Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/152

 142 The House in India f7'07}i the Point of Vieiv

and thus lead to the extinction of the family. Bananas should not grow near a house, because it is dangerous to hear the sound of the bursting of the pods. Best of all is the holy basil, because it sanctifies the air as it passes into the house. ^

The door is carefully guarded and the archway is regarded with veneration, as is the case in China and Japan. ^ In Madras the principal doorway is called the "Lions' Gate," and over it the crosspieces, like the Lions' Gate at Mycenae, are carved to represent lions, elephants, horses or parrots, according to the taste of the owner in devising means of protecting his house. I'he erection of the door-frame is a serious business, the woodwork being smeared with saffron and red powder, and flowers or strings of mango leaves hung above it.^ If a death occurs in the house, the corpse should not be removed by the front door, lest the ghost should find its way back. So a hole is broken in the back wall through which the body is taken out.*

The main pillar, as we have seen, is erected with due ceremonies, and probably represents the tree round which tribes like the Argippaeans built their houses. " Each of them," says Herodotus,^ " dwells under a tree, and they cover the tree in winter with a thick white felt, but take off the covering in the summer time." This reminds us again of the olive tree round which Odysseus built his bedchamber.^

The threshold marking the division of the spirits without and the spirits within, is a holy place. It is the abode of

^ R. V. Russell, op. cit. iv. 89.

"Dyer Ball, Things Chinese, 3rd ed. 36; B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 3rd ed. 407 f. ; W. G. Aston, Shinto, 231 f.

■* Padfield, op. cit, ii. et seq.

■•This was done when the body of the Emperor Akbar was removed from the Acjra Fori for burial. Vincent A. Smith, Akbar, the Great Mogul, 1917, p. 327, where other references are given.

^ iv. 23.

^'Odyssey, xxiii. 1^0 sei/q. ; W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Gf-ecce, in.