There are various ceremonies intended to save certain crops from the ravages of blight and insects. Blight is very generally attributed to the constant measurement of the soil which goes on during settlement operations, to the irreligious custom of eating beef, or to adultery, or to a demon of the east wind, who can be appeased with prayers and ceremonies.[32] No pious Hindu, if the seed fails, will re-sow his winter crop.
When sugar-cane germinates, the owner of the crop does worship on the next Saturday before noon. On one of the days of the Naurâtrî in the month of Kuâr the cultivator himself, or through his family priest, burns a fire sacrifice in the field and offers prayers. In the month of Kârttik he has a special ceremony to avert a particularly dangerous grub, known as the Sûndi. For this purpose he takes from his house butter, cakes, sweets, and five or six lumps of dough pressed into the shape of a pear, with some clean water. He goes to the field, offers a fire sacrifice, and presents some of the cakes to the field spirit. He then buries one of the lumps of dough at each corner of his field, and, having eaten the rest of the cakes, goes home happy.[33]
When field-mice do injury to the crop the owner goes to a Syâna, or cunning man, who writes a charm, the letters of which he dissolves in water and scatters it over the plants. The ancient Greek farmer was recommended to proceed as follows: “Take a sheet of paper and write on it these words, ‘Ye mice here present, I adjure ye that ye injure me not, neither suffer another mouse to injure me. I give you yonder field (specifying the field), but if ever I catch you here again, by the help of the Mother of the gods, I will rend you in seven pieces.’ Write this and stick the paper on an unhewn stone in the field where the mice are, taking care to keep the written side uppermost.”[34]
General Sleeman gives a case of a cowherd who saw in a vision that the water of the Biyâs river should be taken up in pitchers and conveyed to the fields attacked with blight, but that none of it should be allowed to fall on the ground in the way. On reaching the field a small hole should be made in the bottom of the pitcher so as to keep up a small but steady stream, as the bearer carried it round the border of the field, so that the water might fall in a complete ring except at a small opening which was to be kept dry, so that the demon of the blight could make his escape through it. Crowds of people came to fetch the water, which was not supposed to have any particular virtue except that arising from this revelation.[35]
Scaring of Locusts.
Locusts, one of the great pests of the Indian peasant’s life, are scared by shouting, lighting of fires, beating of brass pots, and in particular, by ringing the temple bell. In Sirsa, the Karwa, a flying insect which injures the flower of the Bâjra millet, is expelled by a man taking his sister’s son on his shoulder and feeding him with rice-milk while he repeats the following charm: “The nephew has mounted his uncle’s shoulder. Go, Karwa, to some other field!”[36]
In the Panjâb a popular legend thus explains the enmity between the starling and the locust. Once upon a time the locusts used to come and destroy the crops as they were ripening. The people prayed to Nârâyana, and he imprisoned them in a deep valley in the Himâlaya, putting the starlings to keep them in confinement. Now and again the locusts try to escape and the starlings promptly put them to death. The legend is probably based on the fact that both the starlings and the locusts come from the Hills, and about the same time.[37]
Another device to scare them is based on the well-known principle of treating with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species, while the rest are pursued with relentless vigour. “In the East Indian island of Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in great numbers and burnt in the same way that corpses are burnt. But two of the captured mice are allowed to live and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and let them go.”[38] So in Mirzapur the Drâvidian tribes, when a flight of locusts comes, catch one, decorate its head with a spot of red lead, salaam to it, and let it go, when the whole flight immediately departs.