Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/443

 The Folklore in the Legends of the Paiijab. 403

case the bard would seem to have confused the notions of miraculous and magical powers.

Of what is generally known as sympathetic magic, and may be nothing more than an extension of the notion of the delegated miracle, and so merely a cure by proxy, there is a strong instance in the Legend of Raja Dhol, where the injured leg of a valuable camel is cured by firing that of a stray ass. Restoration to life and health, i.e. cures, and their opposites, destruction and injury by effigy, are strictly exten- sions of the same idea.

Now, when a belief becomes rooted in the popular mind, a custom, however barbarous and disgusting, is sure to be based on it, and the apparently harmless notion of sympa- thetic magic has led in India, and many other lands, to the horrible custom of ceremonial cannibalism. In the Legends we have distinct proofs of this, where faqirs eat up the body of a famous leech in order to obtain his curative powers, and Baloch heroes make roast meat of an enemy's ribs in order to absorb his " virtue," i.e. fighting strength.

A harmless phase in the belief in sympathetic magic, leading to many a pretty and fanciful custom of the folk, is to be seen in a form which I have always flattered myself I discovered, when writing the notes to Wide-awake Stories a good many years ago, and then called by me the Life- index. It now seems to have found a definite place among the recognised technicalities of writers on folklore under the guise of the Life-token. In the Legends, however, we do not hear much of it, except in an allusion to the custom of presenting a female infant to the hero as a bride, together with a mango seedling. When the tree fruits the girl will be twelve years old at least, i.e. marriageable. It is evi- dently felt here in a dim way that the tree is somehow or other her life-token. This custom may be of more interest to ourselves than at first appears, bccau.'=e the habit of planting trees, fruit-trees especially, to commemorate the birth of children, or of connecting certain trees with indi-

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