[85] Plato, Epistolæ, viii. 357. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, iv. 1042 sq.
[86] Aeschylus, Eumenides, 232 sqq.
[87] Idem, Supplices, 349, 489.
[88] Sacred Books of the East ii. 114, n. 3.
[89] Âpastamba, ii. 3. 6. 3.
[90] Laws of Manu, iv. 182.
[91] Institutes of Vishnu, lxvii. 33.
[92] Vasishtha, viii. 6. Laws of Manu, ii. 100. Hitopadesa, Mitralâbhâ, 64.
[93] Vasishtha, viii. 6. Laws of Manu, iii. 100.
The efficacy of a wish or a curse depends not only upon the potency which it possesses from the beginning, owing to certain qualities in the person from whom it originates, but also on the vehicle by which it is conducted—just as the strength of an electric shock depends both on the original intensity of the current and on the condition of the conductor. As particularly efficient conductors are regarded blood, bodily contact, food, and drink. In Morocco, the duties of a host are closely connected with the institution of l-ʿâr, one of the most sacred customs of that country. If a person desires to compel another to help him, or to forgive him, or, generally, to grant some request, he makes ʿâr on him. He kills a sheep or a goat or only a chicken at the threshold of his house, or at the entrance of his tent; or he grasps with his hands either the person whom he invokes, or that person’s child, or the horse which he is riding; or he touches him with his turban or a fold of his dress. In short, he establishes some kind of contact with the other person, to serve as a conductor of his wishes and of his conditional curses. It is universally believed that, if the person so appealed to does not grant the request, his own welfare is at stake, and that the danger is particularly great if an animal has been killed at his door, and he steps over the blood or only catches a glimpse of it. As appears from the expression, “This is ʿâr on you if you do not do this or that,” the blood, or the direct bodily contact, is supposed to transfer to the other person a conditional curse:—If you do not help me, then you will die, or your children will die, or some other evil will happen to you. So also the owner of a house or a tent to which a person has fled for refuge must, in his own interest, assist the fugitive, who is in his ʿâr; for, by being in his dwelling, the refugee is in close contact with him and his belongings. Again, the restraint which a common meal lays on those who partake of it is conspicuous in the usual practice of sealing a compact of friendship by eating together at the tomb of some saint. The true meaning of this is made perfectly clear by the phrase that “the food will repay” him who breaks the compact. The sacredness of the place adds to the efficacy of the imprecation, but its vehicle, the real punisher, is the eaten food, because it embodies a conditional curse.