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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1906.
dawn and were seen by some of the villagers, who, not recognising them as children of the village, were terrified at the sight of them, believing them to be ghosts. I understand that the children ran some risk of being treated harshly, if not killed, as evil-intentioned ghosts.
Churels have their feet pointing backwards. They have long paps which they throw over their shoulders. Their hair is long, and face beautiful. A dyer was returning home one day, when he met a, churél, who accompanied him to his house. Si was very attractive, for she concealed the marks by which he would have recognised her. But at night, when it was time to put out the light, she did it with her hand, which she stretched to such a distance that the dyer in terror found he had a churél by his side. He would have given the alarm, but she threatened him and gave him a rupee. The faqir found her out, however, being set to do it by the dyer's friends. Us né usé qábú kar liyd, he caught her. She then asked for her rupee and disappeared.
If a woman dies before giving birth to her child, she certainly becomes an evil-spirit. When they bury her, they put a nail though her hands and her feet, and put red pepper on her eyes. They place a chain round her ankles and so bury her. On the way home they sow seti sarôn, white mustard, that it may blind her. They have tünd for her, i.e., charms, otherwise she would come and hurt every one in the house. "This is a fact," said my informant emphatically!
At a certain stage of the incantations the child says, "Are you going?" The spirit says, "Yes, but I want a fowl, a goat, a piece of cloth, &c." This is given, and the bad spirit goes.
There are several kinds of spirits, churél, bhút, khavis, jinn, déô, pari. The churél we have described. The parts are churéls when they come in companies. A faqir, who dies within his twelve years of faqiri, becomes a bhút, or a khavís, or a jinn, or a déô. If he dies in his forty days of fasting, when he comes to eat one grain a day, he becomes a bhavis, or a jinn, or a déô.
Totems.
Laung, clove, is the name of one of the ancestors in the clan of Goriyê. It is especially revered. Among the Gils, the baingyan,26 egg plant, is particularly noticed. The chief's name was Parth, so they do not eat the part, rind, of the boingyan.
Women never take the name of their zát, caste, on their lips.
(To be continued.)
NOTES AND QUERIES.
WORSHIP.
CHRISTIAN TOMB USED FOR MUHAMMADAN | lamps are burnt on Thursdays as usual. The "tomb" is in a Muhammadan graveyard still in use and on to it looks the window of a small building used by women as a place of worship on Fridays. The "tomb" is in charge of a woman, who is entitled to a small fee for showing it.
Ar Smyrna, on his way from the low-lying town to Mt. Pagus, the traveller is taken by the local guides to see the Tomb of St. Polycarp, who was martyred in the Stadium in A. D. 155. This so-called "tomb" is nowadays an ordinary Muhammadan grave, made of mud and plaster, painted a bluish grey and surmounted by a green turban, thus turning this early Christian Bishop into a Muhammadan Saint. In the niche in the gravestone (without inscription)
25 Also a nose-stud or ornament,
All this shows that worship at Christian tombs by Musalmans (and Hindas, too, for that matter) is not confined to India.
R. C. TEMPLE. 26 Part is the form given in Maya Singh's Panjabi Dictionary, p. 877.
