Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/148

 138 The House in India from the Point of Vie

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We have an account of a similar " scapegoat " rite from Northern India, known as Griha-pravesa, or " house- entering." A Pandit is sent for and does the usual worship. At its close the householder calls in a barber, whom he worships with an offering of water and washed rice, and asks him to light an oil lamp and set it with some flour m a cup. The barber moves the cup and lamp five times over the head of the house-owner, thus taking the ill luck on himself, and the Pandit tells him to run away at full speed taking with him the cup and its contents. While he is running the people pelt him with grains of rice. When he has escaped he appropriates the contents of the cup and flings the lamp into a pool of dirty water. The lamp is said to represent Bhairon, an old earth god, whose priest is the barber. The moving of the lamp over the head of the owner is said to signify that Bhairon has abandoned his rights over the site.-^

Among the Shans, when the owner comes to take pos- session of a new house, he is met by an old man who wishes him safety from all misfortune ; the old man here probably represents the " scapegoat," though this fact is not clearly stated. Then a fire is kept lighted for seven days in the centre room ; this is to " air " the house, in other words to drive out evil spirits. When the house is first occupied, it is a good plan to bring in pots full of water; cooked rice, and green leaves w^hich do not easily wither. The pots should not be cracked, and none of the contents should be spilled — a piece of sympathetic magic to produce good luck.^ In Bombay dancing girls are invited to dance in a new house, because " without the jingling of the bells on their feet a house does not become pure," or rather, because the bells scare evil spirits.^ In the Panjab an

priestly influence. L. K. Ananiha Krishna Iyer, Cochin Tribes and Castes, ii. 179 el seqq.

^ North Ittdian Notes and Queries, iv. 4 el sei],

-Mrs. L. Milne, op. eit. 103. '^Panjab Notes and Queries, i. 74.