Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/46

 36 The. Legends of Krishna.

in 15 14, which was hung in a church on an iron chain.^ Raffles speaks of one which fell in Java in 142 1, which is preserved as a sacred object in a mosque. One at Charcas in Mexico is built into the wall of a church and worshipped by women. Another, which fell at Benares in 1 798, was supposed to imply the anger of the gods ; and another, seen in Rajputana in 1867, was promptly ground to powder by the people to render it harmless. At the tomb of Mahmud in Bijapur is what is called a meteoric stone hanging from a chain which is said to guard the tomb from lightning : it is really a piece of nephrite or jade.^ Mr. Walhouse describes a similar stone in Southern India.^ In 1802 one fell at I'Aigle in France, which from the fright it caused is said to have effected the conversion of a sceptic. After the fall of one in Ardeche the peasants would not work near the spot till they had sprinkled it with holy water. In East Africa, in 1853, such a stone was anointed with oil, dressed with beads and set up as a god. An Indian stone was " decked with flowers, daily anointed with ^/z/, or clarified butter, and subjected to frequent ceremonial worship and coatings of sandal-wood powder." Two which fell in Japan more than one hundred and fifty years ago were formerly worshipped yearly at the temple in Ogi. One of them is now in the British Museum, where any member of the Society so disposed may start a local cult of his own. As I write, I find in The Times ^ an account of a stone which fell at Mount Zomba in British East Africa in January last. The people sat round it thinking it miraculous and enchanted.

Finally may be mentioned the well-known meteorite of Aigospotami, the Hajar-ul-Aswad, or great black stone, at the Kaaba in Mecca, which is clearly an aerolite, and that

' 7th Series Notes and Queries, vi., 325. - Bombay Gazetteer, xxiii., 606.

^ Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vii., 35 seqq.

Journal of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, xxx., 415.
 * 18 May, 1899 ; other Indian examples in Bombay Gazetteer, xv. (2), 275 ;