BETWEEN INDIAN AND JEWISH IDEAS AND CUSTOMS. 79 
close by, because it represented a man whom they revered, as 
he had died in defence of his rights in the land. He was the 
Bhumia or freeholder, and some thought that if his spirit had 
not been propitiated it would have haunted the village to the 
injury of its inhabitants. In one of the outside walls of the 
ancient Jain temple at Sanganir near Jeypore is a huge block 
of stone which stands in a niche. It represents the Bhumia or 
original lord of the soil, who had to be recognized, and his name 
kept alive by being duly propitiated, before the heretic Jains 
were allowed to build. Examples of this kind are innumerable. 
The inviolability of land is illustrated by the pains and 
penalties which were attached to the removal of landmarks. 
“ Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they 
of old time have set in thine inheritance ” (Deut. xix, 14) says 
the Lawgiver. “ Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s 
landmark,” said the people on Mount Ebal (Deut. xxvii, 17). 
The Wise Man (Prov. xxiii, 10), says, “Remove not the old 
landmarks and enter not into the fields of the fatherless,” and 
again, “ Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers 
have set ” (Prov. xxii, 28), yet Job asks why some remove land- 
marks, “ seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty ” (Job 
xxiv, 10). 
In the British Museum there is a group of boundary stones 
or landmarks which probably belonged to the period that lies 
between 1300 b.c. and 850 b.c. The inscriptions on some of 
these stones record transfers of land, and also, in some cases, 
battles or wars which resulted in the grant of certain privileges 
which are duly recorded, but there are particular imprecations, 
in which the gods are made to curse “ him that shall remove or 
destroy this landmark, or who shall raise any dispute con- 
cerning the property of the rightful owners.” There are also 
certain astronomical marks regarding which there is some 
difference of opinion. Landmarks of this kind exist in India, 
more usually, however, in connection with temples. Outside 
the temple of Pataliswar, the Lord of the lower world, or, in 
other words, of Hell, whose toenail (which projects from the 
Brihm Kar, a cleft in a huge rock on the floor of the shrine) is 
the object of worship, there is such a mark, with horrible 
sculptured figures undergoing indignities to which the person 
who resumes the soil by which the temple is supported will be 
subjected in this world and in the next. In the latter, it is 
added, his soul will spend 60,000 years in Hell as a worm in 
mire. The Sun and the Moon at the top of the tablet, just as 
in a Babylonian Boundary stone of King Nebuchadnezzar I. 
