________________
266
Ancestors.
JAINA WORSHIP AND of the month Śrāvana one often sces women watering those trees to keep the evil spirits that live there happy and so prevent their coming out.
Srāvana is in fact an anxious month, and on the fifth day of it many Jaina women worship serpents, apparently to propitiate the spirits of their ancestors. They draw a picture of a snake on the walls of the room where the water.vessels are kept, in order to pacify the spirit of any of their forefathers who may have died suddenly in battle or been murdered before he could fulfil some strong desire he might have possessed; for they fear that such ancestors may return to carry out their interrupted purpose. To cool these desires, they encircle the picture of the snake three times with water (just as the lamp is waved before the idol at āratī) and offer it little cakes to make it happy.
The spirits of ancestors are also appeased once a year on either the eighth or twenty-ninth of Aévina, when an offering of naivedya is made to them. A lamp is lighted and placed in some corner facing the quarter in which the ancestor once lived; an offering of sweetmeats is then made to the lamp and subsequently eaten by the offerers themselves.
When frightened by the prevalence of plague or cholera, the Jaina have recourse to the Brāhmans to ask how they shall appease the mela deva (evil god) who is affecting them. The priests instruct them to light a fire in their own houses and circumambulate it. Near the flames they place an offering of naivedya and then walk round the fire three times carrying water. After this they themselves cat the actual naivedya that has been offered and give dry materials for naivedya and money to the Brāhmans.
In the same way, if a child actually has small-pox, or if there be an epidemic of it, a Jaina mother almost invariably goes to the shrine of Śitalā Mātā, the goddess of small-pox, whose shrine is to be found in almost every Indian village, and vows to make an offering of artificial glass eyes or money
Plague.
Small-
pox.
