CHAPTER VIII.
OMENS AND DIVINATION.
One will not start on a journey, if he meets as he gets out a beggar, a Buddhist priest, a person carrying firewood or his implements of labour, if a lizard chirps, a dog sneezes or flaps his ears. Nor will he turn back after once setting out; if he has forgotten anything it is sent after him, he never returns for it. That the object of his journey may be prosperous he starts with the right foot foremost at an auspicious moment, generally at dawn, when the cock crows; his hopes are at their highest if he sees on the way a milch cow, cattle, a pregnant woman or a person carrying a pitcher full of water, flowers or fruits.
Thieves will not get out when there is the handa madala (ring round the moon) as they will be arrested.
The day’s luck or ill-luck depends on what one sees the first thing in the morning; if anything unlucky be done on a Monday, it will continue the whole week.
If a crow caws near one’s house in the morning, it forebodes sickness or death, at noon pleasure or the arrival of a friend, and in the evening profit; if it drops its excrement on the head, shoulders or on the back of a person it signifies happiness but on the knee or in step a speedy death.
A lizard warns by its chirp; if it chirps from the East pleasant news can be expected, from the South news of sickness or death, from the North profit and from the West the arrival of a friend. If a lizard or a skink (hikenellâ) falls on the right side of a person, he will gain riches, if on the left he will meet with ill luck.
A snake doctor finds out what kind of reptile had bitten a person by a queer method; if the person who comes to fetch him touches his breast with the right hand it is a viper; if the head it is a mapila; if the stomach a frog; if the right shoulder with the left hand a karavalâ, (bungarus coerulus); if he be excited a skink; and if the messenger be a weeping female carrying a child it is a cobra.
Something similar to crystal gazing is attempted by means of a betel leaf smeared with a magical oil; a female deity (Anjanan Devi) appears on the leaf and reveals what the gazer seeks.
A professional fortune teller (guru) when a client comes to consult him, measures the client’s shadow, divides it into three equal parts and after some calculations informs him whether a lost article will be found, a sick person will recover or any enterprise will fail or succeed.