Note 153 — Chapter I · THE EVIL EYE AND THE SCARING OF GHOSTS.

Another plan is to carry out the corpse by a special way, which is then barred up, so that it may not be able to find its way back. The same end is attained by carrying out the corpse feet foremost. Thus Marco Polo writes: “Sometimes their sorcerers shall tell them that it is not good luck to carry the corpse out by the door, so they have to break a hole in the wall, and to draw it out that way when it is taken to the burning.” It is needless to say that the same custom prevails in Great Britain.153 The Banjâras of Khândesh reverse the process. They move their huts after a death, and make a special entrance instead of the ordinary door, which is supposed to be polluted by the passage of the spirit of the dead.154 A somewhat similar custom prevails among the Maghs of Bengal. When the friends return from the cremation ground, if it is the master of the house who has died, the ladder leading up to the house is thrown down, and they must effect an entrance by cutting a hole in the back wall and so creeping up.155 The theory appears to be that the evil spirits who were on the watch for the ghost may be lurking near the route by which the corpse was removed. We have the same idea in the European custom of saluting a corpse which is being carried past. Grose distinctly states that the homage was really offered to the attendant evil spirits.156 So, the Birhors of Bengal, on the sixth day after birth, take the child out of the house by an opening made in the wall, so as to evade the evil spirit on the watch at the door.157