78 



HOONITAN CHARMS. 



pile, and seven grains of unboiled rice. Fold these in the skins, 

 and tie the two skins together with seven turns of a Kati-ya Nool 

 thread. Before you use the thread for this purpose, repeat over it 

 this charm 49 times, taking care to make a knot every seventh 

 time. Then take 9 thorns from Pas Pengiri trees, and pronouncing 

 the charm 9 times over them drive them into the skins. Make 

 also an altar, and place upon it Rat Mai flowers, milk, porri, and 

 sandal wood, each in a separate leaf, place these at the four corners 

 of the altar, and the skins in the middle. Then perfume them with 

 the smoke of resin, and pronounce the charm 7 times. All this 

 must be done on a Sunday during the morning Yama, After this 

 take away the skins and strike with them the stone, which is op- 

 posite to the door of the house. The man and his wife will become 

 insane, and quarrel with each other, and die in a short time." 



Every Hooniyan, that produces sickness, ends in death, unless 

 it is prevented in time by charms; and no other remedy but charms 

 can effect a cure, whatever the nature of the disease may be. The 

 longer the Hooniyan influence remains on a man, the less chance 

 there is of its removal, probably because the demon acquires a sort 

 of prescriptive right over his victim, until he bring the man to 

 death in his own time, that is within the time assigned in the 

 charm. Hence, in the mind of a Singhalese, suspicion is always 

 awake and ready to discover a Hooniyan cause in the various mis- 

 fortunes, which he may meet with in the ordinary course of nature, 

 in the form of disease and accidents. And hence also it is, that he 

 so often has recourse to charms and demon ceremonies, even when 

 he is in the enjoyment of perfectly good health, merely because he 

 wants to ease his mind, which otherwise would be made very un- 

 happy by a doubt, whether a Hooniyan influence may not then be 

 upon him, although as yet there does not appear even to himself any 

 thing, which he can consider to be a sign of it. 



and of a dark green colour. When bent, the leaf breaks and exudes a thick 

 white sap considered to be poisonous. The fruit when ripe is of a beautiful 

 red colour, and is very tempting to the sight, from which circumstance proba- 

 bly it is, that it has sometimes been called Eve's Apple. 



