Scaring of Locusts.
Locusts, one of the great pests of the Indian peasant’s life, are scared by shouting, lighting of fires, beating of brass pots, and in particular, by ringing the temple bell. In Sirsa, the Karwa, a flying insect which injures the flower of the Bâjra millet, is expelled by a man taking his sister’s son on his shoulder and feeding him with rice-milk while he repeats the following charm: “The nephew has mounted his uncle’s shoulder. Go, Karwa, to some other field!”[36]
In the Panjâb a popular legend thus explains the enmity between the starling and the locust. Once upon a time the locusts used to come and destroy the crops as they were ripening. The people prayed to Nârâyana, and he imprisoned them in a deep valley in the Himâlaya, putting the starlings to keep them in confinement. Now and again the locusts try to escape and the starlings promptly put them to death. The legend is probably based on the fact that both the starlings and the locusts come from the Hills, and about the same time.[37]
Another device to scare them is based on the well-known principle of treating with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species, while the rest are pursued with relentless vigour. “In the East Indian island of Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in great numbers and burnt in the same way that corpses are burnt. But two of the captured mice are allowed to live and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and let them go.”[38] So in Mirzapur the Drâvidian tribes, when a flight of locusts comes, catch one, decorate its head with a spot of red lead, salaam to it, and let it go, when the whole flight immediately departs.