The fear which spirits feel for leather is also illustrated by the procedure of the Drâvidian Baiga, who flagellates people suffering from demoniacal possession with a tawse or leathern strap. In the Dakkhin a person troubled with nightmare sleeps with a shoe under his pillow, and an exorcist frightens evil spirits by threatening to make them drink water from a tanner’s well. We shall see that this is one way of punishing and repelling the power of witches. The Pûna Kunbis believe that a drink of water from a tanner’s hand destroys the power of a witch. In the Panjâb, if a man sits on a currier’s stone, he gets boils.[84] The same principle probably accounts for much of the fear or contempt generally felt in India regarding shoe-beating as a form of punishment. At the same time it is said in Persia and Arabia that the dread of a flagellation with the slipper is based on the idea that while a flogging with the regular scourge involves little discredit, a beating with anything not originally intended for the purpose, such as a shoe or knotted cloth, is disgraceful.
The same feeling for the power of leather possibly explains the use as a seat of various kinds of skins, such as those of the tiger and antelope, by many kinds of ascetics, and in the old ritual the wife with her husband sat on the hide of a bull to promote the fertility of their union.
Garlic.
Garlic, again, from its pungency, is valued in the same way. Garlic was one of the substances used by Danish mothers to keep evil from children.[85] The Swedish bridegroom sews in his clothes garlic, cloves, and rosemary. Garlic was an early English cure for a fiend-struck patient.[86] Juvenal said that the Egyptians had gods growing in their gardens, in allusion to their reverence for onions or garlic. In Sanskrit garlic is called Mlechha-kanda, “the foreigner’s root,” and its virtues for the removal of demons are so well known that it will be often seen hung from the lintel of the house door. The same idea may account for the very common prejudice among some castes against eating onions.
Glass.
Glass in the form of beads, which seem to derive some of their efficacy from being perforated, is also very useful in this way. Mirrors from time immemorial have been held to possess the same quality. “Fascinators, like basilisks, had their own terrible glance turned against them if they saw themselves reflected,” “Si on luy presente un miror, par endardement reciproque, ces rayons retournent sur l’autheur d’iceux.” Philostratus declares that if a mirror be held before a sleeping man during a hail or thunder-storm, the storm will cease.[87] Hence women in India wear mirrors in their thumb rings, and the Jâtnî covers her sheet with little pieces of shining glass.
Pieces of horn, especially that which is said to come from the jackal, and that of the antelope, are also efficacious. The bâzâr Banya treasures up the gaudy labels from his cloth bales for the same purpose. Garlands of flowers possess the same quality, and so do various fruits, such as dates, cocoanuts, betel-nuts, and plantains, which are placed in the lap of the bride or pregnant woman to scare the evil spirits which cause barrenness, and sugar is distributed at marriages. The bones of the camel are very useful for driving off insects from a sugar-cane field, and buried under the threshold keep ghosts out of the house. Pliny says that a bracelet of camel’s hair keeps off fever.[88]
Lastly, the demon may be trapped by physical means. “To be delivered from witches they hang in their entries whitethorn gathered on May Day.”[89] So, many of the menial castes in the North-West Provinces keep a net and some thorns in the delivery room to scare evil spirits.