Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/388

 352 The Binding of a God.

in the ritual of the Dravidian tribes. This may be com- pared with the Drona-kalasa of the early Brahmanical ritual, which is the sacred trough in which the Soma was made.^ We have, again, the legend of the creation of the sages Agastya and Vasishtha from a jar, whence they obtained the title of Kumbha-yoni or Kumbha-janma, " jar-born." And Manu kept the fish out of which Vishnu was created in a jar. Similar instances are found in Southern India. Thus the deity of the Koramas of Madras consists of five branches of the sacred Nim tree and a cocoanut, which are kept in a brass pot.' In the worship of Poturaja, a pot containing the deity when he is enraged is carried in pro- cession to the centre of the village and sacrifices are done to it.^ And in summing up this worship, Dr. Oppert writes: " In the various sacrifices mentioned above repeated allu- sion has been made to the custom of representing the goddess by pots, so that the existence of a special Grama- devata (village god) as pot-goddess need not surprise us. She is called in Tamil Kumbattal, in Sanskrit Kumbha- mata and in Canarese Garigadevara."'* Elsewhere I have given the North Indian legend of the charming of the cholera demon into a jar.^

So in Western Africa Sir R. Burton describes an idol as " a Bo male image, half black, half white, even to the wool, and hung with a necklace of beasts' skulls, with a pair of

' Satapatha Brdhmana ; S. B. E., vol. xxvi. p. 408.

- Oppert, Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa, p. 198, note.

^ Ibid., pp. 463, 494. To these may be added, as Mr. E. S. Hartland remuids me, the remarkable legend of Lai Beg, which I have recorded else- where { Tribes and Castes of the North- Western Provinces and Ottdh, vol. i. p. 266). The Bulgarian sorcerer shuts up a vampire in a bottle which he throws into the fire, and the vampire disappears for ever (Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2nd. ed., vol. ii. p. 193, sq.). A bowl is the representative of one of the Samoan gods, also a bucket (Turner, Samoa, pp. 30, 32).

■* Ibid., p. 502 sqq.

Devi infused into a pitclier, see North Indian Notes and Queries, vol. iv. p. 19.
 * Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, vol. i. p. 141. Also for