Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/402

VELAN a dose of the flesh of fowl mixed with mustard, cumin seeds and uluva (Trigonella fœnum-grœcum) boiled in gingelly oil is taken. She bathes in water boiled with medicinal herbs on the fourth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, and sixteenth days. On the morning of the sixteenth day, her enangathi (enangan's wife) cleans her room with water mixed with cowdung, and sweeps the compound. Wearing a māttu (washed cloth) brought by a washerman, she bathes to be freed from pollution. She may now enter the hut, and mingle with the rest of the family.

Among Vēlans and Mannāns, the sons inherit the property of their fathers, but they are very poor, and have little or nothing to inherit.

Vēlans and Mannāns practice magic and sorcery. All diseases that flesh is heir to are, in the opinion of these people, caused by malignant demons, and they profess to cure, with the aid of their mantrams and amulets, people suffering from maladies. The muttering of the following mantram, and throwing of bhasmam (holy ashes), in propitiation of the small-pox demon is believed to effect a cure.
 * (1) Ōm, Oh! thou, Pallyamma, mother with tusk-like teeth, that in demoniacal form appearest on the burning ground called omkara, with burning piles flaming around, with one breast on one of thy shoulders, and playing with the other as with a ball, with thy tongue stretched out and wound round thy head, with grass, beans, and pepper in thy left hand, with gingelly seeds and chama grains in thy right hand, that scatterest and sowest broadcast the seeds of small-pox; Oh! let the seeds that thou hast sown, and those that thou hast not sown, dry up inside, and get charred outside. Be thou as if intoxicated with joy! Protect thou, protect thou!


 * (2) Malign influence of birds on children.