Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/113

Rh upon the abdomen of the patient; charms are recited, and the diet of the sick man is carefully restricted for fifteen days. This prescription was also given by a Fakír long ago; it is effective only if done on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Members of a family of Mohammedan blacksmiths effect cures by drawing three lines with ashes on the right arm of the patient.

One man in the Jhílam District says that he cures toothache and ringworm by reciting spells which he learned some years ago from a negro cook in East Africa,—a curious example of the importation of folklore. A person in Amritsar cures hydrophobia by treatment taught to his grandfather by a grateful Sikh ascetic. His method is to recite charms seven or eleven times over a little water with which he doses his patient. When he is informed of a case of snakebite, he slaps the messenger on the face with his hand, and gives him a little charmed pepper which is to be administered. In cases of toothache he recites a charm over a knife, and sticks it in the ground or buries it while the sufferer sits concealed by a curtain. Another healer cures hydrophobia by writing some magical characters on a piece of bread which the patient eats. The cure is finished by making him walk (? in the course of the sun) twice or thrice round a mosque.

In Ludhiána District persons suffering from snake-bite are brought to the shrine of Gúga, the snake god. Some earth is dug from the god's tank, on which the patient is laid. He falls asleep, and sees a vision that ensures his cure.

In the Salt Range cattle are healed by a person who walks round them reciting thrice certain verses from the Korán, and blowing towards the animals, and on water in an earthen cup which he holds in his hands. The sacred volume is then wrapped in cloth, hung over the street, and the cattle are driven under it and sprinkled with the holy water. In the same locality members of the Khichi sept of Rajputs charm away hail by walking round the spring crops, blowing over them, and reciting charms. If hail