Note 174 — Chapter I · THE EVIL EYE AND THE SCARING OF GHOSTS.

The same idea of barring the return of the ghost accounts for the tombstone and cairn. British evil spirits have been secured in this way. Mr. Henderson tells of a vicious spirit which was entombed under a large stone for the space of ninety years and a day. Should any luckless person sit on that stone, he would be unable to leave it for ever.174 In India, when a Ho or Munda dies, a very substantial coffin is constructed and placed on faggots of brushwood. The body, carefully washed and anointed with oil, is reverently laid in this coffin, and all the clothes, ornaments, and agricultural implements that the deceased was in the habit of using are placed with it, and also any money that he had with him when he died. Then the lid of the coffin is put on and the whole is burned. The bones are collected, taken in procession to the houses of friends, and every place where the deceased was in the habit of visiting. They are finally buried under a large slab, and a megalithic monument is erected to the memory of the dead. A quantity of rice is thrown into the grave with other food.175