Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/224

 216 I proceeded onwards; most of the people with me hurrying on in advance to escape from that spot of ill-omen. I had, however, a strong wish to get that magic bone, and some days after opened negotiations with my Toda friend, who, without many words or express agreement, signified that it might be brought for a consideration—I suspect, too, with some secret feeling of contempt. In effect, a few days after, he met me mysteriously, and produced the bone from under his mantle. I heard no more at the time, but, to end the story, some few years after I again visited the spot, and found the curious cromlech all thrown down, broken and scattered, the work, I am afraid, of European planters, who had been opening a coffee estate in a neighbouring forest. The bone now on the table seems in the days of its power to have been analogous to the West Indian and African Obeahs.

Human bones, too, are often used in the Madras districts. to form "a spell of powerful trouble" still more resembling Obeahs: a bone must be taken from a native burial-ground, where skulls and bones are always lying about, and the man who desires to kill or injure his enemy must take it by night to some lonely spot, and, holding it in his right hand and his chain of rudraksha beads (i.e., "tears of Siva", a magical ornament) in his left, must recite a hundred times over the bone the powerful Malayala Mantra or spell, "Om, Hrām! Hrām! Swine-faced goddess! seize him, seize him as a victim! Drink, drink his blood! Eat, eat his flesh! O image of imminent death, "Bhăgăvăti of Malayâla, let his destruction be swift!" The bone thus charmed, thrown or hidden in an enemy's house, will cause his death or ruin. Malayâla, or Malabar, is the land of sorcery and magic, and the most malevolent demons reside there. Seven of the most powerful and most dreaded have their abode in the Dharmastâla Temple, in a remote jungle tract of South Canara, where round stones, into which the power of the demons is transfused, are sold by the officials, carrying the power with them, and can be used, it is