[13] Country doctor, unqualified by any medical training.
[14] A ceremonial worship.
[15] It is a superstition current in Bengal that if a man pronounces the name of a very miserly individual, he has to go without his meal that day.
[16] Jaganath is the Lord of Festivity, and Jaganash would mean the despoiler of it.
[17] A water-pot holding about three gallons of water.
[18] A prayer carpet.
[19] Incantations.
[20] Yak or Yaksa is a supernatural being described in Sanskrit mythology and poetry. In Bengal, Yak has come to mean a ghostly custodian of treasure, under such circumstances as in this story.
[21] The incidents described in this story, now happily a thing of the past, were by no means rare in Bengal at one time. Our author, however, slightly departs from the current accounts. Such criminally superstitious practices were resorted to by miserly persons under the idea that they themselves would re-acquire the treasure in a future state of existence. ‘When you see me in a future birth passing this way, you must make over all this treasure to me. Guard it till then and stir not,’—was the usual promise exacted from the victim before he became yak. Many were the ‘true’ stories we heard in childhood of people becoming suddenly rich by coming across ghostly custodians of wealth belonging to them in a past birth.
[22] Thali: plate.