152 THE LATE REV. P. DEHON ON 



her. When their first burst of fury is over, they shave her hair entirely, lead her to the 

 boundaries of the village and threaten to kill her if she dares to come back. Now, see- 

 ing the result of these practices, would it not be good to follow the example of James the 

 first and make these punishable offences ? Those ojhas and sokhas are most dangerous men 

 and the cause of much mischief. Out of a hundred cases of darn bisahi there is not one 

 that goes before the court, for the victims cannot produce a single witness. Even her 

 own children abandon her and shrink from her. 



Rog khedna (the driving out of sickness). — -This is a very curious custom which 

 illustrates well the simplicity of their ideas. Anyone who has travelled in "Chota Nagpur 

 has certainly met on his way a heap of broken earthen pots, fragments of mats and old 

 brooms. This is due to the rog khedna. When there is a kind of epidemic of small ailments, 

 especially among children, sore-throats, diarrhoea, etc., it is attributed to a band of foreign 

 Bhulas who have crossed the boundaries of the village. As they are considered to be 

 beggars, they are treated as such, and the people play them a nasty trick. The pahan or 

 the ojha is called and a fowl is given to him All the women assemble, each one carry- 

 ing something — one an old earthen pot, another a piece of mat, a third an old 

 broom. The pahan or the ojha calls all the Bhulas and pretends to feed the fowl with 

 arwa rice as if to sacrifice it to them. Of course, the poor fellows are not accustomed to 

 such a treat and would follow the pahan to the end of the earth to get it, especially when 

 they see all the things that are prepared for them in the shape of old pots and mats. 

 Being likeDoms, they are not particular about their caste. Then the pa ha n carrying the 

 fowl heads the procession to the boundaries of the nearest village. There instead of 

 sacrificing to the Bhulas, he summons Duharia, sacrifices the fowl to him, and after 

 making a hole in the ground on one side of the road, pours the blood of the 

 offering into it. Of course, Duharia is bound now to stick there and keep an eye on 

 the Bhulas to prevent them from coming back, but Duharia is a chaukidar, and like his 

 confreres often goes to sleep. To obviate this difficulty and prevent the Bhulas from 

 coming back without his knowledge, they put a string across the road connected with the 

 hole in which Duharia is sitting. Any Bhula trying to come back will knock his foot 

 against the string and wake up Duharia. 



Gaonsaji. — -This is perhaps the strangest ceremony of all, and the best calculated to 

 deceive these stupid people. There is a mixture of hypnotism and fraud in it. The fraud 

 is on the part of the pa ha ns and the ojhas In the fraud the latter are not deceived, but 

 they are also deceived in the effects of hypnotism, as they believe it to be produced by a 

 deota. And here a word should be said about their way of looking upon trances. They 

 call it bharna ntJ/na, i.e., to rise mad. They believe that the heavy shade of a deota 

 comes and oppresses the shade of the man subjected to a trance, so that his body is 

 moved {chalaned) by the shade of the dcotas. To express our idea that a man is easily 

 hypnotised, we say that he is a fit subject for hypnotism. To express the same idea 

 they say that the man (halka clihain-ka-hai) has a light shade that can be easily op- 

 pressed by the shade of a deota. We have spoken before of the sarna dari, or the sacred 

 fountain in which a handful of every kind of produce of the country has been deposited 

 in hollow bamboos or earthen pots, etc., the water of which contains all kinds of 



