Note 133 — Chapter V · WORSHIP OF THE MALEVOLENT DEAD.

We have already mentioned incidentally the mine spirits. It is not difficult to see why the spirits of mine and cave should be malignant and resent trespass on their territories, because by the nature of the case they are directly in communication with the under-world. In the folk-tales of Somadeva we have more than one reference to a cave which leads to Pâtâla, “the rifted rock whose entrance leads to hell.” Others are the entrance to fairy palaces, where dwell the Asura maidens beneath the earth.133 Of a mine at Patna, Dr. Buchanan writes: “A stone-cutter who was in my service was going into one of the shafts to break a specimen, when the guide, a Muhammadan trader, acquainted with the fears of the workmen, pulled him back in alarm, and said, ‘Pull off your shoes! Will you profane the abode of the gods?’” Under the same belief, the Cornish miners will allow no whistling underground.134