The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, Volume 2A. Constable & Company, 1896 - Ancestor worship |
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Common terms and phrases
animal appears ashes Baiga bamboo belief Bengal bird blood Bombay Brâhman bride bridegroom Campbell cattle ceremony charm child connected corpse custom Dalton dead deity demon Demonology Descriptive Ethnology Devak Drâvidian Etruscan Etruscan Roman Remains Evil Eye evil spirits festival fetish fire Folk-lore folk-tales Frazer ghost girl goddess godling Golden Bough Gonds grain hair Hindu horse human sacrifice idea Indra jungle Katha Sarit Sâgara Kharwârs killed king Krishna Kunbis Lady Wilde legend Lorik magic marriage married Mathura milk Mirzapur mystic Nâga Nepâl night Nîm North Indian Notes Northern India Notes and Queries offering Oudh Panjâb Panjab Notes plants Popular priest primitive Purâna races Râja Râjputs rice rite round sacred Sanskrit Santâls scare serpent Settlement Report shrine snake stone supposed Tawney temple tiger totem tree turmeric Tylor village Vishnu witch woman women worship Yaksha
Popular passages
Page 21 - Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you ; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
Page 319 - They have a strange notion that at this period, men and women are so over-charged with vicious propensities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing for a time full vent to the passions.
Page 144 - A totem is a class of material objects which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation.
Page 163 - That the Tantras enjoin human sacrifices to Chandika and require that, when human victims are not available, an effigy of a human being should be sacrificed to her.
Page 278 - They have an astonishing acquaintance with the devilries of enchantment; insomuch that they make their idols to speak. They can also by their sorceries bring on changes of weather and produce darkness, and do a number of things so extraordinary that no one without seeing them would believe them. Indeed, this country is the very original source from which Idolatry has spread abroad.
Page 44 - Sodewa Bai was born with a golden necklace about her neck, concerning which also her parents consulted astrologers, who said, ' This is no common child ; the necklace of gold about her neck contains your daughter's soul ; let it therefore be guarded with the utmost care ; for if it were taken off, and worn by another person, she would die.
Page 320 - Few who will give their minds to master the general principles of savage religion will ever again think it ridiculous, or the knowledge of it superfluous to the rest of mankind. Far from its beliefs and practices being a rubbish-heap of miscellaneous folly, they are consistent and logical in so high a degree as to begin, as soon as even roughly classified, to display the principles of their formation and development; and these principles prove to be essentially rational, though working in a mental...
Page 68 - They also forbid crying for the dead until three hours have passed by, lest the wail of the mourners should waken the dogs who are waiting to devour the souls of men before they can reach the throne of God. It is a very general custom during some nights after a death to leave food outside the house — a griddle cake, or a dish of potatoes. If it is gone in the morning, the spirits must have taken it ; for no human being would touch the food left for the dead. The great and old families of Ireland...
Page 105 - ... and wakened and was alive all day, withdrawing its leaves if any one attempted to touch them. Above all, however, it was useful as a preservative against magic ; a sprig worn in the turban, or suspended over the bed, was a perfect security against all spells, evil eye, &c.
Page 148 - SECRETORUM : in which a queen of India is said to have treacherously sent to Alexander, among other costly presents, the pretended testimonies of her friendship, a girl of exquisite beauty, who having been fed with serpents from her infancy, partook of their nature. If I recollect right, in Pliny, there are accounts of nations whose natural food was poison. Mithridates, king of Pontus, the land of venomous herbs, and the country of the sorceress Medea, was supposed to eat poison. Sir John Mandeville's...