338 MAGIC RITES. 



plague of locusts was down in the lamaic forecast for that year. I 

 examined the old printed books and found that in one of the more 

 common versions of the twelve-year cycle a plague of chhaga was fore- 

 told for that year, and chhaga is a short form of the word for "locust." 

 And it seemed that it could not come out in the forecast oftener than 

 about once in six to twelve years. 



Talismans and Amulet-Chaems. 



Talismans, and especially amulet-charms, are innumerable. There 



are special sorts for nearly every kind of disease, 



Talismans as cura- accident, or misfortune, and the eating of the paper 



live medicine. i • i i 11 -ll ■ t 



on which a charm has been written is an ordinary 



form of combatting disease. The letters used in such cases are called 

 za-zigot " Eatable letters," and are magic sentences printed or written 

 on paper in what is called the "Fairy" character — an old form of 

 Devanagari. But in other cases merely the washings of the reflection 

 of the writing in a mirror constitutes the physic. Thus to cure the evil 

 eye as shown by symptoms of mind wandering and demented condi- 

 tion — called " Jyad-/?grol " — it is ordered as follows : — Write with 

 Chinese ink on a piece of wood the particular letters, and smear the 

 writing over with myrobalams and saffron as varnish, and every 

 29 days reflect this inscribed wood in a mirror, and during reflection 

 wash the face of the mirror with beer and collect a cupful of such 

 beer and drink it in nine sips. 



Every individual has always one or more of these charms, usually 

 folded up into little cloth-covered packets tied 

 " ^ ^' around with coloured threads in geometrical pattern 



and worn around the neck. Others are kept in small metallic cases 

 called " ka-o," fastened to the girdle or sash, and others are affixed 

 overhead in the house or tent to ward off lightning, hail, &c., and 

 for cattle special charms are read and sometimes pasted on the walls 

 of the stalls, &c. 



Most of these charms against accident, disease, and ill-fortune 

 are in the form shown in Plate XIII, which is 

 ClSrm''''' *°'°' °^ called the bLa-ma </gongs-/dus, or "The Assembly 

 of the Hearts of the Lamas," as it is believed to 

 contain the essence of the most powerful religious aphorisms. It 

 consists of a series of concentric circles of spells surrounded by 

 flames, amid which in the four corners are the symbols of («) a dorje or 

 thunderbolt's sceptre ; (b) the precious trifid jewel ; (e) a lotus flower, 

 and {d) a flaming dae:ger with a dorje hilt. And in the interior is an 

 eight-petalled lotus-flower, each petal bearing mystic syllables, and in 

 its centre is a circular space of about an inch in diameter, in which is 



