5! 



CHAPTER IV. 



Spells or Charms in general. 



In every demon ceremony, which is performed either to cure 

 or inflict sickness, or to protect a person from becoming liable to 

 any " demon sickness " at all, the effective agents, which influence 

 the demons, and, through them, the disease, are Charms or spells, 

 Invocations, and Dolla or offerings, especially the first with or 

 without the two last. Like the sciences and the Literature of the 

 Singhalese (with the exception of their Elu poetry), charms were 

 originally introduced from the neighbouring continent. India, in 

 those remote times, was to Ceylon and other neighbouring countries, 

 what Greece was a little later to the rest of Europe. Wijeyo from 

 India colonized it in the sixth century before Christ, and the litera- 

 ture and sciences of the Vedas naturally came with him, or soon 

 after, until they were partly, but not wholly, superseded, two cen- 

 turies afterwards by Buddhism and its literature. But Demon ism 

 had taken so strong a hold of the popular mind long before the 

 time of Wijeyo, that nothing could displace it, and when any acces- 

 sions were offered to it in subsequent times in the form of new 

 charms and demons, it seems to have incorporated them with avidity 

 into its old system. 



Almost every charm begins with the words Ohng Ilreeng, which, 

 in Sanscrit, are an invocation to the Hindoo Trinity. The Cattadip.s 

 of this country, who are not worshippers of that Trinity, not under- 

 standing the purport of the words, but attributing to them some 

 mysterious magical properties, have, in a great many instances, 

 prefixed those words to Singhalese charms, in which the virtues 

 and omnipotence of Buddha are described in a very grandiloquent 

 style, to the exclusion of those of the Hindoo triad. Sometimes 

 however the names of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva and other Hindoo 

 deities are found mixed with those of Buddha and other Buddhist 

 divinities in irretrievable confusion in the same charm. Almost 

 every charm, whether Singhalese, Sanscrit, or Tamil, ends with 



