Note 74 — Chapter V · WORSHIP OF THE MALEVOLENT DEAD.

Masân, the modern form of the Sanskrit Smasâna, “a place of cremation,” is the general term for those evil spirits which haunt the place where they were forced to abandon their tenements of clay. So the modern Italian Lemuri are the spirits of the churchyard and represent the Lemures or Larvæ, the unhappy ghosts of those who have died evil deaths or under a ban, to which there are innumerable allusions in the Latin writers.74 In India Masân is very generally regarded as the ghost of a child, and we have already seen that some tribes regard an infant as a Bhût. He is occasionally the ghost of a low-caste man, very often that of an oilman, who, possibly from the dirt which accompanies his trade, is considered ill-omened. By another account such ghosts prowl about in villages in the Hills in the form of bears and other wild animals.75 Others say that Masân is of black and hideous appearance, comes from the ashes of a funeral pyre, and chases people as they pass by. Some die of fright from his attacks, others linger for a few days, and some even go mad. “When a person becomes possessed of Masân, the people invoke the beneficent spirit of the house to come and take possession of some member of the family, and all begin to dance. At length some one works himself up into a state of frenzy, and commences to torture and belabour the body of the person possessed by Masân, until at length a cure is effected, or the patient perishes under this drastic treatment.” Khabish resembles Masân in his malignant nature and his fondness for burial grounds. He is also met with in dark glens and forests in various shapes. Sometimes he imitates the bellow of a buffalo, or the cry of a goatherd or neatherd, and sometimes he grunts like a pig. At other times he assumes the disguise of a religious mendicant and joins travellers on their way; but his conversation is, like that of ordinary Bhûts, always unintelligible. Like Masân, he often frightens people and makes them ill, and sometimes possesses unfortunate travellers who get benighted.76