Mention has been already made of the common belief in an actual embodiment of pestilence in a human or ghostly form. A disease so sudden and mysterious as cholera is naturally capable of a superstitious explanation of this kind. Everywhere it is believed to be due to the agency of a demon, which can be expelled by noise and special incantations, or removed by means of a scapegoat. Thus, the Muhammadans of Herat believed that a spirit of cholera stalked through the land in advance of the actual disease.[26] All over Upper India, when cholera prevails, you may see fires lighted on the boundaries of villages to bar the approach of the demon of the plague, and the people shouting and beating drums to hasten his departure. On one occasion I was present at such a ceremonial while out for an evening drive, and as we approached the place the grooms advised us to stop the horses in order to allow the demon to cross the road ahead of us without interruption.
This expulsion of the disease spirit is often a cause of quarrels and riots, as villages who are still safe from the epidemic strongly resent the introduction of the demon within their boundaries. In a recent case at Allahâbâd a man stated that the cholera monster used to attempt to enter his house nightly, that his head resembled a large earthen pot, and that he and his brother were obliged to bar his entrance with their clubs. Another attributed the immunity of his family to the fact that he possessed a gun, which he regularly fired at night to scare the demon. Not long ago some men in the same district enticed the cholera demon into an earthen pot by magical rites, and clapping on the lid, formed a procession in the dead of night for the purpose of carrying the pot to a neighbouring village, with which their relations were the reverse of cordial, and burying it there secretly. But the enemy were on the watch, and turned out in force to frustrate this fell intent. A serious riot occurred, in the course of which the receptacle containing the evil spirit was unfortunately broken and he escaped to continue his ravages in the neighbourhood.[27] In Bombay, when cholera breaks out in a village, the village potter is asked to make an image of the goddess of cholera. When the image is ready, the village people go in procession to the potter’s house, and tell him to carry the image to a spot outside the village. When it is taken to the selected place, it is first worshipped by the potter and then by the villagers.[28] Here, as in many instances of similar rites, the priest is a man of low caste, which points to the indigenous character of the worship.
In the western districts of the North-Western Provinces the rite takes a more advanced form. When cholera prevails, Kâlî Devî is worshipped, and a magic circle of milk and spirits is drawn round the village, over which the cholera demon does not care to step. They have also a reading of the Scriptures in honour of Durgâ, and worship a Satî shrine, if there be one in the village. The next stage is the actual scapegoat, which is, as we shall see, very generally used for this purpose. A buffalo bull is marked with a red pigment and driven to the next village, where he carries the plague with him. Quite recently, at Meerut, the people purchased a buffalo, painted it red and led the animal through the city in procession. Colonel Tod describes how Zâlim Sinh, the celebrated regent of Kota, drove cholera out of the place. “Having assembled the Brâhmans, astrologers and those versed in incantations, a grand rite was got up, sacrifices made, and a solemn decree of banishment was pronounced against Marî, the cholera goddess. Accordingly an equipage was prepared for her, decorated with funeral emblems, painted black and drawn by a double team of black oxen; bags of grain, also black, were put into the vehicle, that the lady might not go without food, and driven by a man in sable vestments, followed by the yells of the populace, Marî was deported across the Chambal river, with the commands of the priests that she should never again set foot in Kota. No sooner did my deceased friend hear of her expulsion from that capital, and being placed on the road for Bûndi, than the wise men of the city were called on to provide means to keep her from entering therein. Accordingly, all the water of the Ganges at hand was in requisition; an earthen vessel was placed over the southern portal from which the sacred water was continually dripping, and against which no evil could prevail. Whether my friend’s supply of the holy water failed, or Marî disregarded such opposition, she reached the palace.”[29]
Cholera caused by Witchcraft.
In Gujarât, among the wilder tribes, the belief prevails that cholera is caused by old women who feed on the corpses of the victims of the pestilence. Formerly, when a case occurred their practice was to go to the soothsayer (Bhagat), find out from him who was the guilty witch, and kill her with much torture. Of late years this practice has, to a great extent, ceased. The people now attribute an outbreak to the wrath of the goddess Kâlî, and, to please her, draw her cart through the streets, and lifting it over the village boundaries, offer up goats and buffaloes. Sometimes, to keep off the disease, they make a magic circle with milk or coloured threads round the village. At Nâsik, when cholera breaks out in the city, the leading Brâhmans collect in little doles from each house a small allowance of rice, put the rice in a cart, take it beyond the limits of the town, and there it is thrown away.[30]
A visitation of the plague in Nepâl was attributed to the Râja insisting on celebrating the Dasahra during an intercalary month. On another occasion the arrival of the disease was attributed to the Evil Eye of Saturn and other planets, which secretly came together in one sign of the zodiac. A third attack was supposed to be caused by the Râja being in his eighteenth year, and the year of the cycle being eighty-eight—eight being a very unlucky number.[31]
So the Gonds try to ward off the anger of the spirits of cholera and small-pox by sacrifices, and by thoroughly cleaning their villages and transferring the sweepings into some road or travelled track. Their idea is that unless the disease is communicated to some person who will take it on to the next village, the plague will not leave them. For this reason they do not throw the sweepings into the jungle, as no one passes that way, and consequently the benefit of sweeping is lost.[32]
An extraordinary case was recently reported from the Dehra Ismâîl Khân District. There had been a good deal of sickness in the village, and the people spread a report that this was due to the fact that a woman, who had died some seven months previously, had been chewing her funeral sheet. The relatives were asked to allow the body to be examined, which was done, and it was found that owing to the subsidence of the ground through rain, some earth had fallen into the mouth of the corpse. A copper coin was placed in the mouth as a viaticum, and a fowl killed and laid on the body, which was again interred. The same result is very often believed to follow from burying persons of the sweeper caste in the usual extended position, instead of a sitting posture or with the face downwards. A sweeper being one of the aboriginal or casteless tribes is believed to have something uncanny about him. Recently in Muzaffarnagar, a corpse buried in the unorthodox way was disinterred by force, and the matter finally came before the courts.