Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/111

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his Census Report of the Panjab for 1901 (vol. I., pp. 161 et seq.), Mr. H. A. Rose discussed the belief in the inherited powers of curing disease and working other miracles claimed by certain sacred clans and persons. This belief he connected with the theory of the metempsychosis. It more probably results from the consciousness of the power of heredity. He has now forwarded a series of notes contributed by several native correspondents, from which the following extracts have been made.

In Rewári in the Gurgaon District an Ahir, or breeder of cattle, i claims the hereditary gift of being able, by smelling a handful of earth, to decide, when a well is being sunk, whether it will produce saline or sweet water, and at what depth the spring will be found. In the same district several persons assert a similar power of curing hydrophobia, which is healed by waving peacocks' feathers over the patient, who is made to look towards the sun. Then a ball of kneaded rice flour is placed in his hands, and he is ordered to press it. By and by the hairs of the mad dog show themselves in the dough, and the venom is removed. A Brahman professes to cure stomach-ache by making the sufferer stand behind a wall and place his hand on the seat of the pain; the Pandit mutters a spell, and a cure is effected. In the same way, in the Rohtak District, three merchants claim to be able to cure tumours and other swellings. Several men in both districts cure snake-bite by reciting spells and waving a branch of the sacred ním tree (Azadirachta indica) over the sufferer. None of these people take any reward for their services,—in fact, they will not even smoke in the village where they attend patients. If they accept a small fee, they spend it in sweetmeats which they distribute.

In one case among the Jats of Rohtak this healing power descends in the female line. It is also part of the treatment that the patient must neither eat nor drink in the healer's village; if he does so, the charm will fail.

In Gurgaon District the residents of a certain village possess the hereditary power of curing scrofula and glandular swellings, a gift conferred on one of their ancestors by a Fakír. They