Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/366

 328 Occult Powers of Healing in the Panjab.

knots to "bind" disease. The amulet so endowed is put on with almsgiving and sympathetic ceremony, and is disposed of, when disused, by adding it to a storehouse of mysterious inaua, {i.e. a well of water). But on the other hand there are cases in which the favourite cord- amulet is powerful without knots or charms, simply from contact with the healer : —

"All the people of Lallu Lilian in Tahsil Zafarwal have the inherited power of curing scrofula by placing round the patient's neck a hempen cord made with their own hands." (Sialkot.)

" The Lohars (ironsmiths) of Takapur in Tahsil Garhshankar have the power of curing a wasting disease by giving the sufferer a thread." (Hoshiarpur.)

Perhaps the relations of the charm and the charmer are best brought out in the following account of snake-charming from Jhelum, in which the holiness of the original charmers enables them to "discover" the healing charm: —

" One of the priestly families of the Sikhs, the Sodhis, descend- ants of the Gurils Ram Das and Gobind Singh, discovered, in the course of their devotions, certain healing ma?iiras, and those in wliom the power of healing by means of these resides are called viantns. E.g. a mantra for the cure of snakebite is transmitted, and the power is now vested in Sodhi Naranjan Singh viantA (charmer) of Haranpur in Jhelum, The patient, if unable to attend in person, sends a messenger, who must not tell any one on the road of his mission. The tnantrt gives him mesmerised water for the patient to drink. If the latter attend in person, the mantri calls the snake to the spot where he and his patient are, however far away the snake may be. When the patient arrives, the Sodhi recites a mantra and he recovers his senses. Asked how he does, he replies — "There is a snake," but no one else can see it. Then the Sodhi tells him to look carefully where it goes, and repeats the matitras over and over again until the snake comes and lies on a line marked by the Sodhi on the ground near his feet. But only the patient can see the snake, — not the spectators or the Tnantrt ; and he shrinks from it, telling the Sodhi of its position and move- ments. He then tells the patient to offer the snake a (real) cup of