1893.] S. C. Mitra — Drowning and Browned Persons. 103 



killing a fellow-creature by dragging him underneath, tlie water and 

 drowning him. It is also popularly believed by tlie Hindus of Bengal 

 that the spirits of persons who have eome by their deaths from drown- 

 ing, haunt the tanks and wells in which they have been drowned. Per- 

 sons are afraid of going to such tanks and wells after nightfall, from a 

 superstitious dread that the ghost of the drowned man would be sure to 

 appear to him, or some other evil would happen to him. The waters 

 of such tanks and wells are considered impure and unclean until those 

 receptacles of water are reconsecrated and thus rendered pure, by per- 

 forming some ^ftr or sacrifice, or some Jagna. Like the Bengalis, the 

 Japanese also consider the water of wells wherein persons have been 

 drowned as impure. Miss Bird, at page 184 of Yol. I of her above- 

 quoted work, says : " I have passed two wells which are at present 

 disused in consequence of recent suicides by getting drowned in them." 

 There is a belief current among the people of Bangalore in Mysore, that 

 the spirits of those persons who have been drowned possess women.* 



There are some omens which are snperstitiously believed to prog- 

 nosticate death from drowning. Before the days of the Suez Canal, when 

 ships used to come to India by the route round the Cape of Good Hope. 

 European sailors believed that a " Phantom Ship," which they called the 

 " Plying Dutchman," used to sail near the Cape and would appear to 

 passing vessels in times of storms. Sailors believed that the vessel 

 which sighted the "Phantom Ship" would surely come to grief, and 

 all the crew on board the vessel would be drowned. Captain Marry at 

 has founded the plot of a novel upon the legend of the " Plying Dutch- 

 man." There is a superstition in Bengal among the lower classes of 

 Bengalis, that if a single female goes in a boat in which there are male 

 passengers only, the boat would come to grief and the passengers drowned. 

 In order to obviate this evil, the single female passenger must tie a knot in 

 her cloth and must call to mind the name of another female. I once saw 

 a curious illustration of this superstition. In May or June J 884, I had 

 occasion to go over to Seebpore on the other side of the River Hooghly. 

 I hired a boat from the Colvin's Ghat, Calcutta, and was crossing the 

 river. While in midstream, the wind began to blow a regular gale* 

 and the boat was tossed to and fro. My fellow-passengers assured 

 me that the rough weather was the consequence of the presence of 

 a single female who was a passenger in the same boat with us. On 

 a previous occasion also, while going to Seebpore, I was accompanied 

 by a single female — a relative of mine, and, when stepping into the 



* "Note on a Mode of Obsession, which dealt with the Belief in a part of 

 Bangalore in the Possession of Women by the Spirits of Drowned Persons " by 

 F. Fawcett, in the Journal of the Anthropol : Soc: of Bombay, Vol. I. No. 8. 



J. in. 14 



