Next come the arrangements by which disease may be expelled or transferred to someone else. In this connection we may discuss the curious custom of hanging up rags on trees or near sacred wells. Of this custom India supplies numerous examples. At the Balchha pass in Garhwâl there is a small heap of stones at the summit, with sticks and rags attached to them, to which travellers add a stone or two as they pass.[52] In Persia they fix rags on bushes in the name of the Imâm Raza. They explain the custom by saying that the eye of the Imâm being always on the top of the mountain, the shreds which are left there by those who hold him in reverence, remind him of what he ought to do in their behalf with Muhammad, ’Ali and the other holy personages, who are able to propitiate the Almighty in their favour.[53] Moorcroft in his journey to Ladâkh describes how he propitiated the evil spirit of a dangerous pass with the leg of a pair of worn-out nankin trousers.[54] Among the Mirzapur Korwas the Baiga hangs rags on the trees which shade the village shrine, as a charm to bring health and good luck. These rag shrines are to be found all over the country, and are generally known as Chithariyâ or Chithraiyâ Bhavânî, “Our Lady of Tatters.” So in the Panjâb the trees on which rags are hung are called Lingrî Pîr or the rag saint.[55] The same custom prevails at various Himâlayan shrines and at the Vastra Harana or sacred tree at Brindaban near Mathura, which is now invested with a special legend, as commemorating the place where Krishna carried off the clothes of the milkmaids when they were bathing, an incident which constantly appears in both European and Indian folk-lore.[56] In Berâr a heap of stones daubed with red and placed under a tree fluttering with rags represents Chindiya Deo or “the Lord of Tatters,” where, if you present a rag in due season, you may chance to get new clothes.[57] The practice of putting or tying rags from the person of the sick to a tree, especially a banyan, cocoanut, or some thorny tree, is prevalent in the Konkan, but not to such an extent as that of fixing nails or tying bottles to trees. In the Konkan, when a person is suffering from a spirit disease, the exorcist takes the spirit away from the sick man and fixes it in a tree by thrusting a nail in it. We have already had an example of this treatment of ghosts by the Baiga. Sometimes he catches the spirit of the disease in a bottle and ties the bottle to a tree.[58] In a well-known story of the Arabian Knights the Jinn is shut up in a bottle under the seal of the Lord Solomon.
There have been various explanations of this custom of hanging rags on trees.[59] One is that they are offerings to the local deity of the tree. Mr. Gomme quotes an instance of an Irishman who made a similar offering with the following invocation: “To St. Columbkill—I offer up this button, a bit o’ the waistband o’ my own breeches, an’ a taste o’ my wife’s petticoat, in remembrance of us havin’ made this holy station; an’ may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day.”
He “points to the undoubted nature of the offerings and their service, in the identification of their owners—a service which implies their power to bear witness in spirit-land to the pilgrimage of those who deposited them during lifetime at the sacred well.” Some of the Indian evidence seems to show that these rags are really offerings to the sacred tree. Thus, Colonel Tod[60] describes the trees in a sacred grove in Râjputâna as decorated with shreds of various coloured cloth, “offerings of the traveller to the forest divinity for protection against evil spirits.” This usage often merges into actual tree-worship, as among the Mirzapur Patâris, who, when fever prevails, tie a cotton string which has never touched water round the trunk of a Pîpal tree, and hang rags from the branches. So, the Kharwârs have a sacred Mahua tree, known as the Byâhi Mahua or “Mahua of marriage,” on which threads are hung at marriages. At almost any holy place women may be seen winding a cotton thread round the trunk of a Pîpal tree.
Another explanation is that the hanging of the rags is done with the object of transferring a disease to some one else. Professor Rhys suggests that a distinction is to be drawn between the rags hung on trees or near a well and the pins, which are so commonly thrown into the water itself. It is noteworthy that in some cases the pins are replaced by buttons, or even by copper coins. The rags, on the other hand, he thinks may be vehicles of the disease. To this Mr. Hartland objects—“If this opinion were correct, one would expect to find both ceremonies performed by the same patient at the same well; he would throw in the pin and also place the rag on the bush, or wherever its proper place might be. The performance of both ceremonies is, however, I think, exceptional. Where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versâ.”
He goes on to say that “the curious detail mentioned by Mrs. Evans in reference to the rags tied on the bushes at St. Elian’s well—namely, that they must be tied with wool—points to a still further degradation of the rite in the case we are now examining. Probably at one time rags were used and simply tied to the sacred tree with wool. What may have been the reason for using wool remains to be discovered. But it is easy to see how, if the reason were lost, the wool might be looked on as the essential condition of the due performance of the ceremony, and so continue after the disuse of the rags.”
In reference to this it may be noted that there is some reason to believe that the sheep was a sacred animal. In Western India high-caste Hindus wear blankets after bathing. The Kunbis use a mixture of sheep’s milk with lime juice and opium as a cure for diarrhœa. The Parheyas of Bengal used to wash their houses with sheep’s dung to scare spirits. And the use of woollen clothes in certain rites is prescribed in the current ritual.
Mr. Hartland is inclined to think that the rags represent entire articles of clothing which were at an earlier time deposited, and on the analogy of the habit of the witch of getting hold of some part of the body, such as nail-cuttings and so on, by which she may get the owner into her power, the rags were meant to connect the worshipper with the deity. “In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush or thrust into a sacred well, my name written on the walls of a temple, a stone or pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn, is thenceforth in constant contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me. In this way I may be permanently united with the god.”
It is quite possible that some or all of the ideas thus given may have resulted in the present practice in India.