De, Aznslie on Small-Pox and Inoculation in Eastern Countries. Q3 



deity. The Rev. W. Ward • informs us, that inoculation is performed not 

 by the regular doctors (vaidya), but by a lower order of Brahmens (Daivaj- 

 nya), at any period of the year, but chiefly on the 7th, 8th, and 9th of the in- 

 crease of the moon. This valuable writer also tells us (vol. iv. p. 339), that 

 the variolous matter is introduced into the child's arm nearly in the same 

 way that it is in Europe ; but the place chosen is just above the wrist ; in 

 the right arm of the male, and the left of the female. I found, while in 

 the Ganjam circar, that inoculation had been prevalent there when the 

 European conquerors first got possession of it ; and I have no doubt, from 

 what I witnessed and have since heard, that it must have been customary 

 in that district for many ages past. There is this peculiarity in the fact, 

 that it is not amongst the Gentoos who inhabit the range of low and richly 

 cultivated country along the sea shore that the salutary precaution is usually 

 resorted to, but amongst men comparatively less civilized, who talk a 

 barbarous dialect, have a dissenting form of religion, and who live in the 

 more inland and hilly country. They are called Worriahs, and are distin- 

 guished by boldness, hardihood, and attachment to their respective rajas : 

 a brave, handsome race, who cherish independence, and usually build their 

 castles in the most inaccessible and woody recesses of their mountainous 

 dominions ; by which means they but too often have it in their power to 

 give infinite trouble to our regular troops, in times of disaffection and revolt. 

 Here, as in Upper India, it is by a class of Brahmens that inoculation is prac- 

 tised; they assume an exclusive right to it, and from the circumstance of their 

 being priests and physicians combined, they can not only exercise their heal- 

 ing skill, but by their pretended immediate intercourse with the goddess who 

 presides over the disease, can either petition for a mdd affection, or in cases 

 of danger, supplicate for the safety of the patient ; seldom failing, on such 

 occasions, to carry the little suflferer to the image of the goddess, before 

 which it is bathed with the same water that had been oflfered at the shrine. 

 The Worriah word for small-pox is Tikarcmi : to inoculation they have 

 given the name of Tikar, and the inoculators are called Tikar Brahmens. 

 A dose or two of some opening medicine is, for the most part, given pre- 

 viously to the operation being performed ; and great care is taken that the 

 child has no eruption on the skin. TJie infection is conveyed by means of 



• See his View of tlie History, Literature, and Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 174. 



