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JUNE, 1895.)
SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM,
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lightning may see them and flee. In the Konkan, some Hindu mothers in child-bed tie a piece of turmeric round their neck to keep off evil spirits, and continue to wear it for a year.29 Ata Dekban Kunbi's wedding yellow lines are drawn on the cloth, which is held between the boy and the girl,30 and at a Dekhan Ramosi's wedding yellow rice is thrown over the bride and bridegroom.31 Kapara Lingayats tie turmeric roots round the wrists of the bride and bridegroom.33 In Sholapur, Komti women, rub their faces with turmeric powder,33 1,1 Kânara, Havig Brahman women, when in full dress, colour with turnieric paste the parts of the body which remain uncovered.34 In the Karnatak, among the Madhava Brâlimaņs, before marriage and thread.girding, the chief relations are rubbed with turmeric and bathed in warm water.35 The Khônds gird their head-man with a necklace of yellow thread,36 and they bind a yellow thread round the bride and bridegroom's necks and sprinkle their faces with turmeric.37 The Hog and Mundas of South-West Bengal anoint the dead with oil and tarmeric.38 The Gonds tie a yellow thread round the wrist of the bride and bridegroom.30 On the fifth day after a birth the Gonds call women and rub them with turmeric. The Hindu sannyúsi wears yellow clothes. Among fire.worshipping Persians a yellow dog with four eye-like spots, or a white dog with yellow ears drives off the pollution spirit.42 The Persians hield gold to be the purest metal; one washing cleaned a gold dish, a silver dish wanted six.43 Burman women, and some Burman men, rub a sweet straw-coloured powder on their cheeks. Among the Malays, no one but the king may wear yellow.46 The road along which the emperor of China passes in bridal procession is covered with yellow cloths.46 The Lama of Thibet wears a lony yellowish robe.47 At the spring-ploughing festival in China, a husbandman wearing a yellow coat goes before the plough. 9 in China, when a person is sick with headache or fever, the enchanter writes with a red pencil on a yellow paper, burns the paper and gives the ashes to the sick man to drink.49 At a Buddhist funeral in Japan, women in mourning wear yellow clothes. In the Fiji Islands, vermilion and turmeric are rubbed on the faces and bosoms of wives, who are killed to accompany their dead husbands.1 The people of Melville Island daub themselves with yellow,53 The Wagogos of East Africa wear yellow wristlets of goat skin to keep off spirits.53 The Mexicans stained the successful warrior yellow,64 and at Mexican festivals the people painted their faces yellow.55 Greek virgins, at the fifth yearly sacrifice to Diana, wore yellow gowns. though, with this exception, to wear any coloured dress at a festival was against the law.56 In Greece pills made of yellow silk and live spiders are believed to cure ague.57 The pedestal of the Guardian of Ulster in Ireland was a golden yellow stone.68 In Middle Age England gold rings were worn to cure patients suffering from the attacks of evil spirits.69
Red. - On almost all great Hindu occasions red or vermilion, kunku, is used along with yellow turmeric. Hindu women, whose husbands are alive, mark their brows with red powder. In Thâni, when a high-class Hindu woman goes to visit a neighbour, at the close of her visit her brow is marked with red.60 In the Dekhan, the Chitpávan bridegroom's face is marked with black and red.61 The Poona Uchliâs, in preparing the oil for the ordeal caldron, paint
29 Information from Mr. Govind Pandit.
de Bombay Garatteer, Vol. XVIII. p. 805. $1 Op. cit. Vol. XVIII. p. 419.
31 Op. cit. Vol. XV. p. 178. 85 Op. cit. Vol. XX. p. 53.
# Information from Mr. DoSouza. 25 Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XXII. p. 79.
36 Macpherson's Khonds, p. 31. 87 Op. cit. pp. 54, 55.
# Dalton's Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 202, 3) Hislop's Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces, p. 23.
" Op. cit. Ap. I. p. iv. 11 Maurice's Indian Antiguities, Vol. V. p. 1008.
Bleek's Khordah Avesla, p. 71. 13 Op. cit. p. 65.
4+ Shway Yoe's The Burman, Vol. II. P. 22. 5 Comment. of D' Albruerque, Vol. III. p. 83.
16 Simpson's Meeting the Sun, pp. 157, 158. •T Gray's China, Vol. I. p. 134.
43 Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 117. .9 Op. cit. Vol. II. pp. 17, 18.
- St. John's Nipon, p. 220. 61 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. I. p. 459.
62 Earl's Papuans, p. 194. 63 Cameron's Across Africa, p. 100.
54 Bancroft, Vol. III. p. 245.65 Op. cit. Vol. III. p. 360. 66 Clarke's Travels in Greece, Vol. IV. p. 17.
57 Op. cit. Vol. IV. p. 52. 58 Toland's Celtic Religion (1700). p. 134.
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 435. Information from Mr. Govind Pandit.
& Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XVIII. p. 131.
