A EELIEP IN DEMON INFLUENCE. 



113 



and got a Hooniyan ceremony performed against him. On his re- 

 turn from the jail, the first thing Andris heard was a rumour of 

 Siman's having been seen going one night towards a graveyard in 

 company with another man, who carried with him a cock concealed 

 under his Saron cloth, together with some live coals in a broken 

 chatty. Of course Andris immediately understood what it meant, 

 and perhaps thinking within himself that " the best of all charms 

 is a club-charm" (a popular Singhalese saying), the next evening 

 about the time that Siman, who was a toddy drawer, generally re- 

 turned home after drawing Toddy in the neighbouring hamlet, he 

 shouldered his Mamottie (Anglice hoe) and walked along the 

 path, by which he knew the other would come. When he saw Si- 

 man approach, he concealed himself behind a bush, and, as he pass- 

 ed, with a single blow of the Mamottie, struck him to the ground. 

 The unfortunate man's skull was completely fractured, and he lived 

 only 3 days. Andris was tried before the Supreme Court, and 

 being found guilty, expiated his crime on the gallows. Even after 

 this the two families had many quarrels and lawsuits, but none 

 productive of consequences so serious. 



A young man, who was a "rising" astrologer, fell sick, and his 

 physicians did all they could for him, but without any effect. Day 

 by day he grew worse, and was fast approaching his last end. 

 From the first, the illness was attributed to demon influence, and 

 nothing, that charms and Cattadiyas and Balicarayas and Buddhist 

 Priests and Capuas could do, was left untried. The patient how- 

 ever grew no better, and at last he died. The suddenness of the 

 disease, and the speedy death it resulted in, were matters of sus- 

 picion even in the minds of the neighbours, and much more certainly 

 in that of the father of the deceased. The old man suspected ano- 

 ther astrologer, who lived in the same village, of having practised 

 Hooniyan Charms against his son, and all doubt was removed from 

 his mind, when he heard a few days afterwards that a certain Cat- 

 tadiya, who lived in a distant village, was seen, some three or four 

 months before, going to the house of the astrologer late in the 

 evening, and in such a manner as if he wished to go unseen. Whe- 



Q 



