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APRIL, 1898.]
SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM.
109
have been pierced by adder's stings.64 A bored stone in Scotland (1591) kept off the pains of child-bed. In England, about 1700, bored stones were hung at the bed to keep off nightmare, and they may still be seen (1860); there ought to be flints with a natural hole in them at stable doors to keep witches from riding horses. With the cleft stone at Malabar Point may be compared the cleft or passage at the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem through which pilgrims used to crush, and the Shargar stone in the Auld Wife's Lift in Scotland and similar stones in Ireland under which people used to crawl. The special value of the bored stone may perhaps not mean more than that the hole is an open door into the spirit house, and will, therefore, be a favourite dwelling. The flint with the natural hole hung in front of the English stable suggests that the fire-spirit, dreadful to witches, lives in the stone. The cleft stone in Malabar Point is explaind by Brahmaņs as a symbol of a second birth. The character of the three chief men who are said to have passed through the cleft, suggests that the object was to get rid of blood-guiltinoss, or rather of the evil spirits to which the blood-guiltiness had given an opening, and that in passing through the cleft these evil spirits were dragged down through the body And out by the heel in one of the usual ways of getting rid of spirits. So at the church at Jerusalem the object of squeezing through the rock seems to have been the hope that the spirit of Christ would drive out evil spirits. The view seems to agree with Colonel Leslie's statement of the objects with which the clefts in stones in England and Scotland were passed through. The objects were to care existing maladies, to guard against incantations, and to free from sin. In England (ninth and tenth centuries), the rite was to draw children through a hole in the earth, or through a small tunnel, or through a hole where four roads met. A child suffering from hernia (seventeenth century England) was cured by passing it through an ash-tree cleft. In Moray, in Scotland, in 1700, children passed through circles of woodbine clinging to an oak. On Midsummer's Eve, in the Canary Islands, naked infants were passed through a part-split rush to cure hernia. In Oxford (1600), a cheese was cut and hollowed out, and a child made to pass through it on Christmas day. In Cornwall, in 1749, people with pains in the back and limbs passed through a hole, and young children were drawn through to cure them of rickets.67 A third case of bored stones is a slab with a round hole in it which forms one of the sides of the listvaens, or chest-tombs, which have been found in the Dekhan, in Circassia, and in Cornwall.68 Colonel Leslie's explanation, that the hole was left for the spirit to pass out, seems likely to be correct.
Trees. The belief that spirits live in the stems of, or in beams or images of wood, seems not to differ from the belief that spirits live in stones. In the Konkan, orthodox Brahmans daily, before taking their meals, worship the spirit, called Vasto, which lives in the principal pillar of the house. In Nasik, some classes of Marithês set up memorial pillars of wood instead of stone, 70 and Colonel Dalton (Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 115) notices that the Kbyens of the north-east frontier put a carved log or post at the tomb. In the Konkan, the medium or bhagat, who becomes possessed, is called jhead, or tree, apparently because he is a favourite dwelling of the spirits. In the Dekhan, it is believed that the spirit of a pregnant woman lives in a tamarind tree, 71 and, according to the Poona Kunbia, the favourite spirit haunts are large trees, lonely places, empty houses, and old wells.72 The Santhals believe that human spirits live in the bela tree,73 and the Abors or Padams of East Bengal think that spirits in trees kidnap children.7* The Mysore spirits are fond of lodging in trees and burial grounds.75 That human souls live in trees is a belief of the Dayaks of Borneo. Among the Malays spirits frequent trees and bring diseases.77 In Tasmania and in Guinea, spirits live in hollow trees.78 The Hyperboreans
et Soott's Border Minstrelay, p. 409.
6 Leslie's Early Races of Scotland, p. 300. Op. cit. Vol. IL D. 302.
67 Op. cit. Vol. II. pp. 295-297. Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 291.
69 Information from Mr. P. B. Joshi. 70 Information from Mr. Ramsay.
n Information from Mr. Kelkar. 72 Trans. By. Lit. Soc. Vol. III. p. 219.
73 Tylor'e Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 226. ** Dalton's Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 25.
** Rice's Mysore, Vol. I. p. 366. 16 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 11. 11 Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 215. 75 Op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 186, 187.
