Note 181 — Chapter I · THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.

Another common plan in Upper India is for a gang of women to come out to where a man is ploughing and drive him and his oxen by force back to the village, where he and his cattle are well fed. Another device is to seize the blacksmith’s anvil and pitch it into a well or the village tank. We have already given instances of the connection of wells with rainfall, such as the case of the well in Farghâna which caused rain if defiled.181 Mr. Gomme has collected several European instances of the same belief.182 The anvil is probably used for this purpose because it is regarded as a sort of fetish, and the blacksmith himself is, as we shall see later on, considered as invested with supernatural powers.