Note 52 — Chapter III · THE GODLINGS OF DISEASE.

Next come the arrangements by which disease may be expelled or transferred to someone else. In this connection we may discuss the curious custom of hanging up rags on trees or near sacred wells. Of this custom India supplies numerous examples. At the Balchha pass in Garhwâl there is a small heap of stones at the summit, with sticks and rags attached to them, to which travellers add a stone or two as they pass.52 In Persia they fix rags on bushes in the name of the Imâm Raza. They explain the custom by saying that the eye of the Imâm being always on the top of the mountain, the shreds which are left there by those who hold him in reverence, remind him of what he ought to do in their behalf with Muhammad, ’Ali and the other holy personages, who are able to propitiate the Almighty in their favour.53 Moorcroft in his journey to Ladâkh describes how he propitiated the evil spirit of a dangerous pass with the leg of a pair of worn-out nankin trousers.54 Among the Mirzapur Korwas the Baiga hangs rags on the trees which shade the village shrine, as a charm to bring health and good luck. These rag shrines are to be found all over the country, and are generally known as Chithariyâ or Chithraiyâ Bhavânî, “Our Lady of Tatters.” So in the Panjâb the trees on which rags are hung are called Lingrî Pîr or the rag saint.55 The same custom prevails at various Himâlayan shrines and at the Vastra Harana or sacred tree at Brindaban near Mathura, which is now invested with a special legend, as commemorating the place where Krishna carried off the clothes of the milkmaids when they were bathing, an incident which constantly appears in both European and Indian folk-lore.56 In Berâr a heap of stones daubed with red and placed under a tree fluttering with rags represents Chindiya Deo or “the Lord of Tatters,” where, if you present a rag in due season, you may chance to get new clothes.57 The practice of putting or tying rags from the person of the sick to a tree, especially a banyan, cocoanut, or some thorny tree, is prevalent in the Konkan, but not to such an extent as that of fixing nails or tying bottles to trees. In the Konkan, when a person is suffering from a spirit disease, the exorcist takes the spirit away from the sick man and fixes it in a tree by thrusting a nail in it. We have already had an example of this treatment of ghosts by the Baiga. Sometimes he catches the spirit of the disease in a bottle and ties the bottle to a tree.58 In a well-known story of the Arabian Knights the Jinn is shut up in a bottle under the seal of the Lord Solomon.