'Our Lady of the Flux,' an incarnation of Kâlî, who it is believed is one day to appear riding on a horse for the purpose of slaughtering mankind, and of setting the world on fire. In front of the idol a female child about nine years of age lay on the ground. She was evidently stupefied with intoxicating drugs, and in this way prepared to answer responses to such questions as those initiated into the mysteries should think proper to propose." There is much in this statement which is open to question, and it seems doubtful whether, as Dr. Chevers is disposed to believe, the case was really one of intended human sacrifice.

SMALL-POX WORSHIP IN BENGAL.

1

In Bengal the divine force antagonistic to Sîtalâ is Shashthî, "goddess of the sixth," who is regarded as the special guardian of children. The worship of Shashthî rests on a physiological fact, which has only recently been applied to explain this special form of worship. The most fatal disease of Indian children is a form of infantile lock-jaw, which is caused by the use of a coarse, blunt instrument, such as a sickle, for severing the umbilical cord. This disease usually makes its appearance between the sixth and twelfth day of the life of the child, and hence we have the formal rites of purification from the birth pollution performed as the Chhathî on the sixth and the Barahî on the twelfth day after delivery.

"In Bengal when small-pox rages, the gardeners are busiest. As soon as the nature of the disease is determined, the physician retires and a gardener is summoned. His first act is to forbid the introduction of meat, fish, and all food requiring oil or spices for its preparation. He then ties a lock of hair, a cowry shell, a piece of turmeric, and an article of gold on the right wrist of the patient. (The use of these articles as scarers of evil spirits will be considered later on.) The sick person is then laid on the Majhpatta, the young and unexpanded leaf of the plantain tree, and 1 Chevers, "Medical Jurisprudence for India," 415 sq.

milk is prescribed as the sole article of food. He is fanned with a branch of the sacred Nîm (Azidirachta Indica), and any one entering the chamber is sprinkled with water. Should the fever become aggravated and delirium ensue, or if the child cries much and sleeps little, the gardener performs the Mâtâ Pûjâ. This consists in bathing an image of the goddess causing the disease, and giving a draught of the water to drink. To relieve the irritation of the skin, pease meal, turmeric, flour or shell sawdust is sprinkled over the body. If the eruption be copious, a piece of new cloth in the figure of eight is wrapped round the chest and shoulders. On the night between the seventh and eighth days of the eruption, the gardener has much to do. He places a water-pot in the sick-room, and puts on it rice, a cocoanut, sugar, plantains, a yellow rag, flowers, and a few Nîm leaves. Having mumbled several spells (mantra), he recites the tale (qissa) of the particular goddess, which often occupies several hours. When the pustules are mature, the gardener dips a thorn of the Karaunda (Carissa) in sesamum oil and punctures each one. The body is then anointed with oil, and cooling fruits are given. When the scabs have peeled off, another ceremony called Godâm is gone through. All the offerings on the water-pot are rolled in a cloth and fastened round the waist of the patient. The offerings are the perquisite of the gardener, who also receives a fee. Government vaccinators earn a considerable sum yearly by executing the Sîtalâ worship, and when a child is vaccinated, a portion of the service is performed"-a curious compromise between the indigenous faith and European medical science.1

The special Tirhût observance of the Jur Sîtal or "smallpox fever" feast will be more conveniently considered in connection with other usages of the same kind.

MATANGI SAKTI AND MASAN.

We have already seen that Sîtalâ motion to the Brâhmanical heaven.

is in the stage of proHere her special name

1 Risley, "Tribes and Castes," ii. 62.

is Mâtangî Saktî, a word which has been connected with Mâtâ and Masân, but really refers to Durgâ-Devî in her terrible elephant form. Masân or Masânî is quite a different goddess. She resides at the Masân or cremation ground, and is greatly dreaded. The same name is in the eastern district of the North-Western Provinces applied to the tomb of some low-caste man, very often a Teli or oilman, or a Dhobi or washerman, both of whose ghosts are generally obnoxious. Envious women will take the ashes from a cremation ground and throw them over an enemy's child. This is said to cause them to be "under the influence of the shadow" (Sâya, Chhâya) and to waste away by slow decline. This idea is familiar in folk-lore. All savages believe that their shadow is a part of themselves, that if it be hurt the owner of it will feel pain, that a man may lose his shadow altogether and thus be deprived of part of his soul and strength, and that vicious people, as in the present case, can fling their shadow upon you and cause you injury.'

Mâtangî Saktî, again, appears in at least eight forms— Raukâ Devî, Ghraukâ Devî, Melâ Devî, Mandlâ Devî, Sîtalâ Devî, Durgâ Devî and Sankarâ Devî, a collection of names which indicates the extraordinary mixture of beliefs, some of them importations from the regular mythology, but others obscure and local manifestations of the deity, out of which this worship has been developed. She is described as having ears as large as a winnowing fan, projecting teeth, a hideous face with a wide open mouth. Her vehicle is the ass, an animal very often found in association with shrines of Sîtalâ. She carries a broom and winnowing fan with which she sifts mankind, and in one hand a pitcher and ewer. This fan and broom are, as we shall see later on, most powerful fetishes. powerful fetishes. All this is sheer mythology at its lowest stage, and represents the grouping of various local fetish beliefs on the original household worship.

1 Spencer, "Principles of Sociology,” i. 115; Frazer, "Golden Bough," i. 141 sqq.

JOURNEY FORBIDDEN DURING AN EPIDEMIC OF SMALL-POX.

a

During a small-pox epidemic no journey, not even pilgrimage to a holy shrine, should be undertaken. Gen. Sleeman' gives a curious case in illustration of this: "At this time the only son of Râma Krishna's brother, Khushhâl Chand, an interesting boy of about four years of age, was extremely ill of small-pox. His father was told that he had better defer his journey to Benares till the child should recover; but he could neither eat nor sleep, so great was his terror lest some dreadful calamity should befall the whole family before he could expiate a sacrilege which he had committed unwittingly, or take the advice of his high priest, as to the best manner of doing so, and he resolved to leave the decision to God himself. He took two pieces of paper and having caused Benares to be written on one and Jabalpur on the other, he put them both in a brass vessel. After shaking the vessel well, he drew forth that on which Benares had been written. 'It is the will of God,' said Râma Krishna. All the family who were interested in the preservation of the poor boy implored him not to set out, lest the Devî who presides over small-pox should be angry. It was all in vain. He would set out with his household god, and unable to carry it himself, he put it upon a small litter upon a pole, and hired a bearer to carry it at one end while he supported the other. His brother Khushhâl Chand sent his second wife at the same time with offerings to the Devî, to ward off the effects of his brother's rashness from the child. By the time his brother had got with his god to Adhartâl, three miles from Jabalpur, he heard of the death of his nephew. But he seemed not to feel this slight blow in the terror of the dreadful, but undefined, calamity which he felt to be impending over him and the whole family, and he went on his road. Soon after, an infant son of his uncle died of the same disease, and the whole town at once became divided into two parties-those who held that the child had been killed by the Devî as a punishment for Râma Krishna's

1 "Rambles and Recollections," i. 207.

presuming to leave Jabalpur before they recovered, and those who held that they were killed by the god Vishnu himself for having deprived him of one of his arms. Khushhâl Chand's wife sickened on the road and died before reaching Mirzapur; and as the Devî was supposed to have nothing to say to fevers, this event greatly augmented the advocates of Vishnu."

OBSERVANCES DURING SMALL-POX EPIDEMICS.

In the Panjâb when a child falls ill of small-pox no one is allowed to enter the house, especially if he have bathed, washed, or combed his hair, and if any one does come in, he is made to burn incense at the door. Should a thunderstorm come on before the vesicles have fully come out, the sound is not allowed to enter the ear of the sick child, and metal plates are violently beaten to drown the noise of the thunder. For six or seven days, when the disease is at its height, the child is fed with raisins covered with silver leaf. When the vesicles have fully developed it is believed that Devi Mâtâ has come. When the disease has abated a little, water is thrown over the child. Singers and drummers are summoned and the parents make with their friends a procession to the temple of Devî, carrying the child dressed in saffron-coloured clothes. A man goes in advance with a bunch of sacred grass in his hands, from which he sprinkles a mixture of milk and water. In this way they visit some fig-tree or other shrine of Devî, to which they tie red ribbons and besmear it with red lead, paint and curds.'

One method of protecting children from the disease is to give them opprobrious names, and dress them in rags. This, with other devices for disease transference, will be discussed later on. We have seen that the Nîm tree is supposed to influence the disease; hence branches of it are hung over the door of the sick-room. Thunder disturbs the goddess in possession of the child, so the family flour-mill, which, as as we shall see, has mystic powers, is rattled near the child.

1 Nûr Ahmad Chishti, Yâdgâr-i-Chishti.