THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

168

ſ.JUNE 7, 1872.

every heart to pant in pain for him, and not

street; it is more horrible now in the retired

for itself. The worst sight of all is when the frenzied stalwart men fall senseless to the ground

house. Husain has had a long mourning.

in deathly faint. The contrast between the ecstatic frenzy and the senseless mass that a

no longer aid the spirit, this dance of the pos

moment before was maddened in the strife and

liberally distributed. The house-owner brings out his huqah and composes his feelings with a smoke. The assembly breaks up, and we go home wondering why Christians, who have a still more saddening story, as the key of their hopes, should fail so grievously in realising its

now lies apparently dead is very awful.

For

a moment the beating ceases the hoarse shout of “ Husain,” “Hassan,” lulls. Two or three

men dart in to carry off the collapsed mourner. They throw water over him, lay him in the breeze and wait till he comes to. Then swells again the bitter cry, the deadened thuds. It was bad enough to see such things in the crowded

When all are too faint, when the body will sessed comes to an end.

Water and sherbet are

intense interest, should seem to a heathen and Muhammadan world as if the mystery of their

faith were but a series of empty words.

FOLKLORE OF ORISSA. By JOHN BEAMES, B.C.S., M.R.A.S., &c., BALASOR,

Owing to the isolation in which their country

everywhere, and it is only because in ruling

has remained for so many ages, the peasantry

men one must take their nonsense into consi

of Orissa have retained old world ideas and

deration quite as earnestly as their sense, that these scraps of folk-lore are worth recording

fancies to a greater extent than any other Aryan people of India. They are shy of imparting these ideas to strangers, and a man might live among them for years without finding out the singular views and original processes of reason ing on which many of their habits are based. This shyness arises, I suppose, from the gradual

at all.

Witches abound in Orissa and are called dańani,

(Sanskr. Eſſa'ſ or #-ſit) a word in use in all the

indifferent free-thinkers to whom all ideas of

Aryan languages of India. They have the power of leaving their bodies and going about invisibly, but if you can get a flower of the pin, or betel leaf, and put it in your right ear, you will be able to see the witches, and talk to them with impu nity. The pân however never flowers, or rather the witches always cause the flower to be invi sible, so you are not likely to find it. This is like the English peasants' belief in the virtues

religion are childish inventions fit only to be

of fern-seed.

infiltration of modern ideas.

The men are be

ginning to be ashamed of these antiquated fan cies, and though in their hearts believing in them, would rather not talk about them, and would prefer to pass for men of the world, blasé

smiled at.

The women however are still bigot

Witches congregate under banian or pipal trees (in Oriya the first is būr, T3, Skr. Hz, the second

edly attached to the traditions of the past, and the ruder peasantry are in the same primitive stage of credulity. I do not propose to classify these strange

Öshöth sia’ſ, Skr. ***I) which grow on the margin of a tank, and if you sit under such a tree in such a position at either of the dawns, that is

superstitions, but merely to string them to

in the grey of morning or at evening twilight, you

gether as I hear them, noting here and there

will come to grief, especially if the day be Satur

curious parallelisms between them and those

day, when the influence of the planet Saturn pre vails, or Tuesday when that of Mars is strong. On those days the witches are most powerful, and you will be struck with sickness, or idiotcy, or

of our own English peasantry. Students of com parative mythology may draw their own con clusions, but as I do not feel convinced that every one we read of in ancient history re

suffer loss of property.

presents the sun, nor that all heathen religions

A favourite pastime of witches is to get in

are “myths of the dawn,” I do not wish to

side the body of a person, who then becomes insensible. In this case you must repeat the

complicate my simple remarks by plunging into the misty regions of the early Aryans, or those

following very powerful mantrö or spell, and

Human non

then ask the witch her name, which she will be

sense, like human sense, is very much the same

obliged to tell you. You may then go to her

of Baal, Bel, Belus and so forth.