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ALPHABETICAL GUIDE TO SINHALESE FOLKLORE
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exorcism of M. A space 60 cubits square was divided into 16 square inner spaces, the first court being 30 cubits square, the second 20, the third 10, the fourth 7 (apparently the courts forming concentric squares); the walls were of 70 times 70 sticks, the paths in sevens ; there were 16 rounded angles, 16 doors, each door being 2 cubits wide, and 4 corner-posts with a three-storied room over them, in which was a throne, etc. The M.-yâgaya prescribes rituals for exorcism and invokes Kanda, Pattini, and the Four Guardian Gods. For other rituals said to have been used in the healing of M. seo Areca-sickle, Asuras, Betel, Rose-water, Torch, Turmeric, Vas, Vidi.
Mänik Raja. A Naga who gave a black leopard to Kalu Bandara (q. v.). A Mänik Raja is invoked in Alut-devi-kavi.
Mänik Ruval Bandara. See Ruval Yaka.
Mani-mekhalava ((Mudu M.-m.). The Sea-goddess. She gave to Devel Devi and his companions a stone raft, on which they reached Ceylon (see Devel Devi). She restored to Pattini (q. v.) her ring. Invoked in Tis-päyê kima as regent of the 24th päya, and born from Uma's ashes. In the latter connection see Siva.
Mantri Devi. Mother of Aydi Kada vara. Manu-rada. The Manu of Hindi myth ; gee Kota-halu, Maha-sammata.
Mara (Vasavatti). The Spirit of Desire, who vainly tempted Buddha. The poem Mârârgana-inava, intended for an exorcism, describes his three sisters (more properly, daughters) as brewing a philtre of antimony and drugs to conquer Buddha. The drugs include flowers and plants of various kinds, tails of yellow and white rat-snakes and of iguanas, heads of tree-frogs, foam of elephants in rut, oil of various lizards and of crows, lime from the shells of plovers' eggs, oil of sparrows' eggs, sloughed skins of various snakes, divers minerals, fishes' blood, human oil, blood from the mouth, human brains, the lungs of a first-born child, and oil of fire-flies, which were collected on the 4th, 9th, and 14th days of the half-month (see Rita) and on a mara-yoga or unlucky day. On a Sunday the sisters, after purification, made four offerings of flowers, four of betel, and four of blood, and then, with incantations over the 5 kinds of oil, compounded the philtre. Madana Yaka and his consort were propititious. All the Yakas came on Tuesday. A bull was sacrificed, and cow's butter was added to the philtre, and it was boiled in green oil. Three pills, called Bodinat-pills, were thence compounded, which the sisters threw upon Buddha, but in vain. They also prepared ointment of antimony to embellish their eyes, its ingredients including leopards' heads and fat, human skulls, tiger-spiders, &c. Cf. Budu-guwa-mula-santiya, which says that after Buddha had obtained enlightenment, Mâra's daughters threw at him a poisonous pellet, which recoiled upon them and smote them with diabetes. The Cinci-manavika-kivi relates that Mara's sisters Rati, Mati, and Arati danced and sang before Buddha in vain, and as a result of their efforts they were seized with dysentery, from which red lotus flowers and the tree kunumälla arose, as they hastened through the forest to find a lake for bathing. The lake that they sought dried up, and they could not wash. From the dirt of their bodies arose the quranda tree (Celtis cinnamomea). They all fled to different lands and there conceived. One conceived in the Olande country, and gave birth to a son named Olande, the ancestor of the Dutch ; another in Jagandarava bore a child from whom the Ingrisi or English were descended ; the third in Batâviye gave birth to a child named Batâviye, from whom the Sädi Tamils were descended.
