p. 196. 
p. 197 
120 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. (February, 1913. 
popular dishes. The ordinary drink is fermented rice beer or 
bobossa water ; pure water is never used at meals. 
The Padams are naturally hospitable; the guest is first 
expected to give a present to make friends with his host, but 
it is the meal that sanctions and seals friendship for ever; as 
soon as you have touched food, ‘‘ you are friends till the sun 
falls,’’ as these savages are wont to say. 
ect for old age is pushed to its extreme limits, a 
calamity is dreaded as much as the curse of an old man. 
One day, as I called on the chief Leudouck, I saw an old man 
whom the chief had called in to the sick-bed of his child. 1 
asked him whether he wasa priest. ‘‘ No,’’ said the chief, ‘* but 
the words of an old man are a powerful blessing ; God endows 
it with a divine efficacy.’’ Old age is, as you see, a mos 
desirable condition among the Padams ; all honours are due 
a stone rolls from the mountain, if a leaf drops from a tree, 
it must be a spirit on a stroll; if the wind blows through the 
forest, the gods are indulging some healthy exercise; if the 
wind shakes the trees and howls through the valley, the deos 
or spirits are quarrelling. : 
The priest makes it his constant business to appease the 
wrath of the good spirits and to fight it out with the bad 
ones. 
The soul survives the body and is in its future life re- 
warded for its virtues and punished for its crimes. Priests and 
t 
wonders a man works, the events he predicts, are so many 
signs of his vocation to the priesthood. 
he priest expels the spirits and forces them to restore 
the soul to the dying man. This is how this extraordinary 
feat is performed :— - 
t a crowd of singing and howling attendants all 
standing around the patient, the officiating priest, armed with a 
