1917.] Indian Ceremonies for Disease-Transference. 17 



pointed stakes standing upright at the four corners, and one in 

 the centre thereof, is brought before the image. A pig, lamb 

 or -fowl is impaled alive on each of the stakes of the cart. A 

 Mala, called a Pambala, and rigged out in the clothes of a 

 woman, then sits in this cart and holds in his hand the clay 

 image of the goddess. The cart is, then, dragged with ropes 

 to the outermost boundary of the village and thence onward 

 into the lands of the adjoining village, where both it and the 

 ropes are left. The impaled animals, which have all died 

 during the time the procession has been going on, are appro- 

 priated by the Pambalas as their perquisites. 1 



The third variant of the foregoing ceremony is performed 

 when an epidemic of cholera breaks out at Coconada in Southern 

 India. A goddess called Maridi- Amman is installed ; and her 

 image is made by hewing a log of margosa wood, about three 

 feet high and six inches in diameter, and by roughly carving 

 its top into the shape of a head. [This bit of evidence supports, 

 to some extent, Grant Allen's theory that all wooden idols or 

 images have been, directly or indirectly, evolved from the 

 wooden headpost or still more primitive sepulchral pole]. 

 This wooden image is stuck into the ground ; and a pandal of 

 leaves and cloths is set up over it. Then the procession of the 

 earthen pot half- filled with buttermilk and rice is led, every 

 day, very much in the same way as at Masulipatam, until the 

 epidemic disappears. Thereafter some ten or twelve small 

 carts are constructed, about six feet square, with three pointed 

 stakes standing up on each side thereof, on which living 

 animals are impaled, as in other parts of the Telugu country. 

 The carts are partly tilled with boiled rice and curry-stuff 

 prepared at the shrine, and the blood of the sacrificed animals 

 is then poured over the rice. It is said that the live animals 

 are impaled only when a cart, as it is dragged to the boundary, 

 does not move properly. The cart's getting held up in this 

 way is looked upon as an omen that the goddess is angry and 

 requires to be propitiated further. 2 



The only analogue, which I have come across in modern 

 European ritual, to the West and South Indian customs of 

 driving off the disease-spirit in a car, is from Pithuria, the 

 people whereof resort to a similar practice. Whenever influenza 

 breaks out among them, they construct a small cart, yoke a 

 pair of goats to it and drive it out into a forest. And it is 

 believed that influenza will not break out again thereafter. 3 



Then we come across a fourth South Indian variant wherein 

 the cart or " chariot of the goddess " is left out ; and its place 

 in the ritual is taken by a basket wherein the disease-spirit is 



1 Op. cit.\ pp. 133-136. 



2 Op. cit. y p. 141. 



3 Harrison's The Reli/ion of Ancient Greece (Ed. 1905), pp. 44-45. 



