This incident reminds one of the beliefs current among the great unwashed sect of the Jains known as the Dhundhias. These tender-hearted people consider it a sin to wash, as water used for bathing or washing purposes is likely to destroy the germs in it. India is indeed a country of bewildering paradoxes. The Hindu Shastras enjoin a complete bath not merely if one happens to touch any untouchable thing or person, but even if one’s ears are assailed by the voice of a non-Hindu (Yavana). Nevertheless, in this bath-ridden country of religious impressionability and, what may appear to the western people, hyperbolic piety, people like the Dhundhias abound. There are also certain Banias who, during the whole of the winter, consider it useless to have anything to do with water beyond washing their hands and face.[3]
With this practice of abstinence from washing may be compared the custom prevailing all over Greece of refraining from washing during the days of the Drymais. No washing is done there during those days because the Drymais, the evil spirits of the waters, are supposed to be then reigning.
Let us now turn from these quaint religious customs concerning the use of well water to some of the beliefs of the people in the existence of spirits residing in the wells of Bombay.
CHAPTER II.
WATER SAINTS.
When owners of houses are asked to fill up their wells or to cover them, they generally apply for permission to provide a wire-gauze cover or a trap-door. In not a few of these cases the application is prompted either by a desire “to enable the spirits in the well to come out,” or by the fear “lest the spirits should bring disaster” if they were absolutely shut up.
Mr. Gamanlal F. Dalal, Solicitor, once wrote on behalf of a client, regarding his well in Khetwadi Main Road:—
“My client and his family believe that there is a saintly being in the well and they always personally see the angelic form of the said being moving in the compound at night and they always worship the said being in the well, and they have a bitter experience of filling the well or closing it up hermetically because in or about the year 1902 my client did actually fill up the well to its top but on the very night on which it was so filled up all the members of my client’s family fell dangerously ill and got a dream that unless the well was again re-opened and kept open to the sky, they would never recover. The very next day thereafter they had again to dig out the earth with which the well had been filled up and they only recovered when the well was completely opened to the sky.”
A Parsi gentleman, who owns a house on Falkland Road, was served with a notice to hermetically cover the well. He complied with the requisition. After about a month he went to Dr. K. B. Shroff, Special Officer, Malaria, complaining that he had lost his son and that he had himself been suffering from palpitation of the heart. This he attributed to the closing of the well.