Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/475

 The Folklore in the Legends of the Panjab. 435

lucky and unlucky personages, to lucky and unlucky things in nature, plants, trees, and so forth, to the flight and calls of birds, to sneezing, which, like hiccough, is a most mysterious proceeding of the animal body to the Indian mind, to accidental occurrences on mounting a horse and while walking, and so on.

Following on and arising out of the notion of fortune- telling, augury, divination, and omens are the actions necessary to ensure good fortune or luck ; the lucky things to do, and the lucky times for doing them, such as swinging during the rainy season. And as everyone is of course interested in finding these out, we are everywhere favoured in Indian folklore with a goodly array of them, and amongst lucky acts may be mentioned as noticeable, that of mounting a horse with the left foot, a curious in- stance of giving a semi-religious sanction to an act that is otherwise right from a practical point of view. The sole use to which the " science " of astrology is put in the Legends, is to ascertain auspicious times and moments.

In folktales the main use of the idea of ill-luck is to fill up the tale by introducing a great number of incidents, describing all the misfortunes which fancy can call up as happening to the hero or heroine ; but the thousand and one precautions taken in practical life against incurring misfortune are based upon far more serious considerations than this. To the Indian peasant mind misfortune is a sin, and indicates a sinful condition in the victim thereof, de- fining that very difficult and much ill-used term " sin " as an offence, witting or unwitting, against the tribal conven- tions. The good luck of the lucky obviously benefits their surroundings, and the bad luck of the unlucky as obviously brings harm. Therefore the unlucky are sinful and, what is of supreme practical importance to them, must be punished accordingly. The amount of misery and suffering arising out of this " correct argument from a false premiss" that is being and has for ages been incurred by the victims

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