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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JUNE, 1928
representing the beloved, and to shoot an arrow tipped with a thorn in its heart. This is clearly a sort of homeopathic magiu, for does not Káma, the Indian god of Love corresponding to Cupid of classical mythology, shoot his darts at the hearts of young people so that they fall in love? By the same process of reasoning that like produces like, among some of the degraded Hindu sects of Bengal, when it is desired to injure or to kill an enemy, a small clay image is made to represent him, and then a knife or a pin is stuck through the heart : the person whose image is thus mutilated is sure to feel the effects and die in consequence10. "Nijer nak kețe parer játra bhanga kard" (To cut one's own nose in order to make another person's journey abortive) is a common enough expression in Bengali, which may be interpreted in the same way, though the desired effect, we should in justice admit, would be very dearly bought.
A curious application of homøopathic magic is to be met with in the widespread custom in Bengal of curing night-blindness, an affliction of the eye which renders a person incapable of seeing anything distinctly at night, by the internal use of a fire-fly. The process is extremely simple : get hold of a living fire-fly and enclose it alive within the pulpy inside of a banana, then give it to the sufferer to eat; as the fire-fly lights up its own way in the dark, so it is sure to impart some of its virtue to the enter, who will consequently be cured of his affliction 11. A splinter in a child's eye is effectually removed by rubbing the upper eye-lid and repeating the following verse :
“Dhulo has, ure ja ; Mati has, gale jd; Kath has, bheshe ja ;
Pathar has, bhenge ja." which may be translated into English doggerel verse thus :
If dust thou art, fly away; If thou art clod, melt I pray; If wood thou art, float away,
But if stone, breek I say.18 By an association of ideas, the pipal tree (Ficus religiosa18) and the tortoise14 are the objects of a cult in Bengal, for it is believed that longevity may thus be attained.
The Hindus do not burn the body of a still-born child or of a child which has died before attaining the age of two years, but bury the body in the house itself. This unusual method of disposing of the dead-the custom of cremating a dead body is universal among the Hindus -is followed in the belief that, if this be done, the mother will bear another child16. In the
. I have adopted the terms Homeopathic Magic and Contagious Magic in accordance with Sir James G. Frazer (The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, pt. 1 of “The Golden Bough," vol. I, pp. 52 sq.) for the charms based on the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contact respectively.
10 O. W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, Westminster, 1896, vol. II, pp. 278 sq.: The Tribes und Castes of North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Calcutta, 1896, vol. I, p. 137: E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, pp. 328 sqq. 11 Ethnologic du Bengale, p. 141.
13 Ibid. 13 Cl. among the Chineee, S. Wells Williams, Middle Kingdom, New York. 1883, vol. II, p. 259 : in Ceylon..(Sir) J. E. Tannent, An Account of the Island of Ceylon, London, 1859, vol. II, p. 632 sq.
14 "Divers marvellous tales are narrated with regard to its (the tortoise's) fabulous longevity and its faculty of transformation "-W. F. Mayers, The Chinese Reader's Manual, Shanghai, 1924, p. 101, No. 299, ..0."Kwei."
16 Ethrologie du Bengale, p. 71 quoting J. Jolly, Recht und Sitte, Strassburg, 1896, p. 166; R. Hertz Le représentation collective de la mort," Annde Sociologique, vol. X, (Paris, 1905-1906), p. 132, n. 1, where, on the authority of the Code of Manu (Sacred Books of the East, XXV, p. 180), he says, that such children are buried in a foreet immediately after death cecurs, and their bones are never recovered,
