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108
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(APRIL, 1898.
lived in a great rock. In England, a country cure for warts is to press & pebble against the wart, and leave the pebble on the high road.50 Heine in one of his pagan passages adopts the early style: - "Kaiser Friederic, the old Barbarossa, is not dead. He and his court have gone to the hill of Kyffhauser, and will come again to cheer the German people. I cried :
Come, Barbarossa, come'; but he came not, and I could only embrace the rock in which he dwells."62
It is not easy to explain why the stone should have been chosen as a spirit's dwelling. That stones were found to contain fire, may have helped the idea ;53 and that heated stones were so useful in caring sickness, in cooking, and in many other ways, may have strengthened the belief.53 Perhaps, the earliest idea was that, as the life of the millet was in the millet sced, and the life of the mango tree was in the mango stone, a human spirit could live in a rock or pebble. The belief, that the soul or part of the soul of a man lives in his bones, seems closely connected with the belief in the stone as a spirit house. Probably it was held as an early belief, that the bones should be kept so that if the spirit comes back, and worries, he may have a place to go to.54 In West India, the wizard searches for the forearm bone of & woman who has died in child-bed, because her spirit lives in it with great power. For the same reason the hand and arm are engraved on a sati stone. The belief, that the spirit remained in the bones, is at the root of Buddhist and other relic worship. When sick the Andaman Islanders wear round the parts in pain chaplets and belts of the bones of their deceased relations.55 In Australia, three men sleep on a grave, and get a piece of bone, the spirit of the dead. This they can put into another man.56 Some Central African tribes wear necklaces of teeth.67 In America, the belief was widespread that the soul of man lived in his bones.69 So in Ezekiel's vision there was life in the dry bones. So among the Romans teeth were favourite charms, and are common charms among the present Hindus. A child with a wolftooth round his neck does not start in his sleep; a horse with a wolf-tooth round his neck nerer tires. In Scotland (1860), a cup made out of a suicide's skall was believed to cure epilepsy, eo and in England (1858), a collier's wife asked a sexton for a bit of a skull that she might grind it to powder, and give it to her daughter as a cure for fits.cl
According to widespread European beliefs Hobgoblin lives in a mill and the devil gues under a millstone to carry out evil designs.ca The origin of these beliefs would seem the worship shewn, as among Hindus, to the quern or hand grind-stone as the home of a bread-winner or guardian.
Among stones bored stones have a specially sacred character. In India, the most famous example is the shaligram or sacred pebble from the Gandaki River. This is said to be holy, because Vishnu pierced it in the form of a worm. Another famous bored stone is a stone or rock with a cleft in it through which the penitent and the conscience-stricken forced their way. Such was the stone at Malabar Point, in Bombay, through whose cleft Shivaji (1660), Kanoji Angria (1713), and Raghunath Peishwa (1780) are all said to have passed. With the Indian shaligrám and the small bored stones which are so highly valued in North America, may be compared the adder's stone, which was held in high honour among the Scotch, and was believed to
49 Leslie's Early Races of Scotland, Vol. I. p. 142.
Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 149. #1 Fort. Rev. VOL. VI. New Series, p. 298.
63 Shepherds were rubbing stones, and a spark leapt forth; the first was lost, the second caught in straw (Ovid's Fasti, iv. 795). The fint has a special sacredness (Early History of Man, p. 227).
6 Compare the Delaware Indian raised to an ecstasy in & sweat caused by heated stones (Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 417), and Herodotus' Skyths roaring with delight in their tents from the fumes of hemp throwu on heated stones. u Compare Yale's Cathay, Vol. I. p. 151.
• Jour. Anthrop. Inst. Vol. VII. p. 460. 56 Fort. Rev. Vol. VI. p. 415.
57 Stanley's Dark Continent, Vol. II. p. 288. 68 Bancroft, Vol. III. pp. 514, 540.
Pliny's Natural History, Book xxviii., Chap. 19. 60 Mitchell's Highland Superstitione, p. 25.
61 Dyer's Folk-Lore, p. 148. 62 Gubernatis' Zoological Mythology, Vol. I. p. 114 * E. H. 4. p. 187.
