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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[August, 1895.
grass, and wear them, like rings, round their arms and legs. The Balucka women of Central Africa pierce both their ears and lips, and insert inch-long bits of grass stalk." Bongo women put straw into holes made through their lips and nostrils. In somo American tribes, a traveller, to drive out the spirit of weariness, rubs his legs with grass, spits on the grass, and lays it on a shrine at a crossing of ways.46 In the Greek festival to the sun, grass was consecrated and carried about. The Romans had a custom of laying a sacred sieve in the road, and using for medical purposes the stalks of grass that grew through the holes. In Middle Age Scotland, oaths were taken on grass. Compare Scott's Border Minstrelsy, p. 362:
“So swore she by the grass so green.
So swore she by the corn.” In England, a straw drawn through a child's mouth close to a running stream cures the thrush.49 In England, herbs used to be strewn in churches on humiliation and thanksgiving days.60 That spirits fear grass may have been one of the reasons for the old English custom of strewing the floors of houses with rushes. Rushes were used in Devonshire as a charm for the thrush, as well as for their coolness, and their pleasant myrtle-like smell when broken. In the north of England rushes are still (1857) used in making rush lights.61
Grain. - Spirits fear grain, probably because grain scares the spirit of hunger, is & valuable poultice, and yields liquor. According to the Hindus, grain scares spirits, because certain guardian spirits or gods live in grain. Five deities live in rice: - Brahma the Creator, Sôma the inoon, Ravi the sun, the Marutgaņas or wind gods, and Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.52 In all leading Hinda ceremonies, in Western India, grains of sarshapa, Sinapis dichotoma, and parched rice are scattered to scare fiends.53 In Thâná, among the Marathi Brahmans, when a daughter-in-law returns home from a distance, an elderly woman comes forward to greet her, and waves round her face water and rice, and throws the water and rice into the street, telling the lady not to look back.54 The admitted object of this waving is to drive away any roadside or other spirit that may have attached itself to the travellers. In the East Dekhan, the exorcist piles small heaps of millet round the possessed person, and, when driving oat the spirit, holds grains of millet in his right hand and keeps throwing grains in the patient's face. Rice is poured over the stool on which the Dekhan Chitpê van boy sits, when he is being girt with the sacred thread.55 The Chitpavan bride and bridegroom stand on rice heaps, and, before her wedding, the Chitpa van bride sits in front of a picture of the gods and throws rice over it.56 When an Uchlâ woman dies in child-bed, as the body leaves the house a nail is driven into the threshold to keep her spirit from coming back, and on the road to the burning ground rúlá grains are strewn.57 At their marriage, the Poona Uchlà bride and bridegroom sit on a blanket in a square of rice.58 The Velålis, a Poona Tamil class of Vaisyas, strew the ground with parched grain before the body, when it is carried to the burial-ground. In the Deklan, when one Brâhman asks another to dine at his house, the host lays a few grains of rice in the guest's right hand, and at their memorial or sraddh ceremony the performer throws grains of rice and sesamum to all the Four Quarters to keep off evil spirits. At the end of a Poona Dhruva Prabhu's wedding, when it is time to bow out the wedding gods, rice is thrown over them.cl In Poona, on Dasahra day (Sept.-Oct.), men of the higher classes wear in their turbans some seedlings of the rice, barley, wheat, and palse, which have been grown in baskets in the temple of Bhavâni during the nine previous days. At a Dekhan Kunbi's wedding, in the girl's
*3 Schweinfurth's Heart of Africa, Vol. II. p. 117. « Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 258. 5 Op. cit. Vol. I. p. 297. Bancroft, Vol. III. p. 481.
61 Maurice's Indian Antiquities, Vol. V. p. 895. ** Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, Vol. III. p. 1200. Dyer's Folk-Lore, p. 150. 60 Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 118. 61 Chambers's Book of Days, p. 507. 5* The Sanskrit text is :- Anne Brahm icha Somascha Rarit aond Marul gands. Information from Mr. P. B. Joshi.
- Information from Mr. Govind Pandit. 36 Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XVIII. p. 117.
6 Op. cit. Vol. XVIII. pp. 130, 132. 67 Op. cit. Vol. XVIII. p. 474.
63 Op. cit. Vol. XVIII. p. 472. » Op. cit, Vol. XVIII. p. 250, • Op. cit. Yol. XVIII. p. 156.
Op. cit, Vol. XVIII. p. 190.
