There is a fountain called “the pure one,” in Egypt. If anyone that is impure through pollution or menstruation touches the water, it begins at once to stink, and does not cease until one pours out the water of the fountain and cleans it. Then only it regains its fine smell.
Akin to this tradition is the Esthonian belief concerning the sanctity of water. In Esthonia there is a stream Wohhanda which has long been the object of reverence. No Esthonian would fell any tree that grew on its banks or break any reed that fringed its watercourse. If he did, he would die within the year. The brook was purified periodically and it was believed that if dirt was thrown into it, bad weather would follow. The river-god resident in the stream was in the habit of occasionally rising out of it and those who saw him described him as a little man in blue and yellow stockings. Like other river wraiths, whom we shall accost later, this water-sprite also demanded human sacrifices, and tradition records offerings of little children made to Wohhanda.[7] When a German landowner ventured to build a mill and dishonour the water, bad seasons followed year after year, and the country-people burned down the abominable thing.
A strange variant of the popular belief concerning pollution of wells is found in the curious custom of deliberately defiling wells with the object of disturbing the water-spirit and thus compelling him to produce rain. It was a common belief among several nations that one of the ways of constraining the rain-god was to disturb him in his haunts. Thus when rain was long coming in the Canary Islands, the priestesses used to beat the sea with rods to punish the water-spirit for his niggardliness. In the same way the Dards, one of the tribes of the Hindu-Kush, believe that if a cow-skin or anything impure is placed in certain springs, storm will follow. In the mountains of Farghana there was a place where it began to rain as soon as anything dirty was thrown into a famous well. In his famous work on the Chronology of Ancient Nations, Athár-ul-Bakiya, Albiruni refers to this phenomenon and asks for an explanation. “And how,” he inquires, “do you account for the place called “the shop of Solomon, the son of David,” in the cave called Ispahbadhan in the mountain of Tâk in Tabaristan, where heaven becomes cloudy as soon as you defile it by filth or by milk, and where it rains until you clean it again? And how do you account for the mountain in the country of the Turks? For if the sheep pass over it, people wrap their feet in wool to prevent their touching the rock of the mountain. For if they touch it, heavy rain immediately follows.” These things, says the author, are natural peculiarities of the created beings, the causes of which are to be traced back to the simple elements and to the beginning of all composition and creation. “And there is no possibility that our knowledge should ever penetrate to subjects of this description.”
This doctrine of negation of knowledge is typical of Persian poets and philosophers. The poet Fakhra Razi has beautifully expressed the idea in the following words:—“I thought and thought each night and morn for seventy years and two, but came to know this, that nothing can be known.”
CHAPTER IV.
QUAINT PARSI BELIEFS.
Close by Nowroji Wadia’s house was another habitat of spirits. The owner of the house, a Parsi lady, was asked to cover it. In view of the sad experience of the fate of the owner of the neighbouring house she was reluctant to do anything that might offend the spirits, but the Malaria Department was insistent. She therefore first implored the presiding deities of the well to forgive her as she had no option in the matter, and then consented to cover the well provided a wire-gauze trap-door was allowed so as not to interfere with the work of worship. I understand that on every full moon eve she opens the trap-door, garlands the well and offers her puja there.
Further down the same street, once renowned for the abodes of Parsi Shethias, is a house belonging to a well-known Parsi family. A well in this house was and still is most devoutly worshipped by the inmates of the house. I hear from a very reliable source that whenever any member of the family got married, it was the practice to sacrifice a goat to the well-spirit, to dip a finger in the blood of the victim and to anoint the bride or bridegroom on the forehead with a mark of the blood. Once however this ceremony was overlooked and, as fate would have it, the bridegroom died within forty days.
This practice of besmearing the forehead with the blood of the sacrifice is a survival of primitive ideas concerning blood-shedding and blood-sprinkling, the taking of the blood from the place where the sacrifice was given being regarded as equivalent to taking the blessing of the place and putting it on the person anointed with the blood. Thus when an Arab matron slaughters a goat or a sheep vowed in her son’s behalf, she takes some of the blood and puts it on his skin. Similarly, when a barren couple that has promised a sacrifice to a saint in return for a child is blest with the joys of parenthood, the sacrifice is given and the blood of the animal is put on the forehead of the child.