Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/447

Rh if they are genuine is very simple, but later they are put through other ordeals to try their supernatural powers. Each stone, as it is discovered, is struck on all sides with a small hammer, or, in some cases, is merely knocked with the finger. This causes the soft powdery part, produced by the boring of the worm, to fall in and disclose the vadana or hole, which may, in the more valuable sālagrāms, contain gold or a precious gem. In addition to the real stone with chakram and vadana formed by natural causes, there are found in many mountain streams round black pebbles resembling the true salagram in colour, shape, and size, but lacking the chakram and vadana. These are collected by Bairāgis,or holy mendicants, who bore imitation vadanas in them, and, tracing false chakrams in balapa or slate stone,paste them on the pebbles. So skilfully is this fraud perpetrated that it is only after years of use and perpetual washing at the daily pūja that in time the tracery wears away, and detection becomes possible. There are over eighteen known and different kinds of true sālagrāms, the initial value of which varies according to the shape and markings of the stone. The price of any one sālagrām may be so enhanced after the further tests have been applied, that even a lakh of rupees (Rs. 1,00,000) will fail to purchase it; and, should experience prove the stone a lucky one, nothing will, as a rule, induce the fortunate owner to part with it. The three shapes of sālagrāms most highly prized are known as the Vishnu sālagrām, the Lakshmi Narasimha sālagrām, and the Mutchya Murti sālagrām. The first has a chakram on it the shape of a garland, and bears marks known as the shenka (conch) gada padma, or the weapons of Vishnu, and is peculiar to that god. The second has two chakrams on the left of the vadana, and