Indian Antiquary Vol 28

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

Page 95

MARCH, 1899.]
water is poured. The words of the charm leave no doubt that not only intestinal diseases but also pains of the head and the eyes, etc., are ascribed to worms. Thus, German popular medicine knows of a "finger-worm" as the causer of whitlow (panaricium), and even spasm in the stomach is ascribed to a worm, the so-called "heart-worm" (Herzwurm). As the Hindu charm mentions a worm "that gets to the middle of the teeth," so worms are believed to be the cause of toothache in almost every part of the world. "If a worm eat the teeth," says one of the prescriptions in an English Leech Book, "take holly rind over a year old and root of carline thistle, boil in hot water, hold in the mouth as hot as ithou hottest may." In Madagascar the sufferer from toothache is said to be "poorly through the worm" (W. G. Black, Folk-Medicine, pp. 32 f.). In a French charm against toothache it is said: "Si c'est une goutte de sang, elle tombera; si c'est un ver, il mourra." In Germany a sufferer from toothache will go to a pear-tree, walk three times round it, and say: "Pear tree, I complain to thee, three wormis sting me, the one is gray, the other is blue, the third is red- I wish they were all three dead." The circumambulation of the tree here alluded to has its parallel in the circumambulation of the fire and other sacred objects, which forms an essential part in the magic rites and religious ceremonies of the ancient Hindus.
WITCHCRAFT IN ANCIENT INDIA.
81
An important chapter in ancient Hindu witchcraft is that of the so-called "women's rites," or the charms and rites connected with sexual love. This chapter may well be treated as an appendix to medical witchcraft. "Liebeswahnsinn Pleonasmus, Liebe ist ja selbst ein Wahnsinn," says Heine, and to the primitive mind sexual love is indeed only a kind of mania, or mental derangement. Hence the love charms are only one class of medical charms. As herbs are used to allay disease, so are various kinds of plants used to arouse love in men or women. Thus a man who wishes to secure the love of a woman is told to tie to his little finger an amulet of licorice-wood and recite the charm: "This plant is born of honey, with honey do we dig for thee. Of honey thou art begotten, do thou make us full of honey! At the tip of my tongue may I have honey, at my tongue's root the sweetness of honey! In my power alone shalt thou then be, thou shalt come up to my wish! ... I am sweeter than honey, fuller of sweetness than licorice. Mayest thou, without fail, long for me alone, as a bee for a branch full of honey! I have surrounded thee with a clinging sugar-cane, to remove aversion, so that thou shalt not be averse to me !"
Most of the love charms, however, are not so "sweet," but have more in common with the fierce imprecations used for hostile sorcery. The following words are addressed to a plant (andropogon aciculatus, according to one authority), to arouse the passionate love of a woman: "Clinging to the ground thou didst grow, O plant, that producest bliss for me; a hundred branches extend from thee, three and thirty grow down from thee: with this plant of a thousand leaves thy heart do I parch. Thy heart shall parch with love for me, and thy mouth shall parch with love for me! Languish, moreover, with love for me, with parched mouth pass thy days! Thou that causest affection, kindlest love, brown, lovely plant, draw us together; draw together yonder woman and myself, our hearts make the same!"
To secure the love of her husband, and to become victorious over a rival or co-wife, a woman had to perform the following rite. In the morning of an auspicious day, she goes to a spot where a Clypea hernandifolia grows, scatters three times seven barley corns around it, and says, "If thou belongest to Varuna, I redeem thee from Varuna; if thou belongest to Soma, I redeem thee from Soma." Next morning she digs the plant up, saying the following charm: "I dig up this plant, the most potent of herbs, by which a rival woman may be overcome, by which a husband may be entirely won. O thou plant with erect leaves, who art auspicions, victorions, and powerful! Blow away my rival, make my husband mine alone! Superior am I, O superior plant, superior to the highest. Now shall my rival be inferior to the lowest ! I do not even mention her name, nor does she care for me. To the very farthest distance let as banish the rival" Then she ents the root of the plant in two, and ties the two pieces to