________________
156
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1895.
foot of the bed.25 In Durbam, a garter tied round the left leg below the knee cures cramp.26 In England, the newly-christened child continued to wear the christening cap till the morning after the christening.27
Colours. - Spirits seem to hold in special dread the three colours, yellow, red and black, and perhaps white.
Yellow. - For six days before the wedding the Indian Masalman bride wears old tattered yellow clothes. The admitted object of the practice is to drive away the spirits or jinns that hover round the bride and bridegroom. So when a wife prepares to meet a long absent husband she dresses in yellow from head to foot. A North-Indian Hindi song runs: "Her husband returns at eve, the fair one makes ready to meet him with yellow saffron on her brow, with a golden ring in her nose, with a garland of yellow gold hung round her neck. Golden, too, is her vestment and yellow sandal shines on her body. Ripe yellow pán she chews. The dear one makes herself yellow to meet her lord.''28 Among Gujarat Musalmans the marriage turmeric-rabbing, pithi-lagdná, is confessedly with the object of keeping off evil spirits, with whose presence the wedding day air is so heavy-laden as to give rise to the proverb: - “Shadi ka waķht badá bhari waķht hai. The time of marriage is # very heavy time." To silence any possible grumble of the bride :-"Of what use is Ibis yellow-paste rubbing," the elders are primed with stories :-"Khuda Bakhsb, the Paidhôni weaver, had his wedding day close at hand. Hirå his bride was at her house. The pithi, or turmeric paste, was ready. The time of rubbing it on bad come. The bride missed her nosering. She was allowed by mistake to go herself to fetch it. She found the ring and came back. Wben the rubbing on of the paste began, almost at the very sight of the paste, she fell into convulsions. For two or three days the fits came back at intervals. Her mother heard of a good exorcist and took Hîrâ to see him. The power of the exorcist forced the spirit in the girl to speak. I am the spirit of a Sidi,' he said. "I am a gnome half a span high. I saw this girl when she went for the nose-ring. I liked her. I noticed neither yellow clothes nor yellow paste to keep me off. I took possession of her.'” “Yes," says another of the elder ladies, * and Miriam Hasan of Mâhim, with her new ideas, was looking about her just before the paste was put on. She fell in a fit. She had looked into the tamarind tree in front of the bouse and the jinn who lived in the tamarind tree had seen her looking and took possession of her.. It was long before they could get the jinn to confess and leave her ...." During the spirit-laden days of Dasara or Diwali no careful Masalman mother lets a child ont of doors without a yellow lemon in his pocket. A Bombay inspector, a Sürat Musalman, going his rounds after dark on Diwali eve, felt something bob against his legs. He tried with his hand and found that the dear house-mother had dropped a lemon into each tail-pocket. Most Hindus of Western India make yellow the bodies of the bride and bridegroom by rabbing them with turmeric. Among most high-class Hindus the bride's cloth, or radhuvastra, is always yellow, and the kankans, or marriage wristlets, tied round the wrists of the bride and bridegroom have generally inside of them a piece of turmeric root and a betel-nut. Before a thread-girding, 1 he Brahman boy is rubbed with yellow, and among several classes, when a girl comes of age, she is covered with yellow clothes, or is rubbed with turmeric. That it is the yellow colour, not the turmeric, that is valued, is shewn by the fact that several classes use yellow earth instead of turmeric. The Vaishnava use of yellow earth, known as gopi-chandan, or milk-maid's sandalwood, seems based on the belief that yellow scares spirits. That this is not because yellow is a festive colour, is proved by the practice of marking the face and chest of the dead with lines of yellow. The explanation that the object is to drive away spirits is supported by the belief among some Hindus that spirits fear yellow. When they re-tbatch their houses at the beginning of the rains, the Maratha Hindus of the Konkan give the thatcher a bundle of cloth, in which are tied turmeric, marking nuts, an iron nail, and rice, to lay on the roof peak or ridge, that the
25 Henderson's Folk-Lore, pp. 101, 102. 37, Op. cit. p. 15.
26 Op. cit. p. 155. 7 Information from Mr. Fazl Lutfullah,
