veneration, and the deity of the fall is carefully propitiated. The visitor to the magnificent waterfall in which the river Chandraprabha pours its waters over a sheer precipice three hundred feet high in its descent from the Vindhyan plateau to the Gangetic valley, will learn that it is visited by women, particularly those who are desirous of offspring. On a rock beside the fall they lay a simple offering consisting of a few glass bangles, ear ornaments made of palm leaves, and cotton waist strings. In Garhwâl there is a waterfall known as Basodhâra, which ceases to flow when it is looked at by an impure person.[120]
Sacred Lakes.
There are also numerous lakes which are considered sacred and visited by pilgrims. Such is Pushkar, or Pokhar, the lake par excellence, in Râjputâna. One theory of the sanctity of this lake is that it was originally a natural depression and enlarged at a subsequent date by supernatural agency. “Every Hindu family of note has its niche for purposes of devotion. Here is the only temple in India sacred to Brahma, the Creator. While he was creating the world he kindled the sacred fire; but his wife Sawantarî was nowhere to be found, and as without a woman the rites could not proceed, a Gûjar girl took her place. Sawantarî on her return was so enraged at the indignity that she retired to the height close by, known as Ratnagirî, or ‘the hill of gems,’ where she disappeared. On this spot a fountain gushed out, still called by her name, close to which is her shrine, not the least attractive in the precincts of Pokhar.” Like many of these lakes, such as are known in Great Britain as the Devil’s Punch-bowls, Pokhar has its dragon legend, and one of the rocks near the lake is known as Nâgpahâr, or “Dragon Hill.” There is a similar legend attached to the Lonâr Lake in Berâr, which was then the den of the giant Lonâsura, whom Vishnu destroyed.[121]
Most famous of all the lakes is Mâna Sarovara in Tibet, about which many legends are told. “The lake of Mâna Sarovara was formed from the mind of Brahma, and thence derived its name. There dwell also Mahâdeva and the gods, and thence flow the Sarjû and other female rivers, and the Satadru (Satlaj) and other male rivers. When the earth of Mâna Sarovara touches any one’s body, or when any one bathes therein, he shall go to the Paradise of Brahma; and he who drinks its waters shall go to the Heaven of Siva, and shall be released from the sins of a hundred births; and even the beast which bears the name of Mâna Sarovara shall go to the Paradise of Brahma.” It is said that the sons of Brahma, Marichi, Vasishtha and the rest of the sages proceeded to the north of Himâlaya and performed austerities on Mount Kailâsa, where they saw Siva and Pârvatî and remained for twelve years absorbed in meditation and prayer. There was very little rain and water was scanty. In their distress they appealed to Brahma. He asked them what their wishes might be. The Rishis replied, “We are absorbed in devotion on Kailâsa, and must always go thence to bathe in the Mandâkinî river; make a place for us to bathe in.” Then Brahma, by a mental effort, formed the holy lake of Mânasa, and the Rishis worshipped the golden Linga which rose from the midst of the waters of the lake.[122]
So the Nainî Tâl Lake is sacred to Kâlî in one of her numerous forms. The goddess Sambrâ, the tutelary deity of the Chauhân Râjputs, converted a dense forest into a plain of gold and silver. But they, dreading the strife which such a possession would excite, begged the goddess to retract her gift, and she gave them the present lake of salt.[123] The people say that the Katûr valley was once a great lake where lived a Râkshasa named Râna who used to devour the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages. Indra’s elephant Airâvata descended to earth at the place now known after him by the name Hâthi Chîna, and with his mighty tusks he burst the embankment of the lake and the water flowed away, so that the goddess Bhrawarî, whose shrine is there to this day, was enabled to destroy the monster.
The Lake of the Fairy Gifts.
In the Chânda District of the Central Provinces is the lake of Taroba or Tadala, which is connected with an interesting series of folk-lore legends. A marriage procession was once passing the place, and, finding no water, a strange old man suggested that the bride and bridegroom should join in digging for a spring. They laughingly consented, and after removing a little earth a clear fountain gushed forth. As they were all drinking with delight the waters rose, and spreading over the land, overwhelmed the married pair. “But fairy hands soon constructed a temple in the depths, where the spirits of the drowned are supposed to dwell. Afterwards, on the lake side, a palm tree grew up, which appeared only during the day, sinking into the earth at twilight. One day a rash pilgrim seated himself on the tree and was borne into the skies, where the flames of the sun consumed him.” This part of the story reads like a genuine solar myth. “The palm tree then shrivelled away into dust, and in its place appeared an image of the spirit of the lake, which is worshipped under the name of Taroba, or ‘the palm-tree deity.’ Formerly, at the call of pilgrims, all necessary vessels rose from the lake, and after being washed were returned to the waters. But an evil-minded man at last took those he had received to his house, and from that day the mystic provision wholly ceased.”
This legend of the fairy gifts which are lost through the selfish greed of some mean-spirited man has been admirably illustrated by Mr. Hartland. It is also told of the Amner Lake in Elichpur, of the Karsota Lake in Mirzapur, and of many other places.[124]
Many of these lakes possess subaqueous palaces beneath their waters. At Cudden Point in Cornwall, the unhallowed revelry of a party of roisterers is heard from under the waves.[125] In one of Somadeva’s stories the hero dives after a lady, and comes on a splendid temple of Siva; Sattvasila falls into the sea and finds a city with palaces of gold, supported on pillars of jewels; Yasahketu plunges into the sea and finds a city gleaming with palaces that had bright pillars of precious stone, walls flashing with gold, and latticed windows of pearl. So in the sixth fable of the second chapter of the Hitopadesa, the hero dives into the water and sees a princess seated on a couch in a palace of gold, waited on by youthful sylphs. The sage Mandakarni alarmed the gods by his austerities, and Indra sent five of his fairies to beguile him. They succeeded, and now dwell in a house beneath the waters of the lake called from them Panchapsaras. At the Lake of Taroba, the tale of which has been already told, on quiet nights the country people hear faint sounds of drum and trumpet passing round the lake, and old men say that in one dry year when the waters sank low, golden pinnacles of a fairy temple were seen glittering in the depths. This is exactly the legend of Lough Neagh, immortalized by Thomas Moore.
The Shâhgarh Lake.
A lake at Shâhgarh in the Bareilly District is the seat of another legend which appears widely in folk-lore. When Râja Vena ruled the land, he, like Buddha, struck by the inequality of human life, retired with his young wife Sundarî or Ketakî to live like a peasant. One day she went to the lake to draw water, and she had naught but a jar of unbaked clay and a thread of untwisted cotton. In the innocence of her heart she stepped into the lake, but the gods preserved her. After a time she wearied of this sordid life, and one morning she arrayed herself in her queenly robes and jewels, and going to the lake, as usual, stepped on the lotus petals. When she plunged in her jar it melted away, and the untwisted thread broke, and she herself sank beneath the water. But she was saved, and thenceforward learned the evil of vanity and pride in riches, and the strength of innocence and a pure mind. And the lotus pool, in honour of the good queen Sundarî, was called by all men the Rânî Tâl, or “the Queen’s Tank,” and is to be seen to this day just outside the town of Kâbar, though the lotus flowers have perished and the castle of Shâhgarh has sunk into dust.[126]
The same tale is told in Southern India of Renukâ, the mother of Parasurâma. In its Western form it is told in Switzerland of a pious boy who served a monastery, and in his innocence was able to carry water in a sieve without spilling a single drop.[127]
Other Sacred Tanks.
The number of lakes and tanks associated with some legend, or endued with some special sanctity of their own, is legion. Thus, the tank at Chakratîratha, near Nîmkhâr, marks the spot where the Chakra or discus of Vishnu fell during his contest with Asuras.[128] That near the Satopant glacier is said to be fathomless, and no bird can fly over it. Bhotiyas presents offerings to the lake, requesting the water spirit to keep the passes open and aid them in their dangerous journeys. As they are denied entrance into the temple of Badarinâth, it has for them all the virtue of Badarinâth itself.[129] Another famous tank is that at Amritsar, “the Lake of Immortality.” A holy woman once took pity on a leper, and carried him to the banks of the tank. As he lay there a crow swooped into the water and came out a dove as white as snow. The leper saw the miracle, bathed, and was healed. The woman on her return could not recognize her friend, and withdrew in horror from his embraces. But the Guru Râm Dâs came and explained matters, and the grateful pair assisted him in embellishing the tank, which has become the centre of the Sikh religion. The Tadag Tâl in the Hills is sacred to Bhîm Sen, and the curious fish which it contains are said to be lice from the body of the hero.
One day a Brâhman was passing the Mandkalla tank and saw a marriage party sitting before the wedding feast; but they were all most unaccountably silent and motionless. They asked him to join in the meal, and he did so with some misgivings, which were soon justified when he saw the heads of the whole party fall off before his eyes, and they soon disappeared.[130] The Râja Râma Chandra Sena was once hunting near the site of the present Dharâwat tank. He saw a crow drinking from a puddle, and, being in want of water, he ordered the courtiers to have a tank dug, the limits of which were to be the space that his horse would gallop round when released. Fortunately for them they selected a site close to some hills which checked the course of the horse. This reduced the tank to comparatively moderate dimensions.[131]
The tank at Lalitpur is famous for the cure of leprosy. One day, a Râja afflicted with the disease was passing by, and his Rânî dreamt that he should eat some of the confervæ on the surface. He ate it, and was cured; and next night the Rânî dreamt that there was a vast treasure concealed there, which when dug up was sufficient to pay the cost of excavation.[132] So, at Qasûr is the tank of the saint Basant Shâh, in which children are bathed to cure them of boils.
Of the Rin Mochan pool the Brâhmans say that any one who bathes there becomes free from debt.[133] Another at Pushkar turns red if the shadow of a woman during her menstrual period fall upon it.[134] Sîtâ proved her virtue by bathing in a tank. She prayed to Mother Earth, who appeared and carried her to the other bank, an incident of which a curious parallel is quoted by Mr. Clouston from the Gospel of the pseudo Mathew.[135] In the legend of Chyavana, as told in the Mahâbhârata, the three suitors of Sukanyâ bathed in a tank and came forth of a celestial beauty equal to hers. So in one of the Bengal folk-tales the old discarded wife bathes in a tank and recovers her youth and beauty.[136] It is a frequent condition imposed on visitors to these holy tanks that they should remove a certain quantity of earth and thus improve it.
Many tanks, again, are supposed to contain buried treasure which is generally in charge of a Yaksha. Hence such places are regarded with much awe. There is a tank of this kind in the Bijaygarh fort in the Mirzapur District, where many speculators have dug in vain; another forms an incident in Lâl Bihâri Dê’s tale of Govinda Sâmanta.[137]
Mountain-worship; the Himâlaya.
“He who thinks of Himâchal (the Himâlaya), though he should not behold him, is greater than he who performs all worship at Kâsi (Benares); as the dew is dried up by the morning sun, so are the sins of mankind by the sight of Himâchal.”[138] Such was the devotion with which the early Hindus looked on it as the home of the gods. Beyond it their fancy created the elysium of Uttara Kuru, which may be most properly regarded as an ideal picture created by the imagination of a life of tranquil felicity, and not as a reminiscence of any actual residence of the Kurus in the north.[139]
From early times the Himâlayan valleys were the resort of the sage and the ascetic. Almost every hill and river is consecrated by their legends, and the whole country teems with memories of the early religious life of the Hindu race. As in the mythology of many other peoples,[140] it was regarded as the home of the sainted dead, and the common source or origin of Hinduism. Its caves were believed to be the haunt of witches and fairies. Demons lurked in its recesses, as at the Blockberg, where, as Aubrey tells us, “the devils and witches do dance and feast.”[141] Many of its most noted peaks are the home of the deities. Siva and Kuvera rest on Mount Kailâsa; Vaikuntha, the paradise of Vishnu, is on Mount Meru. The whole range is personified in Himavat, who is the father of Gangâ and Umâ Devî, who from her origin is known as Pârvatî, or “the mountaineer.” One of the titles of Siva is Girisa, the “mountain god.” His son Kârttikeya delights in the weird mountain heights.
Mountain-worship among the Drâvidians.
But, deeply rooted as the veneration for mountains is in the minds of the early Aryans, there is reason to suspect that this regard for mountains may be a survival from the beliefs of non-Aryan races whom the Hindus supplanted or absorbed. At any rate, the belief in the sanctity of mountains widely prevails among the non-Aryan or Drâvidian races. Most of these peoples worship mountains in connection with the god of the rain. The Santâls sacrifice to Marang Bura on a flat rock on the top of a mountain, and after feasting, work themselves up into a state of frenzy to charm the rain. The Korwas and Kûrs worship in the same way Mainpât, a plateau in the mountainous country south of the Son. The Nâgbansis and the Mundâri Kols worship a huge rock as the abode of the “great god,” Baradeo.[142] So, in Garhwâl in the Chhipula pass is a shrine to the god of the mountain. At Tolma is a temple to the Himâlaya, and below Dungagiri in the same valley is a shrine in honour of the same peak.[143] In Hoshangâbâd in the Central Indian plateau, Sûryabhân or “Sun-rays” is a very common name for isolated round-peaked hills, on which the god is supposed to dwell, and among the Kurkus, Dungardeo, the mountain god, resides on the nearest hill outside the village. He is worshipped every year at the Dasahra festival with a goat, two cocoa-nuts, five dates, with a ball of vermilion paste, and is regarded by them as their special god.[144] The idea that dwarfs, spirits, and fairies live on the tops of mountains is a common belief in Europe.
As in the Himâlaya, one of the main peaks, Nandâ Devî, has been identified with Pârvatî, the mountain goddess, so the aborigines of the Central Provinces have in Kattarpâr, the Kattipen of the Khândhs, a special deity of ravines, as Rhœa Sybeli was to the Etruscans.[145] In the Mirzapur hills the aboriginal tribes have an intense respect for mountains. On the Mâtra hill lives a Deo or demon known as Darrapât Deo. When Râvana abducted Sîtâ he is said to have kept her on this hill for some time, and her palanquin, turned into stone, is there to this day. No one ascends the mountain through fear of the demon, except an Ojha or sorcerer, who sacrifices a goat at the foot of the hill before he makes the attempt. So, in Garhwâl the peak of Barmdeo is sacred to Devî, and none can intrude with impunity. A Faqîr who ventured to do so in the days of yore was pitched across the river by the offended goddess.[146] On another Mirzapur hill, Chainpur, lives Kotî Rânî, who is embodied in the locusts which usually are found there. Similarly Pahâr Pando is a mountain deity of the Dharkârs, a sub-caste of the Doms. Bansaptî Mâî, who is half a forest and half a mountain goddess, lives on Jhurma hill, and if any one dares to sing in her neighbourhood, he becomes sick or mad. These mountain demons often take the form of tigers and kill incautious intruders on their domains. On the Aunri hill are two dreaded demons, Deorâsan and Birwat, the latter a Bîr or malignant ghost of some one who died a violent death. They rule the hail, and at harvest time the Baiga offers a goat, and spreading rice on the ground, prays—“O Lord Mahâdeva! May this offering be effectual.” Mangesar, the rugged peak which frowns over the valley of the Son, is a popular local god of the various Kolarian races, and a shrine to Bâba or Râja Mangesar, “the father and the king,” is found in many of their villages.
Respect Paid to the Vindhya and Kaimûr Ranges.
The Kaimûr and Vindhyan ranges also enjoy a certain amount of sanctity. On the latter the most famous shrines are those of Asthbhuja or “the eight-armed Devî,” Sîtâkunda or the pool of Sîtâ, and the temple of Mahârânî Vindhyeswarî, the patron goddess of the range, built where it trends towards the Gangetic valley. She has travelled as far as Cutch, where she is worshipped under the corrupted name of Vinjân.[147] Her shrine has evil associations with traditions of human sacrifice, derived from the coarser aboriginal cultus which has now been adopted into Brâhmanism.[148] There the Thags used to meet and share their spoils with their patron goddess, and her Pandas or priests are so disorderly that a special police guard has to be posted at the shrine to ensure the peaceable division of the offerings among the sharers, who mortgage and sell their right to participate in the profits, like the advowson of a living in the English Church.
These two ranges, says the legend, are an offshoot from the Himâlaya. When Râma was building the bridge across the strait to Lanka, he sent his followers to Himâlaya to collect materials. They returned with a mighty burden, but meanwhile the hero had completed his task; so he ordered them to throw down their loads, and where the stones fell these ranges were produced. In the same way the Maniparvata at Ajudhya is said to have been dropped by Sugrîva, the monkey king of Kishkindhya, and the Irichh hills at Jhânsi are described to have been formed in the same way.
There is another legend of the Vindhyas told in the story of Nala and Damayantî. They were jealous of the Himâlaya, the peaks of which were each morning visited by the earliest rays of the rising sun. The sun, on being appealed to, declared that it was impossible for him to change his course. Immediately the Vindhyas swelled with rage, and rising in the heavens, intercepted the view of the sun, moon, and the constellations. The gods, alarmed, invoked the aid of the saint Agastya. He went, accompanied by his wife, and requested the Vindhyas to sink and let him pass to the south, and not rise till he returned. They agreed, and gave passage to the saint, but as he never came back they have never resumed their former height. Agastya finally settled on the Malayam or Potiyam mountain, not far from Cape Comorin. He now shines in the heavens as the regent of the star Canopus, and to him is ascribed almost all the civilization of Southern India. The legend possibly goes back to the arrival of the earliest Brâhmanic missionaries in Southern India, and the name of the range, which probably means “the divider,” marked the boundary between the Aryan and Drâvidian peoples. A similar story is told of one of the ranges in Nepâl.[149]
Other Famous Hills.
A mention of some other famous hills in Northern India may close this account of mountain-worship. At Gaya is the Dharma Sila, or “rock of piety,” which was once the wife of the saint Marîchi. The lord of the infernal regions, by order of Brahma, crushed it down on the head of the local demon.[150] The hills of Goghar kâ dhâr, in the Mundi State, have a reputation similar to that of the Brocken in the Hartz mountains on Wulpurgis night. On the 3rd of September the demons, witches, and magicians from the most distant parts of India assemble here and hold their revels, from which time it is dangerous for men to cross the mountains. The spirits of the Kulu range are said to wage war with those of the Goghar, and after a violent storm the peasants will show the traveller the stones which have been hurled from range to range. The last chief of Mundi was a mighty wizard himself. He had a little book of spells which the demons were forced to obey, and when he placed it in his mouth he was instantly transported where he pleased through the air.[151]
Another famous hill is that of Govardhan, near Mathura. This is the hill which Krishna is fabled to have held aloft on the tip of his finger for seven days, to protect the people of Braj from the tempests poured down on them by Indra when he was deprived of his wonted sacrifices. There is a local belief that as the waters of the Jumnâ are yearly decreasing in volume, so this hill is gradually sinking. Not a particle of stone is allowed to be removed from it, and even the road which crosses it at its lowest point, where only a few fragments of the rock crop up overground, had to be carried over them by a paved causeway.[152]
The Spirits of the Air.
“Aerial spirits or devils are such as keep quarter in the air, cause many tempests, thunder and lightnings, tear oaks, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it rain wool, frogs, etc. They cause whirlwinds on a sudden, and tempestuous storms, which though our meteorologists refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodin’s mind that they are more often caused by those aerial devils in their several quarters.”[153] This statement of Burton is a good summary of current Hindu opinion on this subject; and it is just this class of physical phenomena which civilized man admits to be beyond his control, that primitive races profess to be able to regulate. As Dr. Taylor puts it—“The rainfall is passing from the region of the supernatural to join the tides and seasons in the realm of physical science.”[154]
The old weather god was Indra, who wars with Vritra or Ahi, the dragon demon of drought, whom he compels to dispense the rain. He was revered as the causer of fertility, and feared as the lord of the lightning and the thunder. He has now been deposed from his pre-eminence, and is little more than a roi fainéant, who lives in a luxurious heaven of his own, solaced by the dances of the fairies who form his court, one of whom he occasionally bestows on some favoured mortal who wins his kindness or forces him to obey his orders. But his status is at present decidedly low, and it is remarkable in what a contemptuous way even so orthodox a poet as Tulasî Dâs speaks of him.[155] Mr. Wheeler[156] suggests that this degradation of Indra may possibly be due to the fact that he was a tribal god notoriously hostile to Brâhmans; and it is certainly very suggestive from this point of view that he has come to be regarded as the great deity of the Burman Buddhists. It is still further remarkable that at Benares, the headquarters of Brâhmanism, he has been replaced by a special rain god, Dalbhyeswara, who perhaps takes his name from Dalbhya, an ancient Rishi, who must be worshipped and kept properly dressed if the seasons are not to become unfavourable.[157]
Bhîmsen, a Weather Godling.
Bhîmsen, of whom more will be said later on, is regarded by the Gonds as a god of rain, and has a festival of four or five days’ duration held in his honour at the end of the rainy season, when two poles about twenty feet high and five feet apart are set up with a rope attached to the top, by which the boys of the village climb up and then slide down the poles. This is apparently an instance of rude sympathetic magic, representing the descent of the rain.[158]
TANK OF BHÎMSEN, HARDWÂR.
Demoniacal Control of the Weather.
It is an idea common to the beliefs of many races, that the spirits of the wind may be tied up in sacks and let out to injure an enemy and assist a friend. To this day the Lapps give their sailors magic sacks containing certain winds to secure them a safe journey.[159]
Another side of the matter may be illustrated from Marco Polo. “During the three months of every year that the Lord (Kublai Khân) resides at that place, if it should happen to be bad weather, there are certain crafty enchanters and astrologers in his train, who are such adepts in necromancy and the diabolical arts, that they are able to prevent any cloud or storm passing over the spot on which the Emperor’s palace stands. Whatever they do in this way is by the help of the Devil; but they make those people believe that it is compassed by their own sanctity and the help of God. They always go in a state of dirt and uncleanness, devoid of respect for themselves or for those who see them, unkempt and sordidly attired.” Timûr in his “Memoirs” speaks of the Indian Jâts using incantations to produce heavy rain, which hindered his cavalry from acting against them. A Yadachi was captured, and when his head had been taken off the storm ceased. Bâbar speaks of one of his early friends, Khwâjaka Mulai, who was acquainted with Yadagarî, or the art of bringing on rain and snow by incantations. In the same way in Nepâl the control of the weather is supposed to be vested in the Lamas.[160]
Rain-making and Nudity.
One very curious custom of rain-making has a series of remarkable parallels in Europe. In Servia, in time of drought, a girl is stripped and covered with flowers. She dances at each house, and the mistress steps out and pours a jar of water over her, while her companions sing rain songs.[161] In Russia the women draw a furrow round the village, and bury at the juncture a cock, a cat, and a dog. “The dog is a demonic character in Russia, while the cat is sacred. The offering of both seems to represent a desire to conciliate both sides.”[162] Mr. Conway thinks that the nudity of the women represents their utter poverty and inability to give more to conciliate the god of the rain; or that we have here a form of the Godiva and Peeping Tom legend, “where there is probably a distant reflection of the punishment sometimes said to overtake those who gazed too curiously upon the Swan Maiden with her feathers.”[163]
The Godiva legend has been admirably illustrated by Mr. Hartland,[164] who comes to the conclusion that it is the survival of an annual rite in honour of a heathen goddess, and closely connected with those nudity observances which we are discussing. The difficulty is, however, to account for the nudity part of the ceremony. It may possibly be based on the theory that spirits dread indecency, or rather the male and female principles.[165]
This may be the origin of the indecencies of word and act practised at the Holî and Kajarî festivals in Upper India, which are both closely connected with the control of the weather. Among the Ramoshis of the Dakkhin the bridegroom is stripped naked before the anointing ceremony commences, and the same custom prevails very generally in Upper India. The Mhârs of Sholapur are buried naked, even the loin-cloth being taken off. Barren women worship a naked female figure at Bijapur. At Dayamava’s festival in the Karnâtak, women walk naked to the temple where they make their vows; and the Mâng, who carries the scraps of holy meat which he scatters in the fields to promote fertility, is also naked.[166] The same idea of scaring evil spirits from temples possibly accounts for much of the obscene sculpture to be found on the walls of many Hindu shrines, and it may be noted in illustration of the same principle that in Nepâl temples are decorated with groups of obscene figures as a protection against lightning.[167]
Rites Special to Women.
Connected with the same principle it may be noted that in India, as in many other places, there are rites of the nature of the Bona Dea, in which only women take part, and from which males are excluded. In some of these rites nudity forms a part. Thus, in Italy, La Bella Marte is invoked when three girls, always stark naked, consult the cards to know whether a lover is true or which of them is likely to be married.[168] A number of similar usages have been discussed by Mr. Hartland. We have already noticed the custom of sun impregnation. Among Hindus, a woman who is barren and desires a child stands naked facing the sun and desires his aid to remove her barrenness. In one of the folk-tales the witch stands naked while she performs her spells.[169]
The rain custom in India is precisely the same as has been already illustrated by examples from Europe. During the Gorakhpur Famine in 1873–74, there were many accounts received of women going about with a plough by night, stripping themselves naked and dragging the plough over the fields as an invocation of the rain god. The men kept carefully out of the way while this was being done, and it was supposed that if the women were seen by the men the rite would lose its effect. Mr. Frazer on this remarks that “it is not said they plunge the plough into a stream or sprinkle it with water. But the charm would hardly be complete without it.”[170] It was on my authority that the custom which Messrs. Frazer and Hartland quote was originally recorded, and I do not remember at the time hearing of this part of the ritual. Later inquiries do not point to it as part of the rite in Upper India.
It may be well to adduce other instances of this nudity rite. In Sirsa, when a horse falls sick, the cure is to kill a fowl or a he-goat and let its warm blood flow into the mouth of the animal; but if this cannot be done quickly, it is sufficient for a man to take off all his clothes and strike the horse seven times on the forehead with his shoe.[171] Here the nudity and the blows with the shoe are means to drive off the demon of disease. In Chhattarpur, when rain falls a woman and her husband’s sister take off all their clothes and drop seven cakes of cow-dung into a mud reservoir for storing grain. If a man and his maternal uncle perform the same ceremony, it is equally effective; but as a rule women do it, and the special days for the rite are Sunday and Wednesday. Here we have the custom in process of modification, males, one of whom is a relation in the female line, being substituted for the female officiants.
Another similar means of expelling the demon of disease is given by Mrs. Fanny Parkes in her curious book entitled “Wanderings of a Pilgrim in search of the Picturesque.”[172] “The Hindu women in a most curious way propitiate the goddess who brings cholera into the bâzâr. They go out in the evening, about 7 p.m., sometimes two or three hundred at a time, each carrying a lota or brass vessel filled with sugar, water, cloves, etc. In the first place they make pûjâ; then, stripping off their sheets and binding their sole petticoat round their waists, as high above the knee as it can be pulled up, they perform a most frantic sort of dance, forming themselves into a circle, while in the centre of the circle about five or six women dance entirely naked, beating their hands together over their heads, and then applying them behind with a great smack that keeps time with the music, and with the song they scream out all the time, accompanied by native instruments played by men who stand at a distance, to the sound of which these women dance and sing, looking like frantic creatures. The men avoid the place where the ceremony takes place, but here and there one or two men may be seen looking on, whose presence does not seem to molest the nut-brown dancers in the least; they shriek and sing and dance and scream most marvellously.” Here we find the rule of privacy at these nudity rites slightly modified.
Another instance of the nudity rite in connection with cattle disease comes from Jâlandhar.[173] “When an animal is sick the remedy is for some one to strip himself and to walk round the patient with some burning straw or cane fibre in his hands.”
Nudity also appears to be in some places a condition of the erection of a pinnacle on a Hindu temple. “The Temple of Arang in Râêpur district and that at Deobalada were built at the same time. When they were finished and the pinnacles (kalas) had to be put on, the mason and his sister agreed to put them on simultaneously at an auspicious moment. The day and hour being fixed by Brâhmans, the two, stripping themselves naked, according to custom on such occasions, climbed up to the top. As they got up to the top each could see the other, and each through shame jumped down into the tank close to their respective temples, where they still stand turned into stone, and are visible when the tank water falls low in seasons of drought.”[174]
Of the regular nudity rite in case of failure of rain, we have a recent instance from Chunâr in the Mirzapur district. “The rains this year held off for a long time, and last night (24th July, 1892) the following ceremony was performed secretly. Between the hours of 9 and 10 p.m. a barber’s wife went from door to door and invited all the women to join in ploughing. They all collected in a field from which all males were excluded. Three women from a cultivator’s family stripped off all their clothes; two were yoked to a plough like oxen, and a third held the handle. They then began to imitate the operation of ploughing. The woman who had the plough in her hand shouted, ‘O Mother Earth! bring parched grain, water and chaff. Our bellies are bursting to pieces from hunger and thirst.’ Then the landlord and village accountant approached them and laid down some grain, water and chaff in the field. The women then dressed and went home. By the grace of God the weather changed almost immediately, and we had a good shower.”[175] Here we see the ceremony elaborately organized; the privacy taboo is enforced, and the ritual is in the nature of sympathetic magic, intended to propitiate Mother Earth.
The nudity rite for the expulsion of disease is also found in Madras. “The image of Mariyamma, cut out of Margosa wood, is carried from her temple to a stone called a Baddukal, in the centre of the village, on the afternoon of the first day of the feast. A rounded stone, about six inches above the ground and about eight inches across, is to be seen just inside the gate of every village. It is what is called the Baddukal or navel stone; it is worshipped in times of calamity, especially during periods of cattle disease; often women passing it with water pour a little on it, and every one on first going out of the village in the morning is supposed to give it some little tribute of attention. The following day all men and women of Sûdra castes substitute garments of leaves of the Margosa, little branches tied together, for their ordinary clothes, and thus attired go with music to the goddess.”[176] Here the dress may imply some form of nudity rite, or may be a reminiscence of the time when, like the Juângs of Chota Nâgpur, they wore leaf aprons.
There can be little doubt that rites of this kind largely prevail in India, but, as might naturally be expected, they are very carefully concealed, and it is extremely difficult to obtain precise information about them.