Note 95 — Chapter I · THE EVIL EYE AND THE SCARING OF GHOSTS.

Mr. Ferguson may be correct in his opinion that in India, prior to the distribution of the remains of the Buddha at Kusinagara, we have no historical record of the worship of relics;95 still the idea must have prevailed widely among the Hindu races, out of whom the votaries of the new faith were recruited. With some of these relics of the Buddha, such as his begging bowl, which was long kept in a Dagoba or Vihâra erected by King Kanishka, then removed for a time to Benares, and finally to Kandahâr, where it is now held in the highest respect by Musalmâns, and has accumulated round it a cycle of legends like those connected with the Sangrail, we reach the zone of pure fetishism.