Note 30 — Chapter III · THE GODLINGS OF DISEASE.
Reading edition
In Gujarât, among the wilder tribes, the belief prevails that cholera is caused by old women who feed on the corpses of the victims of the pestilence. Formerly, when a case occurred their practice was to go to the soothsayer (Bhagat), find out from him who was the guilty witch, and kill her with much torture. Of late years this practice has, to a great extent, ceased. The people now attribute an outbreak to the wrath of the goddess Kâlî, and, to please her, draw her cart through the streets, and lifting it over the village boundaries, offer up goats and buffaloes. Sometimes, to keep off the disease, they make a magic circle with milk or coloured threads round the village. At Nâsik, when cholera breaks out in the city, the leading Brâhmans collect in little doles from each house a small allowance of rice, put the rice in a cart, take it beyond the limits of the town, and there it is thrown away.30