Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/144

 134 ^-^^ House in India from the Point of Vieiv

begin the work on a new house, kill or cut the ear of a sheep, and smear the blood on the wall or on one of the pillars ; when the house is finished, the owner supplies the workmen with at least four goats, one of which is sacrificed at each corner, and a number of fowls, the blood of which is rubbed on the walls and ceiling.^ The Shans will not begin building a new house until on his birthday the owner offers sacrifice to the earth-spirit.^

Particular care is taken to fix the direction in which the house should be built. A Nayar house may face east or west, never north or south, the east, the region of the rising sun, being generally preferred. ^ Some Nagas will not build their houses facing west because this is the direction in Avhich the spirits go to deathland. But, as Mr. Hodson ob- serves, the rule has a practical value, because the prevailing winds blow from^that direction.^ So the aspect of all the houses at Delos was regulated by the prevailing north-east winds. ^ The south, possibly because it was the region occupied by the Dravidian tribes hostile to the Indo- Aryans, is generally avoided by orthodox Hindus. But here, again, practical convenience overrides superstition, and in parts of Bengal the doors of houses face south, to avoid the sharp cold north wind in winter, and to get the benefit of the soft south winds in the summer months.® In the Central Provinces the Brahmanical rule prevails, and a house should face north or east, not south or west, because the south is the land of Yama, god of death, and the west the quarter of the setting sun.'^ In Madras, again, a house should not be built in front of a temple of Siva, as the eye of that god disperses an evil influence, nor should it be

^Thurston, op. cit. iii. 113, 127.

-Mrs. L. Milne, The Shans at Home, Introd. xvi.

"^Bulletin Madras Mtiseum, iii. 301.

''T. C. Hodson, The Naga Tribes of Manipur, 43.

^Journal Hellenic Studies, xxi. 29S. •" Lai Bihari Day, op. cit. 258.

'K. V. Russell, op. cit. iv. 88.