RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



83 



he looked with more curiosity than contempt on the pageant of 

 Hind/)o bigotry. While tame snakes, and jugglers from Madras, 

 amused his companions, his eyes were attracted by a female Pa- 

 riah, one of the most reprobated class of outcasts. She held in 

 her hand a lamp of fireliies, and was wading into the tide in quest 

 of the cocoa-shells that swam near the shore; hoping, perhaps, to 

 collect a few whose fibres might be used for cordage. Though 

 her person was bowed by the constant drudgery of her unhappy 

 class, and defiled by squalid habits, there was something in the ar- 

 rangement of the shalie"^ contrived to answer the purpose of a 

 petticoat and mantle, which revealed modesty and natural grace. 

 And when she threw back the corner of this shalie, whose ragged 

 ends had been gathered over her head as a veil, the beautiful 

 black eyes beneath it made the Dustoor Ibrahim half regret the 

 dignity of his own station He thought with more than usual 

 bitterness, of the superstition that consigns the Pariah to utter ig- 

 nominy, and perhaps these thoughts occupied him so long that 

 he forgot the Atshbakaram, or holy fire, which he ought to have 

 kept alive. Those who recollect the objects of a Guebre's super- 

 stition, know that a fire temple contains two fires, one of which 

 the vulgar may behold, but the other is preserved in the most 

 holy recess, un visited by the hght of the sun, and approached 

 only by the chief Dustoor, or high-priest. It was necessary to 

 remedy its extinction by fire brought from a funeral pile, and at 

 this period Ibrahim knew not where to seek one, as his sect no 

 longer burned their dead, holding it more advisable to return the 

 body to air, by exposing it, than to earth, water, or fire. But, 

 as the Hindoos of Bombay burned human relics on the shore at 

 low water, he folded himself in his shawl, and went forth to seek 

 the material from whence he might lawfully rekindle the conse- 

 crated fire so precious to a Guebre. 



It was midnight when Ibrahim began his walk towards a ceme- 

 tery on the shore, seldom visited at this hour except by wild dogs ; 

 but the superstition of his sect had made these animals holy in 

 his imagination, and he saw them with the feehngs of friendliness, 

 excited by his belief, that a dog would preserve his soul from evil 



* The Shahe, among the common class of native females, is a long piece 

 of coloured silk or cotton wrapped round the \Yaist, leaving half one leg 

 bare. 



