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OCTOBER, 1907.)
A REPORT ON THE PANJAB HILL TRIBES.
307
LII. - Omens from Houses.
(1) The pince where a crow caws at night and a jackal howls at day, becomes unfit for habitation. This is considered to be the forecast of somebody dying there.
(2) The sitting of an owl, a pheasant, or a vulture on the roof of a house is considered ominous. If this happens, & goat is sacrificed at once.
(3) The crawling of a snake in the upper floor of the house is considered to portend evil. If one appears, it is expelled by pulling down the roof and not through the door. Something is also given in charity.
(4) Cracking sounds in the roof or furniture of a hone are unlucky.
(5) If in a house the sound of a stranger, or of a member of the family, is heard, and after enquiry it is found that there was no such man there, but the sound was only an unnatural one, the house is thought to be unfortunate:
(6) The appearance of moisture in the walls of a honge without any rain, is thonght ominous.
(7) The following are ill-omens for a house : The subjection of the inmates to constant. whimsical thonghts, excessive sleep, poverty, constant.dreams, expenses greater than income, perpetual illness.
(8) The going out of a fire suddenly at the time of cooking food. (9) Decrease in charity, prayers and worship, and increase in sin, portend misfortune.
LIII. - Omons from the Ronde. To lay a road along one's habitation is prohibited.
LIV. - Omons from Movements of the Body. (1) The trembling of any limb, in a healthy state of the person, is of evil import.
1 Ungenal silence or too much talk, sickly heart and whimsical thoughts, foreshadow ooming evil. Also evil dreams; sneezing of a person in front or on the left; & Buccession of calamities; spitting; a snake, a lizard, a jackal or an Ass touching the body; the perching of crow on the hond or the fall of a crow's droppings on the body; the appearance of drops of blood on a cloth when the cause cannot be found out; biting by a dog or cat; burning by fire; cloth being damaged by mioe.
LV.-Lucky and Unluoky Stars, 109. Everyone has two rdshis (stars of fate), s. e., birth rdshi and name rishi. If an avil star como near this rdshi at a distance of 4, 8 or 12 stages, the man under its influence has to propitiato it, and considers himself unluoky, The images or likenesses of stars are not buried.
LVI. - Omons from the Rivers. 900. If the following omens occur to a man crossing a river, he will stop for an hour and then cross it : Sneezing, tombling, confronting an ass or a snake going to the right, confronting a bareheaded man or a man bringing wood, a bridegroom going to a marriage, one being asked as to where he is going, appearing to the left or in front of a partridge, crow, a pheasant, a deer, a jackal or a heron, a widow.
If one comes across some of these omens successively in crossing a river or a road, he returns and does not proceed.
