Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/383

Rh The five colours are blue, white, green, yellow, and red. (Köppen, ii. 307, note 3.)

6. Baling-cakes are figures made of dough or rice paste, generally pyramidal in form, covered with cotton wool or some inflammable material smeared over with brown colour and then set fire to. (Jülg.)

7. Râkschasas, Bopp (note to his translation of the Ramajana) calls them giants. In the mythology they are evil demons inimical to man; vampires in human form, generally of hideous aspect, but capable of assuming beautiful appearances in order to tempt and deceive.

There is no doubt, however, it was the Raxasas, the wild people inhabiting the country south of the Vindhja range at the time of the immigration of the Aryan Indians, whose fierce disposition, and cruel treatment of the Brahmans gave rise to the above conception of the word. Consult Lassen, ''Ind. Altert.'' i. 535, where passages giving them this character are quoted; also pp. 582, 583.

8. Manggus, Mongolian name for Râkschasas. (Jülg.)

9. The present mode of treating the sick in Mongolia would seem much the same. Abbé Huc thus describes what he himself witnessed:—"Medicine is exclusively practised by the Lamas. When any one is ill the friends run for a Lama, whose first proceeding is to run his fingers over the pulse of both wrists simultaneously. All illness is owing to the visitation of a tchatgour or demon, but its expulsion is a matter of medicine He next prescribes a specific  the medical assault being applied, the Lama next proceeds to spiritual artillery. If the patient be poor the tchatgour visiting him can only be an inferior spirit, to be dislodged by an interjectional exorcism  and the patient may get better or die according to the decree of Hormoustha  But a devil who presumes to visit an eminent personage must be a potent devil and cannot be expected to travel away like a mere sprite; the family are accordingly directed to prepare for him a handsomes [sic] suit of clothes, a pair of rich boots, a fine horse, sometimes also a number of attendants. The aunt of Toukuna was seized one evening with an intermittent fever. The Lama pronounced that a demon of considerable rank was present. Eight other Lamas were called in, who set about the construction of a great puppet (baling) which they entitled 'Demon of Intermittent Fevers,' and which they placed erect by means of a stick in the patient's tent. The Lamas then ranged themselves in a circle with cymbals, shells, bells, tambourines, and other noisy instruments, the family squatting on the ground opposite the puppet. The chief Lama had before him a large copper basin, filled with millet and some more little puppets. A diabolical discordant concert