Omens and Superstitions of Southern India

by Edgar Thurston

Overview

In my "Ethnographic Notes in Southern India" (1906), I stated that the confused chapter devoted to omens, animal superstitions, evil eye, charms, sorcery, etc., was a mere outline sketch of a group of subjects, which, if worked up, would furnish material for a volume. This chapter has now been remodelled, and supplemented by notes collected since its publication, and information which lies buried in the seven bulky volumes of my encyclopaedic "Castes and Tribes of Southern India" (1909). The area dealt with (roughly, 182,000 square miles, with a population of 47,800,000) is so vast that I have had perforce to supplement the personal knowledge acquired in the course of wandering expeditions in various parts of Southern India, and in other ways, by recourse to the considerable mass of information, which is hidden away in official reports, gazetteers, journals of societies, books, etc."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788180940934
Publisher:	Mjp Publisher
Publication date:	07/01/2021
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.72(d)

Read an Excerpt

In villages, strangers are not allowed to be present, when the cows are milked. Sudden failure of milk, or blood-stained milk, are attributed to the evil eye, to remove the influence of which the owner of the affected cow resorts to the magician. When the hill Kondhs are threshing the crop, strangers may not look on the crop, or speak to them, lest their evil eye should be cast on them. If a stranger is seen approaching the threshing-floor, the Kondhs keep him off by signalling with their hands, without speaking. In Malabar, a mantram, which is said to be effective against the potency of the evil eye, runs as follows: " Salutation to thee, O God ! Even as the moon wanes in its brightness at the sight of the sun, even as the bird chakora (crow-pheasant) disappears at the sight of the moon, even as the great Vasuki (king of serpents) vanishes at the sight of the chakora, even as the poison vanishes from his head, so may the potency of his evil eye vanish with thy aid." In Malabar, fear of the evil eye is very general. At the corner of the upper storey of almost every Nayar house near a road or path is suspended some object, often a doll-like hideous creature, on which the eye of the passers-by may rest.f " A crop," Mr Logan writes,$ " is being raised in a garden visible from the road. The vegetables will never reach maturity, unless a bogey of some sort is set up in their midst. A cow will stop giving milk, unless a conch (Turbinella rapa) shell is tied conspicuously about her horns. [Mappilla cart-drivers tie black ropes round the neck, or across the faces of their bullocks.] When ahouse or shop is being built, there surely is to be found exposed in some conspicuous position animage, sometimes of extreme indecency, a pot covered with cabalistic signs, a prickly branch of ca...