Indian Antiquary Vol 24

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 63

MARCH, 1895.]
SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM.
59
with him & small charcoal fire, a pair of bellows and some iron rods. When a patient thinks himself bewitched, the doctor makes him lie down, pulls aside the clothes from his back, and, making his rod of iron red-hot, draws it with a hissing sound across the back and loins of the sick person in the name of God.46 Actual cautery with a red hot iron is a favourite remedy with the Moors.46 In Madagascar the chief post of the house has a silver chain fastened to it.7
So great is the power of iron over spirits, that the guardian spirit in fire must not be touched with a sword or iron. So the Tartars would not (1246) touch fire with a knife. Pythagoras (B. C. 600) said that fire should not be stirred with a sword. The same belief occors in North-East Asia and North America. In Russia to break faggots with a poker might cause an ancestor to fall into hell, - that is, might drive away the guardian ancestral spirit from his hearth-home.49 A similar reason may explain why the Romans would not cut certain plants with a knife, and why religious monuments were long made of undressed stone. The Romans believed that if an iron spike was driven in the ground, where a person was attacked by the falling sickness, he would never be again seized.50 The Romans kept a javelin in a lying-in room to give the mother easy delivery, and drove large coffin nails in the side-posts of doors to drive off spirits.62 Any one finding n cast horse-sboe in the road, and laying it up, will be cured of the yox, or hiccup, by thinking of the place where the shoe was put.53 In the Roman tombs opened at Mayence, in women's coffins, bracelets, rings, needles and censors for burning incense were found.
The Danish women, before putting a child in a cradle, to prevent evil spirits from hurting the child, fasten garlic, salt and steel to the cradle.65 In Sweden a knife, or other steel implement, is laid in the cradle of an unbaptized child to keep off spirits. Batbers throw steel into the water, and say :-"Neck, Neck, stoel in strand, thy father was a steel-thief, thy mother a needle-thief, so far shalt thou be hence as this cry is heard.”66 The young German warriors (A. D. 100) wore an iron chain,67 and the British mothers gave their children their first fond off the father's sword.58 The Germans used to lay three knives for the Three Mothers, 60 probably at first to drive them away, though they afterwards seem to have laid offerings on the blades.
In 1691, in the Scotch Highlands, cold iron was put in a lying-in woman's bed to keep off the fairies, the reason being that, as iron mines lay near to hell, iron had an unpleasant savour to those fascinating creatures.60 In Suffolk (1780) it was believed that an old horse-shoe buried under the threshold of a witch kept her in at night. 61 That no elf or nightmare should ride on a woman in child-bed, and that an infant may not be carried away by an owl, a knife should be kept on the couch.62 In early England the fiend-sick patient had to drink out of a church bell.63 Middle-Age Europe believed that spirits could be hurt by swords and lances. The belief that a horse-shoe keeps off spirits, is
45 Rohlf's Morocco, p. 82. Cf. ante, p. 20. 6 Op. cit. p. 81. " Sibree's Madagascar, p. 287.
* Early History of Man, p. 277. Comparo (Macgregor's Sikhs, Vol. I. p. 91) when the Sikh leader Guru Govind (1580) was forced to eat boef he first turned over the flesh with a knife. The sense seems to be that the iron drove out the divine cow-spirit. What Gorind ate was therefore no longer cow's flesh. + Op. cit. p. 277.
60 Pliny's Natural History, Book xxviii. Chap. 6. 61 Op. cit. Book xxviii. Chap. 4.
52 Op. cit. Book xxxiv. Chap. 13. * Pliny's Natural History, Book xxviii. Chap. 20. In some Roman British tombs large nails have been found (Wright's Celt, Romin and Saxon, pp. 302, 306, 306, 310). Parhaps the object, as among the Cheremiss Indians, was to secure the body in the coffin (Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. I. p. 29). 04 Bombay Gaxette, 5th February, 1884.
66 Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 73. 66 Henderson's Foll-Lore (2nd Edition), p. 281. 07 Taoitus' Germania, Chap. p. 31. 58 Tacitus' Oxford Trans. Vol. II. p. 356.
6 Wright's Celt, Roman and Saxon, pp. 288-287. * Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 184.
Moore's Oriental Fragments, p. 455. • Brand'. Popular Antiquities, Vol. IĻI. p. 250. * Tylor's Primitire Culture, Vol. II. p. 140.
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. p. 788.