The Rat and Mouse.
The rat is sacred as the vehicle of Ganesa. In Bombay, “to call a rat a rat is considered by lower classes of Hindus as unlucky, and so they call him Undir Mâma, or ‘the rat uncle.’ He is so called because he is probably supposed to be the spirit of an uncle. It is considered a great sin to kill a rat, and so, when rats give trouble in a house, the women of the house make a vow to them that, if they cease troubling, sweet balls will be given to them on a certain day, and it is believed by the Hindus that when such a vow has been made, the rats cease troubling them for some time.”[114] In parts of England it is believed that a field mouse creeping over the back of a sheep gives it paralysis, and that this can be cured only by shutting up a mouse in a hollow of the trunk of the witch elm or witch hazel tree and leaving it to die of famine.[115]
The curiously deformed idiot boys which are collected at the shrine of Shâh Daula at Gujarât are known from their wizened appearance as the rats of Shâh Daula.[116]