1917.] Indian Ceremonies for Disease-Transference. 1 9 



also present there, with a wooden cow-bell dangling from his 

 neck or his waist. As soon as a certain signal is given, the 

 bachelors, attired in nature's vestments, pursue the flying 

 herdsman, uttering shouts very much like the lowing of cattle; 

 and, in the course of their pursuit, they go on smashing to pieces, 

 with their cudgels, all the earthenware vessels left outside the 

 villagers' huts. If they chance to come across any person on 

 the way, be he a co- villager or stranger, they give him a good 

 drubbing with their cudgels. The same sort of scurvy treat- 

 ment they mete out to whomsoever they happen to hear talking 

 or breaking the silence of the night in any manner whatever. 

 [This is another instance of the tabu against speaking which i 

 a feature of North Indian rural ceremonies.] In this way they 

 pursue their mad career on the pretence of giving chase to 

 the cowherd. Arrived at the boundary of the village, the 

 cowherd goes a little further on into the lands of the adjoining 

 village, and there, in the twinkling of an eye, drops down his 

 cow bell and runs back. His pursuers, also, go up to the very 

 place where the cowherd has dropped down his cow- bell, and 

 leave their own cudgels there in the belief that the disease- 

 spirit —the spirit which has been causing the cattle-murrain 

 has been expelled from their village. The people of the village, 

 to which the disease-spirit has been transferred in this way, 

 in their turn also, transmit it by a similar process to the village 

 adjoining their own in the direction opposite to that of the 

 other village. The ceremony is repeated in this way by each 

 village, till it is believed that the disease-spirit has been com- 

 pletely expelled from the district. 1 



The foregoing mode of disease-transference bears a striking 

 resemblance to that pursued by the Canarese people of Mysore, 

 only the place of the basket containing the charmed rice bein£ 

 taken by the wooden cow-bell and the cudgels into which the 

 disease-spirit seems to have been compressed. The incident of 

 beating with their cudgels any body whom the pursuers may 

 come across in the course of their pursuit of the cowherd, re- 

 calls to mind the English practice of " beating the bounds'' 

 which Mr. Grant Allen would explain as being the last expiring 

 relic of renewing the boundary-god every year by the sacrifice 

 of a new victim. He says: "The bounds are beaten, ap- 

 parently, in order to expel all foreign gods or hostile spirits ; 

 the boys who play a large part in the ceremony are the repre- 

 sentatives of the human victims. They are whipped at each 

 terminus stone, partly in order to make them shed tears as a 

 rain- charm (after the fashion with which Dr. Frazer has made 

 us familiar), but partly also because all artificially- made gods 

 are scourged or tortured before being put to death, for some 



l The Oraons of Chota Nagpur. By Sarat Chandra Rov. Ranchi: 

 1915. pp. 253-255. 



