FOLKLORE OF WELLS

Floating of lamps during the Kartik Bath.

FOLKLORE OF WELLS
BEING A STUDY OF
WATER-WORSHIP
IN EAST AND WEST

BY
R. P. MASANI, M.A.

BOMBAY:
D. B. TARAPOREVALA SONS & Co.
1918

Printed by B. Miller, Superintendent, British India Press, Bombay.
Published by D. B. Taraporevala Sons & Co.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.

For literary conceits and dreams of authorship there is no more powerful antidote than the tedium of official life. It radically cures all such morbid propensities. This little book, however, owes its inspiration to office routine. It was in connection with official business that my interest in the subject of water-worship was awakened about six years ago when in my capacity as Municipal Secretary of Bombay I received several protests against requisitions for the closing of wells.

In the course of its campaign against malaria the Municipality had to call upon owners of wells breeding anopheles mosquitoes to close them. The owners protested against these orders and in their petitions they cited traditions concerning the sanctity of water and related stories of spirits residing in the wells which to one ignorant of the social organization and customs of the people might appear to be nothing more than old wives’ tales and babble, or mere pretexts to shirk civic responsibilities, but which a student of traditional lore has learnt to prize as priceless fragments of information concerning the condition of human thought of bygone ages. Often during one’s investigation of such local accounts one comes across examples where history is in close contact with popular tradition, illustrating abundantly the inherent value of what Sir Henry Maine slightingly called “the slippery testimony concerning savages which is gathered from travellers’ tales.” Looked at from that point of view, the curious beliefs and customs referred to in those petitions revealed divers elements of sociological and ethnological importance leading back to the days of the ancestors of the petitioners, and affording glimpses of remote, unexplored periods of antiquity when people unknown to history dwelt in the particular localities from which the petitioners hailed and left behind them a heritage of their mental strivings and conceptions concerning wells and springs and other natural objects. All this local lore of wells established, beyond doubt, the prevalence of water-worship amongst educated Hindus and Parsis residing in Bombay. It was, however, a medley of many divergent elements. To docket and classify all the constituent elements of this folklore, to trace their origin and to throw fresh light on the different stages of culture of the early settlers in the island of Bombay, was a task far beyond my capacity. Nevertheless, it seemed to me it would be a sin to allow such precious gems of information to remain buried in the dusky archives of the Municipality. I therefore culled from the official correspondence such gems as I could lay my hands on, made personal investigations about local wells, gathered additional information and read a paper on the Folklore of Bombay Wells before the Anthropological Society of Bombay on the 30th August 1916.

It was natural that my interest in the subject should grow as I proceeded. What struck me most during my studies and inquiries was the striking resemblance in the traditions, customs, rites and ceremonies prevailing in India and those in vogue in European countries. It was clear, moreover, that until recently the cult of water flourished in the West in a more primitive and much ruder form than in India. I was, therefore, tempted to read before the Society a second paper on the subject and this was followed by another on the rituals of water-worship and the sundry offerings to water-spirits in East and West.

It was impossible to bring within the range of these papers all the materials I had collected. As the series was primarily intended to expound the lore of wells only, a good deal remained unsaid concerning the divine seas and springs and tanks and cataracts. I, therefore, thought of completing the series and publishing a volume embodying the varied water-cults, localising and classifying them, and tracing, as far as possible, their genealogy with a view to elucidating the early life of the people who lived in the different localities from time to time and their relationship with the ancestors of the long-forgotten races of other climes in which such ideas and customs also prevailed. It was a very ambitious project, but I was tempted to set about it as in the bibliography of anthropological literature I could not find a single volume specially devoted to the subject. I was, however, unable to make much progress for some months owing to other engagements.

A few days ago, when I was sitting on the Versova sands, musing on life’s uncertainties and the vanity of human wishes, recalling Tennyson’s words “so many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be,” methought I heard a water-nymph questioning me from under the pale-green sea-groves: “How many years wilt thou dream away before thou completest that work? Why not immediately convey to thy readers our invitation to the concerts of the nymphs?” At once I recalled that eight years had rolled by since I had resolved to complete another series of anthropological papers, viz., Naming Customs and Name Superstitions, just as I had thought of elaborating the water-worship series, but that I had not been able to take the work in hand in the midst of rapidly increasing daily duties. What chance was there of better success in regard to this new work? I, therefore, thought it advisable to publish the papers as read before the Society without further delay. Their publication in book-form has, however, necessitated a somewhat unsatisfactory arrangement of chapters, and for this and other demerits I owe an apology to the reader.

It might perhaps be said that such a gallimaufry of divers tales and traditions, beliefs and superstitions long current among different people in different countries treats the reader to nothing new. It might also be urged that these traditions and customs are mere survivals of a particular phase of animism with which we are all familiar, that we all know that from remote ages our ancestors have peopled trees and plants, stocks and stones, dales and hills, and seas and springs with all sorts of spirits, visible and invisible, and that it is upon this spirit-world of prehistoric man that the primeval nature-worship of our Aryan ancestors was based, upon which again rest the religions and philosophies of the civilised world. This is all very true. Veneration of water is undoubtedly a phase of nature-worship. The student of history knows why from the remotest ages Egypt, Babylon, India and China became centres of population in the East and why the plains of Lombardy and Netherlands attracted waves of humanity in the West. Naturally, man gravitated towards districts where food was easily obtainable. Valleys and plains fertilized by springs became his home. Water to him was not only the prime necessity of life, but the birth-place, so to say, of life. Moreover, the primitive mind associated life with motion. It saw spirits in rolling stones and swinging boughs. How could it remain unconscious of the spirits controlling the many-sounding seas and bubbling rivers and tumbling waterfalls? This is the raison d’être of the universality of water-worship. No new work on the folklore of wells is needed to tell us that, but, as I have just stated, such folklore contains valuable details of social conditions and the early history of races and if it puts in the hands of the student of antiquities a key to the sealed book of some unexplored stages of the cultural history, howsoever fragmentary, of forgotten races, its publication would not be wholly in vain.

Races flourish and vanish, but their concepts and customs live in their successors. These successors are not necessarily their descendants. Often they are invaders and conquerors, sometimes refugees, professing altogether different creeds, but with the estates and objects which they inherit from their predecessors they also inherit their mental strivings and traditions and customs and hand these down from generation to generation. These in their turn influence others, wherever they go. Thus it is that we see ancient customs and ceremonies observed, even to this day, with very little variation, by different communities, even though separated by oceans.

Numerous illustrations may be given of this parallelism of beliefs prevailing in different places and their persistence in different culture eras. One remarkable instance is the preservation of the bridge-sacrifice traditions. It is referred to by Sir Laurence Gomme in Folklore as an Historical Science in the course of his analysis of the legend of the Pedlar of Lambeth and the treasure stories centering round London Bridge. The bridge was the work of the Romans of Lundinium—a marvellous enterprise in the eyes of the Celtic tribesmen who believed that the building of the bridge was accompanied by human sacrifice. This is confirmed by the preservation in Wales of another tradition relating to the “Devil’s Bridge” near Beddgelert. “Many of the ignorant people of the neighbourhood believe that this structure was formed by supernatural agency. The devil proposed to the neighbouring inhabitants that he would build them a bridge across the pass on condition that he should have the first who went over it for his trouble. The bargain was made, and the bridge appeared in its place, but the people cheated the devil by dragging a dog to the spot and whipping him over the bridge.” When the Calcutta authorities proposed to build a bridge over the Hoogly River, the ignorant masses apprehended that the first requirement would be a human sacrifice for the foundation. The news went to England from the London and China Telegraph from which the Newcastle Chronicle of 9th February 1889 copied the following statement:—

“The boatmen on the Ganges, near Rajmenal, somehow came to believe that the Government required a hundred thousand human heads as the foundation for a great bridge, and that the Government officers were going about the river in search of heads. A hunting party, consisting of four Europeans, happening to pass in a boat, were set upon by the one hundred and twenty boatmen, with the cry Gulla Katta or cut-throats, and only escaped with their lives after the greatest difficulty.”

Thirteen years ago, when the Sandhurst bridge was under construction, a poor old man suspected of taking a child for being interred in the foundations of the bridge was mercilessly belaboured in the streets of Bombay. The boy was inclined to play truant and did not wish to go home with the old man. Some one started the canard that he had sold the head of the child for bridge-sacrifice, the mob took it up and only after great difficulty the unfortunate man was rescued by the Police. Curiously enough, only a few days ago I gathered from the story of a Mahomedan lad, who was brought to me for admission to the home of the Society for the Protection of Children, that another bridge-sacrifice panic had recently seized the good people of Bankipur. The boy, named Abdulla Bakar, aged 11, being an orphan, was working as a cooly in Bankipur. He told the Society’s agent, and also repeated to me, that he had been greatly alarmed by the report he had heard in the streets of that city that children were buried alive in the foundations of a bridge that was being built somewhere near.

No less persistent is the traditional dread of spirits haunting pools and rapids. Until recently we used to hear in Bombay that the spirits residing in the wells near the Bombay Gymkhana waylaid and drowned people who disturbed them in the evening. Similar beliefs are still current in England. In the Transactions of the Folklore Society has been recorded the following example of persistence of the superstitious dread of water: A man was drowned in the Derwent in January 1904. “He didna know Darrant,” commented an old neighbour, with a triumphant tone in her voice, “he said it were nought but a brook. But Darrant got him! They never saw his head, he threw his arms up, but Darrant wouldna let him go. Aye, it’s a sad pity—seven children! But he shouldna ha’ made so light of Darrant. He knows now! Nought but a brook! He knows now!” “She talked of the river as if it were a living personage or deity,” wrote the narrator, “I could almost imagine the next step would be to take it offerings.” Jenny Greenteeth still lurks under the weeds of stagnant pools in Shropshire and Lancashire and in the following pages will be found examples of numerous water-spirits residing in or hovering round Indian wells and tanks.

Folklore tells us that mermaids threatened floods if offended by drainage schemes. Would that some fair denizens of the waters of Araby had raised up their heads from the pātāls when the schemes for the drainage of Bombay were under consideration and when Worli point was selected for the outfall! On that occasion even God Varuna, the lord of all waters, and the Nagas and Nagins, the semi-divine sovereigns of the watery regions, half men and half serpents, and the whole band of sea-spirits were mysteriously silent and forbearing, but the well-spirits are not so tame. They will not allow another municipal atrocity lying down. Some have exacted the toll of human life, others have evinced their wrath by breaking open the coverings enforced by the Municipality, while some weak spirits, for whom the concrete covers have proved too strong, have been haunting the neighbourhood and inducing the owners of wells and, failing them, responsive neighbours, to re-open the wells. Only a few weeks ago, a Hindu member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation told me that a Parsi residing in a house adjoining his property in Dhus Wadi assured him that a sayyid residing in the well of his house, which had been closed in compliance with a municipal requisition, had been visiting the Parsi in dreams and imploring him to get the well opened, promising him saintly favours. He could not understand why the cabined spirit should not seek the assistance of the Hindu inmates or of the Hindu owner of the very house in which the well was situated, but go instead to the Parsi neighbour. The reason, however, is not far to seek.

The Bombay Parsi is a born venerator of water. He may be seen any day on the beach, dipping his fingers in the water and applying it to his eyes and forehead, lifting his hands in prayers and wafting his soul to the realms of the Great Unknown. To all that is pure, sublime and beautiful in the universe the Zoroastrian paid willing homage. Accordingly, water-worship was a general cult amongst the Parsis in their ancestral home. It was, however, a means of looking up through nature to nature’s God. It merely postulated the presence of a beneficent spirit permeating water. There was no suggestion, whatsoever, of water-goblins haunting wells and springs. How, then, did the present-day Parsi come to imbibe the belief in such minor deities and how did he come to give them a local habitation and a name? This is a question of absorbing interest from the point of view of the folklorist. India is par excellence the land of goblindom and it is but natural that the spirit-world of the Parsis should expand in the land of their adoption. With their mind attuned to the worship of water they came readily under the influence of the genii locorum. The most curious feature, however, of this Parsi belief in Moslem water-spirits is that amongst the Mahomedans themselves no such belief prevails or ever did prevail. They believe, no doubt, in saints who have endowed springs and wells, but no Mahomedan sayyid or pir has or ever had his home or haunt in water. Neither does a Mahomedan believe in any other benevolent or malevolent indwelling spirit of the well. The installation of Mahomedan saints in the wells of Parsi households is therefore an anthropological puzzle for the solution of which we must make a joint appeal to history and folklore. It is evidently a case of substitution and amalgamation of beliefs and it is cases such as these that call for research in the localisation of popular beliefs and their ethnic genealogy. People inhabiting modern culture areas have an anthropological as well as a national or political history and without the anthropological history it is impossible to explain the meaning and existence of a number of beliefs and customs prevailing in a particular community. It is, therefore, necessary to classify all the Indian cults of water according to their ethnological and geographical distribution and to carry on research in the genealogy of the different conceptions and customs prevailing in different parts. In this way we may arrive at different historical landmarks, working backwards from which we may get some glimpses of the political, social, psychological and religious history of the older races that lived in this country. Water-worship, like stone-worship, is a non-Aryan custom and without some research in the history of the non-Aryan races that dwelt in the land before the advent of the Aryans it will not be possible to account for the savagery of many of the forms and rituals of this worship as it now prevails amongst the Aryan races.

Parsis on the sea-beach in Bombay.

Offerings to the Gunbow Well.

In the following pages I have sought to indicate what scope there is for such research work and I have devoted a special chapter to Sir Laurence Gomme’s luminous analysis of the water cults prevailing in Britain and its isles with a view to indicating the methods of research adopted by him. If we follow the same lines in tracing the ancestry of the Indian customs and beliefs, we may hope to throw some fresh light on the cultural history of the ancestors, or at all events the immediate predecessors, of the people among whom we now find them prevailing. I do not profess to have accomplished anything of the kind in this book. It is really not want of time so much as the consciousness of sheer inability to do justice to the theme that has deterred me from launching upon a scientific survey of the varying forms of water-worship. Circumstances permitting, after further study and research, I may venture to essay it and place before the public a more studied and comprehensive volume on the subject, meanwhile this little book will not have been published in vain if it leads some student of anthropology to embark on such a survey and I shall be better pleased indeed to see this fascinating subject comprehensively dealt with by one of the masters of the science of folklore.

I trust I have duly acknowledged, at the proper places, all the authorities I have consulted. I cannot conclude, however, without expressing my special indebtedness to the works of that distinguished Town Clerk and student of local lore, the late Sir Laurence Gomme. My thanks are also due to my esteemed teacher and friend, Mr. J. D. Bharda, for the interest he has taken in this work and for his helpful suggestions when the sheets were passing through the press.

R. P. M.

Bombay, March 21st, 1918.

PART I.
FOLKLORE OF BOMBAY WELLS.

CHAPTER I.
SANCTITY OF WATER.

Time was when the whole earth, the fever-stricken isle of Bombay included, was free from fevers. One unlucky day, however, Daksha Prajapati and his son-in-law Shiva fell out and their discord brought with it a whole crop of fevers. The story runs that Daksha Prajapati once celebrated a great sacrifice to which he did not invite Shiva. All humanity had to suffer for this insult which greatly incensed Shiva whose breath during those moments of fury emitted eight frightful fevers.

In the good old days, however, a magic thread (dora), or a charm (mantra), was enough to scare the fever-spirit away.[1] In obstinate cases, no doubt, the spirit had to be exorcised from the body of the patient by a Bhuva or Bhagat and transferred to some animate or inanimate object, or perhaps a cock or a goat or a buffalo had to be sacrificed to propitiate the disease-deity. That, however, was all. A special offering for the Benares godling Jvaraharísvara, “the god who repels the fever,” was Dudhbhanga, a confection of milk (dudh), leaves of the hemp plant (bhanga) and sweets.

Of all such remedies and expedients the simplest and the quaintest was that for driving the malaria fiend away. One had only to listen to the story of Ekānterio, the spirit controlling intermittent fever, and one got immunity for ever. The legend runs that once a Bania, on his way to a village, came across a banyan tree where he unyoked his bullocks and went to a distance in search of water. Ekānterio, who resided in this tree, carried away the Bania’s carriage together with his family. The Bania was much surprised to miss them, but he soon found out the author of the trick and pursued Ekānterio. That fever-goblin, however, would not listen to the Bania’s entreaties to return his carriage, and the matter was at last referred for arbitration to Bochki Bai. She decided in favour of the Bania, and confined Ekānterio in a bamboo tube whence he was released on condition that he would never attack those who listened to this story.[2]

To-day in our midst there are no such story-tellers, no such Bhuvas and medicine-men, or, if there are any, they are seldom given a chance. We rather like to listen to the stories of the microscope and pin our faith to the doctor and the scientist. These men of science scent Ekānterio in every anopheles mosquito and tell us that malarial fever is conveyed from one human being to another by the bite of this ubiquitous insect. Therefore, if we wish to stamp out malaria, we must wage a crusade against this vast army of Ekānterio. It is well known that these mosquitoes breed in water and that they are particularly fond of well water. One of the measures that the Bombay Municipality has therefore to enforce in connection with its campaign against malaria is the closing of wells containing the larvæ of these mosquitoes. In the early stages of the campaign, however, it gave rise to vehement protests. These were prompted not merely by utilitarian motives, but also by religious sentiments and supernatural beliefs. The aggrieved parties gave chapter and verse to show that their scriptures enjoined the use of well water, and well water only, in connection with divers ceremonies, and they further relied on several popular beliefs investing the water of wells with supernatural efficacy. We shall record a few typical examples of such beliefs and convictions and a few traditions concerning several wells of Bombay, culled from the official correspondence on the subject and other sources, and we shall see in the course of our survey that these merely present, with a little local colouring, the particular primitive phase of nature-worship under which all nations inhabiting the globe have held in the past, and do hold to a certain extent even now, springs and wells in religious reverence and awe, regarding the water thereof as a living organism or as a dwelling-place of spirits.

When the owner of an objectionable well is asked by the Municipality either to fill up the well or to cover it, he invariably prefers the second alternative, provided he is allowed to cover the well with wire gauze or at least to provide a wire gauze trap-door for drawing water. The reason given in most of the cases is that according to tenets and established customs the water required for religious ceremonies must be exposed directly to the rays of the sun and that water not so exposed is rendered unfit for the purpose. The Parsis cite their scriptures and the Hindus theirs in support of this contention. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to quote the injunctions of the scriptures, but it is interesting to note how they are construed and understood.

When the Health Officer, Dr. J. A. Turner, was overwhelmed by all sorts of religious objections to the closing of wells, he consulted recognised authorities on Parsi religion as to the precise requirements of the scriptures and the manner in which the object of the Department could be carried out without wounding the religious susceptibilities of the Parsis. Dr. J. J. Modi gave his opinion as follows, referring to a ceremony of peculiar interest to the students of scriptural lore:—

“As, according to Parsi books, the sun is considered to be a great purifier, it is required that the well must be exposed to the rays of the sun. So a well hermetically covered with wood or metal is prohibited. But one ‘hermetically covered with wire gauze of very fine mesh,’ as suggested by you, would serve the purpose and would, I think, serve the Scriptural requirement. As to the question of drawing water from such a well, a part of the three principal ceremonies performed at a Fire Temple is known as that of Jor-melavvi (lit. to unite the Zaothra or ceremonial water with its source). As we speak of ‘dust to dust,’ i.e., one born from dust is in the end reduced to dust, this part of the ceremonial which symbolizes the circulation of water from the earth to the air and from the air to the earth requires what we may, on a similar analogy, speak of as the transference of ‘water to water.’ It requires that a part of the water drawn for ceremonial purposes from the well must be in the end returned to its source—the well. So, the provision of the air-pump, will not, I am afraid, meet all the requirements. I would therefore suggest that in addition to the hand-pump, a small close-fitting opening, also made of wire-gauze of fine mesh, may be provided.”

Shams-ul-ulma Darab Dastur Peshotan Sanjana also gave his opinion to the same effect and the recommendation of these two scholars was accepted by the Department.

No Hindu savant appears to have been consulted on the subject, but a few gems selected from the petitions and protests received by the Municipal authorities will throw some light on the traditions and customs of the different Hindu sects. In a letter to the Standing Committee the Trustees of the Derasar Sadharan Funds of the temple of Shri Anantnathji Maharaj represented that according to the scriptures of the Jains water used for religious ceremonies “must be drawn at one stretch from a well over which the rays of the sun and the light of the moon fall constantly and which must therefore be open to the sky and no other water could be used at such ceremonies.”

In another letter to the Committee Messrs. Payne & Co., Solicitors, wrote on behalf of their client Mr. Kikabhoy Premchand: “Our client is a staunch Hindu of old idea and he requires the use of water from seven wells for religious ceremonies. For this purpose he uses the two wells in question and has to go to neighbouring properties to make up the full number of seven wells. Water drawn by means of a pump cannot be used for religious purposes and it is absolutely necessary that both the wells should be provided with trap-doors.”

Even a trap-door would not satisfy the scruples of a large number. Messrs. Mehta, Dalpatram and Laljee, Solicitors, represented that the Marjadis never used pipe water, and they observed: “According to the Marjadi principles if any pot containing water touches any part of the trap-door, the water cannot be used for any purpose and the pot must be placed in fire and purified before it can be used again. As, however, it is exceedingly difficult whilst drawing water to prevent the vessel from coming into contact with the trap-door, the provision of such door instead of being a convenience is the cause of much needless irritation and annoyance.”

Mr. Goculdas Damodar went a step further and urged that his Marjadi tenants “were drawing water out of the well only in sackcloth buckets and any other means would conflict with their religious scruples.”

Mr. Sunderrao D. Navalkar raised a further objection. “By asking me to cover the well,” wrote he, “you will be interfering in our religious ceremony of lighting a lamp in the niche in the well and performing other ceremonies regarding it.”

The least objectionable expedient for protecting wells from the malarial mosquito was to stock them with fish. In many cases it was cheerfully resorted to as an experimental measure for killing the larvæ. But even this simple remedy was not acceptable to some. In objecting to it a member of the Jain community submitted that the fish would devour the larvæ and that it was against his religion to do any harm to insect life. It, however, required no very great efforts of casuistry to induce him to believe that it would be no transgression on his part if he merely allowed the Department to put the fish into the well.

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.

Similarly, a Parsi lady in Wanka Moholla, Dhobi Talao, informed Dr. Shroff that since the closing of the well in her house her husband had been constantly getting ill. Likewise, a Parsi gentleman living in the same locality complained that he was struck with paralysis for having sealed his well hermetically.

These spirits are believed to influence not only the health and strength of their victims but also their fortunes. In Edwardes Theatre on Kalbadevi Road there was a well, which was filled in by its considerate owner of his own accord during the construction of the building. Subsequently, the owner went to the Malaria Officer and informed him that no Indian Theatrical Company would have his theatre as the proprietors had a sentimental objection pertaining to the well, and that it was believed that European Companies also did not make any profit, as the spirit in the well had been playing mischief. He therefore applied for permission to re-open the well, promising at the same time that he would cover it over again so as to let the spirit have “a free play in the water.” This request was granted and the work was carried out accordingly. “Recently I was informed,” says Dr. Shroff, “that the theatre was doing better.”

Sometimes the pent-up spirits are not so vindictive. Instead of ruining the owners of the wells in which they are shut up, they vent their ire by merely breaking open the barriers. A Parsi lady in Cowasji Patel Street, Fort, owned a large well about 25 to 30 feet in diameter. The Departmental deities ordered that the well should be covered over. After half the work of covering the well had been done, the concrete gave way. The lady went running to the Malaria Officer urging that that was the result of offending the presiding spirit of the well and imploring him to cancel the requisition.[4] The Malaria Officer, however, remained unmoved by the fear of rousing the ire of the water wraith and the dejected lady left his house greatly incensed and probably firmly convinced that the wrath of the spirit would soon be visited on that callous Officer. He is, however, still hale and hearty. What he did to appease the spirit or what amulet he wears to charm the water-goblins away, is not known. However, this much is certain, that he has not escaped the furious cannon-fire of all the well-worshippers in Bombay during the last four years.

Whatever may be the attitude of hardened scientists in this matter, there is no doubt that these well-spirits are everywhere held by the people in great reverence and awe. Whether one believes in their existence, or is inclined to be sceptical on that point, wells supposed to harbour spirits are scrupulously left undisturbed. Mr. Rustomji Byramji Jeejeebhoy, whose family is known both for munificence and culture, wrote in the following terms with regard to a well in Alice Building, Hornby Road:—

“There is a superstition connected with the well. It is well-known all over this part of the town that the well is said to be a sacred well and much sanctity is attached to it. Out of deference to this superstition, I had in designing Alice Building to so design it as to leave the well alone. To me personally the well is of no use, but those who believe in the superstition come and pray near the well and present offerings of flowers and cocoanuts to it.”

Not only owners of wells but also building contractors are averse to disturbing water-spirits. When the Parsi contractor who built the Alice Buildings had done work worth about Rs. 35,000, he was informed that it had been proposed that the well had better be filled up. He said he was prepared to give up the work and forego all his claims rather than lay irreverent hands on that sacred well.

Once you instal a natural object in the position of a deity, the idea that the deified power demands offerings and can be easily cajoled invariably follows, probably based on the conviction that every man has his price! Offerings to well-spirits are, therefore, believed to insure good luck and to avert calamities. One day a Parsi lady went to Dr. Shroff in great excitement and begged of him not to insist on the well of her house in Charni Road being closed. The well, she urged, was held in great reverence by people of all communities. Only the day previous, while she was driving in a carriage to the house to offer a cocoanut, sugar and flowers to the well, she narrowly escaped a serious accident, thanks to the protection offered by the well-spirit.

Two sisters owned a house in Dhunji Street near Pydhowni. They were served with a notice to cover the well of the house. One of the sisters went running to the Malaria Officer beseeching him to cancel the notice. She said that her invalid sister strongly believed in the efficacy of the worship of the well and never went to bed without worshipping it and offering it flowers. “My poor sister would simply go mad if she sees the well covered over,” she cried, and she would not leave Dr. Shroff’s office until that unchivalrous officer left her alone and slipped into another room.

Several wells are believed to harbour spirits possessing occult powers and faculties for giving omens. One such oracular well may be seen in Ghoga Street, Fort. The owner of the house, a Parsi, was allowed, in the first instance, to stock the well with fish so as to clear it of the malaria mosquitoes. This, however, failed to give satisfactory results and there was no alternative but to demand a covering. The owner on the other hand pleaded that the well had been held in great veneration by all classes of people and had so high a reputation for divination that many persons visited it at midnight to “enquire about their wishes.” “About eight to twelve ladies (of whom none should be a widow) stand surrounding the well at midnight and ask questions. If any good is going to happen, fire will be seen on the surface of the water.” The owner assured Dr. Shroff that he himself had been an eye-witness to these phenomena.

Indian folklore abounds in stories belonging to the same group. Neither are such stories unknown to the European folklorist. We shall notice in due course several oracular and wishing wells in India and other countries, but the ceremony described by the Parsi owner is purely local and typical. So far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no parallel for it in the literature of well-worship. Peculiar also is the hour fixed for the ceremony. Generally, visiting wells in the midnight or even midday is believed to bring disasters. It seems, however, from an account of a rite described by Miss Burne in Shropshire Folklore that anyone wishing to resort to St. Oswall’s Well at Oswestry had also to go to the well at midnight. The ceremony was of course different. It simply required that the votary had to take some water up in the hand and drink part of it, at the same time forming a wish in the mind, and to throw the rest of the water upon a particular stone at the back of the well. If he succeeded in throwing all the water left in his hand upon that stone without touching any other spot, his wish would be fulfilled.

CHAPTER III.
PENALTY FOR DEFILEMENT.

A tenant of the same house in Ghoga Street informed Dr. Shroff that a cooly spat on the pavement surrounding the oracular well with the result that he died instantly on the spot for having defiled the holy ground. This reminds me of a story related to me about three years ago of a European girl who took suddenly ill and died within a day or two after she had kicked aside a stone kept near the pavement of a well in Loveji Castle at Parel. On this stone people used to put their offerings to the saintly spirit of the place known by the name of Kaffri Bâwâ. Many are the stories I have heard of this spirit from a lady who spent her youth in Loveji Castle, but as this was a tree-spirit and not a well-spirit, those tales would be out of place here.

As well-water is used for religious ceremonies, wells and their surroundings are generally kept clean by the Parsis and Hindus alike, but there is a further incentive to cleanliness in the case of wells which are regarded as dwelling-places of spirits. It is a common conviction that any act of defilement, whether conscious or unconscious, offends the spirits and all sorts of calamities are attributed to such acts. At the junction of Ghoga Street and Cowasjee Patel Street stands the once famous house of Nowroji Wadia. Some years ago the property changed hands. Certain alterations were made in the building and in consequence a place was set apart close to the well for keeping dead bodies before disposal. This brought disasters after disasters. Deaths after deaths took place in the house and bereavements after bereavements ruined the owner’s family. Too late in the day was it realized that the nymphs living in the well should not have been thus insulted. Once a well in Barber Lane overflowed for days together, emitting foul water. It did not occur to anyone to ascribe this to the sewer-sprite who had just commenced his pranks in Bombay. Instead, the mischief was unanimously fathered on a Parsi cook and his wife who used to sleep near the parapet of the well.

From ancient times contiguity of a corpse to water has been regarded as a source of defilement. In “Primitive Semitic Religion To-day” (1902), Professor Samuel Curtiss says that he was told by Abdul Khalil, Syrian Protestant teacher at Damascus, that “if a corpse passes by a house, the common people pour the water out from the jars.” With this idea of pollution of water was blended the conviction that the defilement of the water of a well or spring was tantamount to the defilement of the spirits or saints residing near them. Once two sects of Mahomedans in Damascus fell out. One section held the other responsible for the displeasure of a saint on the ground that it had performed certain ablutions in the courtyard of his shrine and that “the dirt had come on the saint to his disgust.”

In Brittany it is still a popular belief that those who pollute wells by throwing into them rubbish or stones will perish by lightning.[5] In the prologue to Chrétiens Conte du Graal there is an account, seemingly very ancient, of how dishonour to the divinities of wells and springs brought destruction on the rich land of Logres. The damsels who resided in these watery places fed travellers with nourishing food until King Amangons wronged one of them by carrying off her golden cup. His men followed his evil example, so that the springs dried up, the grass withered, and the land became waste.[6]

Before the well of Nowroji Wadia’s house was unwittingly defiled, the presiding fairies of the well used to sing and play in it, but this entertainment ceased after the place had been polluted. Another well, famous for the concerts of the nymphs, was a well belonging to the Baxter family in Bhattiawad. There, too, the water damsels regaled the ears of the inmates with music. I say this on the authority of an old lady who used to enjoy those subterranean melodies.

There is a fountain called “the pure one,” in Egypt. If anyone that is impure through pollution or menstruation touches the water, it begins at once to stink, and does not cease until one pours out the water of the fountain and cleans it. Then only it regains its fine smell.

Akin to this tradition is the Esthonian belief concerning the sanctity of water. In Esthonia there is a stream Wohhanda which has long been the object of reverence. No Esthonian would fell any tree that grew on its banks or break any reed that fringed its watercourse. If he did, he would die within the year. The brook was purified periodically and it was believed that if dirt was thrown into it, bad weather would follow. The river-god resident in the stream was in the habit of occasionally rising out of it and those who saw him described him as a little man in blue and yellow stockings. Like other river wraiths, whom we shall accost later, this water-sprite also demanded human sacrifices, and tradition records offerings of little children made to Wohhanda.[7] When a German landowner ventured to build a mill and dishonour the water, bad seasons followed year after year, and the country-people burned down the abominable thing.

A strange variant of the popular belief concerning pollution of wells is found in the curious custom of deliberately defiling wells with the object of disturbing the water-spirit and thus compelling him to produce rain. It was a common belief among several nations that one of the ways of constraining the rain-god was to disturb him in his haunts. Thus when rain was long coming in the Canary Islands, the priestesses used to beat the sea with rods to punish the water-spirit for his niggardliness. In the same way the Dards, one of the tribes of the Hindu-Kush, believe that if a cow-skin or anything impure is placed in certain springs, storm will follow. In the mountains of Farghana there was a place where it began to rain as soon as anything dirty was thrown into a famous well. In his famous work on the Chronology of Ancient Nations, Athár-ul-Bakiya, Albiruni refers to this phenomenon and asks for an explanation. “And how,” he inquires, “do you account for the place called “the shop of Solomon, the son of David,” in the cave called Ispahbadhan in the mountain of Tâk in Tabaristan, where heaven becomes cloudy as soon as you defile it by filth or by milk, and where it rains until you clean it again? And how do you account for the mountain in the country of the Turks? For if the sheep pass over it, people wrap their feet in wool to prevent their touching the rock of the mountain. For if they touch it, heavy rain immediately follows.” These things, says the author, are natural peculiarities of the created beings, the causes of which are to be traced back to the simple elements and to the beginning of all composition and creation. “And there is no possibility that our knowledge should ever penetrate to subjects of this description.”

This doctrine of negation of knowledge is typical of Persian poets and philosophers. The poet Fakhra Razi has beautifully expressed the idea in the following words:—“I thought and thought each night and morn for seventy years and two, but came to know this, that nothing can be known.”

CHAPTER IV.
QUAINT PARSI BELIEFS.

Close by Nowroji Wadia’s house was another habitat of spirits. The owner of the house, a Parsi lady, was asked to cover it. In view of the sad experience of the fate of the owner of the neighbouring house she was reluctant to do anything that might offend the spirits, but the Malaria Department was insistent. She therefore first implored the presiding deities of the well to forgive her as she had no option in the matter, and then consented to cover the well provided a wire-gauze trap-door was allowed so as not to interfere with the work of worship. I understand that on every full moon eve she opens the trap-door, garlands the well and offers her puja there.

Further down the same street, once renowned for the abodes of Parsi Shethias, is a house belonging to a well-known Parsi family. A well in this house was and still is most devoutly worshipped by the inmates of the house. I hear from a very reliable source that whenever any member of the family got married, it was the practice to sacrifice a goat to the well-spirit, to dip a finger in the blood of the victim and to anoint the bride or bridegroom on the forehead with a mark of the blood. Once however this ceremony was overlooked and, as fate would have it, the bridegroom died within forty days.

This practice of besmearing the forehead with the blood of the sacrifice is a survival of primitive ideas concerning blood-shedding and blood-sprinkling, the taking of the blood from the place where the sacrifice was given being regarded as equivalent to taking the blessing of the place and putting it on the person anointed with the blood. Thus when an Arab matron slaughters a goat or a sheep vowed in her son’s behalf, she takes some of the blood and puts it on his skin. Similarly, when a barren couple that has promised a sacrifice to a saint in return for a child is blest with the joys of parenthood, the sacrifice is given and the blood of the animal is put on the forehead of the child.

Remarkable as is the survival of this primitive ritual in Bombay and its prevalence amongst people such as the Parsis, there is nothing very extraordinary about it. A little patch of savagery as it appears to be in the midst of fair fields and pastures new of western culture, it merely affords an illustration of the fact that localities preserve relics of a people much older than those who now inhabit them. It also shows that various systems of local fetichism found in Aryan Countries merely represent the undying beliefs and customs of a primitive race which the Aryans eventually incorporated into their own beliefs and rituals, for it will be seen as we proceed that in India as in Great Britain the entire cult of well-worship was imbibed rather than engendered by Aryan culture.

What, however, is most extraordinary is that of all the communities in Bombay the Parsis show the greatest susceptibility to these beliefs. Amongst the Hindus worship of water is, no doubt, universal. Belief in spirits is also general amongst them. Amongst these spirits there are water-goblins also, Jalachar, as contrasted with Bhuchar, spirits hovering on earth, mostly inimical, mâtâs and sankhinis, bhuts, and prets who hover round wells and tanks, particularly the wayside ones, and drown or enter the persons of those who go near their haunts. Many of these goblins are the spirits of those who have met with an accidental death or the souls that have not received the funeral pindas with the proper obsequies. The Hindus believe that these fallen souls reside in their avagati, or degraded condition, near the scene of their death and molest those who approach it. Almost all the old wells in the Maidan were in this way believed to be the haunts of such spirits who claimed their annual toll without fail. Thus it was believed that the well that stood in the rear of the Bombay Gymkhana must needs have at least three victims, and sure enough there were at least three cases of suicide in that well during a year! However, so far as domestic well-spirits are concerned, while almost all the wells of a Parsi house were until recently and many of them still are under the protection of a Bâwâ, or Sayyid, or Pir, or Jinn, or Pari, or other spirits, one rarely comes across such wells in Hindu household. Wells are worshipped by the Hindus no doubt, without exception, but it is the sacred character of the water that accounts for the worship, not the belief in the existence of well-spirits. Again, as a result of my investigations, I find that the worship of wells amongst the Parsi community is in some cases much ruder and more primitive than amongst the Hindus. What can be the explanation for it? Is it simply a continuation of their own old beliefs in the land of their adoption? Is it merely old wine in new bottles?

Water-worship was, no doubt, a general cult with the Parsis in their ancestral home. Of the antiquity of this worship amongst them we have ample evidence in their scriptures. In the Aban Yesht the spring is addressed as a mighty goddess, Ardevi Sura Anahita, strong, sublime, spotless, erroneously equated by some authors with the Mylitta of the Babylonians and the Aphrodite of the Greeks. Ahurarmazda calls upon Zarathushtra to worship Ardevi Sura Anahita:—

The wide-expanding, the healing,

Foe to the demons, of Ahura’s Faith,

Worthy of sacrifice in the material world,

Worthy of prayer in the material world,

Life-increasing, the righteous,

Herd-increasing, the righteous,

Food-increasing, the righteous,

Wealth-increasing, the righteous,

Country-increasing, the righteous.

Who purifies the seed of all males,

Who purifies the womb of

All females for bearing.[8]

Who makes all females have easy childbirth,

Who bestows upon all females

Right (and) timely milk.

All the shores around the Sea Vourukasha

Are in commotion,

The whole middle is bubbling up,

When she flows forth unto them,

When she streams forth unto them,

Ardevi Sura Anahita.

To whom belong a thousand lakes,

To whom a thousand outlets;

Any one of these lakes

And any of these outlets

(Is) a forty days’ ride

For a man mounted on a good horse.

Whom I, Ahura Mazda, by movement of tongue

Brought forth for the furtherance of the house,

For the furtherance of the village, town and country.

The chariot of Banu Ardevi Sura is drawn by four white horses who baffle all the devils. Ahuramazda is said to have worshipped her in order to secure her assistance in inducing Zarathushtra to become his prophet, and the example set by Him was followed by the great kings and heroes of ancient Iran. It is conceivable that this tribal cult accompanied the devout descendants of the ancient Persians wherever they went and that with their mind attuned to the worship of water they readily came under the influence of the genii locorum in the different parts of this country and adopted some of the local rituals of the people who resided there before them. But the question then arises, who were the people from whom they borrowed these beliefs and rituals? Most of the guardian angels of their wells point to a Mahomedan origin, and yet amongst the followers of Islam well-worship is conspicuous by its absence. They have, no doubt, their Sayyids and Pirs in abundance, almost every shrine of theirs has its presiding saint, but they scarcely believe in any spirit residing in wells. In fact, one may safely say that well-worship amongst these people has died out, if ever it did exist before. During my investigation I have not come across a single case of such worship amongst them and all the Mahomedans whom I have consulted testify to the absence of these beliefs among them. How then, do we account for the Mahomedan patron saints of the wells of Parsi houses? It clearly cannot be a case of preservation of old wine in new jars. The intensely local colouring does not warrant any such assumption. There are distinctly non-Parsi ingredients in it. From whom and how did they get these? Well-spirits, like tree-spirits, form no part of any tribal cult. They are essentially local in nature and the subject needs careful research in the localisation of beliefs and the genealogy of folklore. We shall advert to this subject again,[9] meanwhile let us record a few more instances of sanctified wells in Bombay.

A well of which I heard during my childhood several thrilling stories of a somewhat singular type was situated in a house in Nanabhoy Lane, Fort, opposite the Banaji Fire-Temple, which belonged to my great grand-mother. It was believed to be the abode of a kind-hearted Sayyid (Mahomedan saint) who used to watch the health and fortunes of the inmates of the house. Women in labour preferred for confinement no other place to this auspicious house always mercifully protected by that guardian angel. It is said that he used to come out of the well regularly and that his presence was known by the ecstatic possession of a Parsi woman who used to live on the ground floor. A big basin of maleeda (confection of wheat flour) was offered to him by the ladies. It was emptied in a few moments. The inmates of the house related to the saint all their difficulties and each one got a soothing reply and friendly hints through the lips of the medium. A young lady used to suffer from constant headache. Her grand-mother one day asked the Sayyid what to do to cure the ailment. He gave her a betel-nut and told her that it should always be kept by the girl with her. This was done and she never suffered from headache again. An old inmate of the house was once seriously ill. All hopes of recovery were abandoned, but the saint came to his rescue and advised the relatives as to what they should do to propitiate the sea furies who wanted to devour the man. After the furies were propitiated as advised, the man recovered.

One or two more stories of Bombay wells known after the names of the saintly spirits residing in them may be noted. The Gunbow Lane is known after the famous well in the locality. It is generally believed that the well was sacred to the Saint (bâwâ) Gun who resorted to it. The Bombay City Gazetteer, however, informs us that “the curious name Gunbow is probably a corruption of Gunba, the name of an ancestor of Mr. Jagannath Shankersett.” Old records show that Gunba Seti or Gunba Shet settled in Bombay during the first quarter of the 18th century and founded a mercantile firm within the Fort walls. This Gunbow well was so big that it was believed that a man could swim from its bottom to another in the compound of the Manockji Seth Wadi about 500 feet away. Report has it that swimmers even used to find their way as far as the wells on the Maidan beyond Hornby Road. When it was proposed to fill in the well, strong representations were made to the effect that an opening for the well spirit should be kept, and a portion was left open for years. This too has been now covered over, but people still take their offerings to the site. In the same way, a well in the lane by the side of the Manockji Seth’s Agiary leading to Mint Road, which has been covered over, is seen strewn with flowers and other offerings.

Another well in Ghoga Street was believed to be the dwelling place of a Mahomedan saint, Murgha Bâwâ. “Murgha” is believed to be a corruption of Yusuf Murgay, who owned houses in the street which was also known after his name as Murgha Sheri. An esteemed friend, who used to reside in the house containing this well, tells me that the well was held in great reverence by the Parsi families residing in the locality. Various offerings were made, the principal of which was a black murgha or fowl, the common victim of such sacrifices. It was believed that in the still hours of the night the saint used to come out of the well and move about in the house. His steps were heard distinctly on the staircase and his presence was announced by the creaking sound that was heard round about. But my friend, who used to burn midnight oil in that house during his college days and who has since been wedded to science, is inclined to think that the footsteps were those of the rats infesting the house and that the creaking sound was made by the wooden book-cases!

A Parsi lady who lived in the same house says that people from various parts of the town used to take offerings to the spirit of the well, amongst which were big thalis (trays) of sweetmeat. Children were asked not to touch these, but this young lady freely helped herself to those sweets. Another friend, who took similar liberties with the offerings, was Mr. Jamsetji Nadirshaw. He used to live in Mapla’s house in old Modikhana. The well of this house was adored by people and young Jamsetji pilfered a lot of sweets offered to the gods. Sir Dinsha Edulji Wacha, who lived in the house during his childhood, informs me that his mother and grand-mother used to tell him many a thrilling story of the queer ways in which the guardian spirit of the well used to divert them.

A friend living in Karwar Street (Modi Khana) says that the well of his house is sacred to a Mahomedan pir and that to this day vows are offered to the saint and his blessings sought whenever the tenants are in difficulty. On the full moon day the well is decorated with flowers and the saint is implored to cure cases of illness which defy the doctor’s skill. Needless to say, these offerings and prayers are speedily followed by the recovery of the patients.

Another well in Parsi Bazar Street is also believed to harbour a beneficent pir. Only four years ago, a friend was informed that when doctors despaired of curing a patient, a Parsi carpenter suggested that the well spirit should be implored to save the patient. He brought certain people versed in the art of propitiating spirits and asked them to try their skill. They gratified the well-spirit by placing grain and other offerings on the surface of the water and by remaining in the water for days together, muttering incantations. The patient was thoroughly cured and, no wonder, he attributes the cure to the grace of the water saint.

These folk beliefs in the efficacy of well-water and the influence of the spirits dwelling in it are, as already observed, in no way peculiar to the City of Bombay or to other parts of the country of India and present no new phase of human thought. They are common to the whole world. In the concept of primeval man everything had its spirit. Particularly did it associate life with motion. The spring was ever flowing, ever bountiful, ever refreshing and fertilizing and came to be regarded as a living organism, a benevolent spirit supplying man with the prime necessity of life and endowed with purifying and healing qualities. Everywhere, therefore, the source of this quickening element that had such charms came to be adored so that the water-worship in the East has its striking counterpart in the history of Western thought.

Professor Robertson Smith identifies well-worship with the agricultural life of aborigines who had not yet developed the idea of a heavenly God. This is his description of the worship prevailing in Arabia: “The fountain is treated as a living thing, those properties of its waters which we call natural are regarded as manifestations of a divine life, and the source itself is honoured as a divine being, I had almost said a divine animal.”[10] “This pregnant summary of well-worship in Arabia,” says Sir Laurence Gomme in his Ethnology of Folklore, “may, without the alteration of a single word, be adopted as the summary of well-worship in Britain and its isles.” One might even say that well-worship is probably more widespread in the West than in the East and that some of the rituals there observed are more primitive than those which distinguish it in the East.

PART II.
WATER-WORSHIP IN EAST AND WEST.

CHAPTER V.
THE MOST WIDE-SPREAD PHASE OF ANIMISM.

We have seen that water-worship was a cult of hoary antiquity. The belief that every locality has its presiding genius gave rise to the deification of fountains and rivers just as it led to the deification of hills and trees and other phases of animism. The emphasis of animism lies in its localisation, in the local spirits which, to quote Tylor’s words, belong to mountain and rock and valley, to well and stream and lake, in brief, to those natural objects which in early ages aroused the savage mind to mythological ideas.[11] Some localities may not have in their midst such weird places as mountains and rivers, groves and forests, but scarcely any district is devoid of a well or a pool of water. Of all nature-worship, therefore, well-worship is the most widespread. Just the same scenes as one witnesses to-day at wells and tanks in India were beheld for ages in other parts of the world. Just the same stories as one hears to-day of the mysterious ways and powers of water-spirits were everywhere heard before. We have already seen that it was a general cult with the ancient Iranians and with the help of Professor Robertson Smith and Professor Curtiss we have also noticed how in Arabia the fountain was treated as a living thing and the source itself honoured as a divine being.

Max Müller, however, puts a different construction on the deification of natural objects. He points out that it is in India more than anywhere else that animism has been made to disclose its secret cause, namely, the necessity of deriving all appellative nouns from roots necessarily expressive, as Noire has shown, of action, so that, whether we like it or not, the sun whether called Svar or Vishnu, bull, swan or any other name, becomes ipso nomine an agent, the shiner or the wanderer, the strong man, the swift bird. By the same process the wind is the blower, the night the calmer, the moon, Soma, the rainer. What is classed as animism in ancient Aryan mythology, he observes, is often no more than a poetical conception of nature which enables the poets to address the sun and moon, and rivers and trees as if they could hear and understand his words. “Sometimes however,” he continues, “what is called animism is a superstition which after having recognised agents in sun and moon, rivers and trees, postulates on the strength of analogy the existence of agents or spirits dwelling in other parts of nature also, haunting our houses, bringing misfortunes upon us, though sometimes conferring blessings also.” It lies beyond the scope of this work to enter into any discussion of this theory, but we shall see as we proceed that the theory of poetic personification does not harmonize with the myriad details of folklore of wells and springs.

One might be inclined to attribute the worship of water to the great economic value which water possesses in the hot and dry regions of the east where wells and springs are veritable assets of the people, the most precious gifts of the gods. But it was not in arid lands only that wells received divine honour. There is ample evidence to show that people inhabiting lands rich in springs and fountains also held them sacred and worshipped the divine beings under whose protection the streams flowed bubbling across their fields. It would seem, therefore, that the spiritual element has been the uppermost in the worship of water. It was in view of the religious awe in which the Greeks held rivers that they raised their prayers to the springs, as may be gathered from the prayers offered by Odysseus to the river after his vicissitudes in the deep and from the description given by Homer in the Iliad of the sacrifice offered at flowing springs.

According to the Old Testament water was an important factor during the first three days of Creation. On the first day “the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”; on the second day the nether waters were divided from the upper, and the latter were transformed into the “rakia” or “firmament”; and on the third day the nether waters were assigned to their allotted place, which received the name of “sea.” The Gnostics regarded water as the original element and through their influence and the influence of the Greeks similar beliefs gained currency among the Jews, so that Judah ben Pazi transmitted the following saying in the name of R. Ismael: “In the beginning the world consisted of water within water; the water was then changed into ice and again transformed by God into earth. The earth itself, however, rests upon the waters, and the waters on the mountains” (i.e. the clouds).[12]

Nature withheld stone and wood from the Babylonian, but bestowed upon him by way of compensation another invaluable gift—the sea and the rivers. The Babylonian fully realized its value as an incentive to civilization. In his work on the Evolution of the Aryan Rudolph von Ibering points out that in his conception of the God Nun the Babylonian personified the idea that water was the source of all life, that historically the earth came forth from the water as well as that water was the source of all blessing, the quickening element of creation. Indeed, in Mesopotamia more than anywhere else one could vividly realize the fact that the inhabited soil had once formed the bottom of the sea and had become dry land through the retreat of the waters. In Egypt Shu, the air, rises from water which existed before the gods and goddesses some of whom like Vishnu, Vira-Kocha and Aphrodite, have actually sprung from waters. In the Quran Lord Almighty says: “We clave the heavens and earth asunder, and by means of water, we gave life to everything.” This is also one of the Ebionite doctrines. The Akkad triad of gods was formed of Ea, the ocean-god, who was also known as “the lord of the earth” with Na, the Sky, and Mul-ge, the lord of the underworld. They had no local water-deities, but from the earliest times we come across two stages of development of one central idea—the conception of the natural element as an animated being itself and the separation of its animating fetish-soul as a distinct spiritual deity. In the Land of the Hittites Garstang says that the Hittites seem to have absorbed into their pantheon a number of acceptable nature-cults, like the worship of mountains and streams and of the mother-goddess of earth, already practised by an earlier population whom they overlaid. In the history of Polybius is recorded an oath made by Hannibal to Philip of Macedon containing two triads sacred to the Phœnicians: “Sun, Moon and Earth”; “Rivers, Meadows and Waters.”

In the Puranas the Vedic God Varuna is the “lord of the waters.” He rides on the Makara, half crocodile, half fish, rules the soft west winds and controls the salt seas and the “seminal principle.”[13] The noose of Varuna is called the Nâgapâsa, or snake-noose, from which the wicked cannot escape. Every twinkle of man’s eyes and his inward thoughts are known to Varuna. “He sees as if he were always near: none can flee from his presence, nor be rid of Varuna. If we flee beyond the sky, he is there; he knows our uprising and lying down.” Originally Mithra and Varuna were merely the names for day and night and it is interesting to note how the conception of the night served to convey the idea of the ocean. “The night,” says Kunte,[14] “presents the phenomenon of an expanse which resembles that of the ocean in colour, in extent, in depth, and in undulating motion. Hence the idea of the one naturally expressed the idea of the other. The god of night became the god of waters.” The same author thus sums up the different stages of the development of the idea of Varuna:

1. Varuna, darkness or night and one possessed of meshes.

2. Varuna, ocean or firmament.

3. Varuna, lord of waters.

4. One who aided sailors, a beneficent god.

Turning to the classic world, we find that the early Greeks, like the Babylonians, regarded the ocean as a broad river surrounding the earth, the abode whence spirits came, and to which they returned, and so a “river of life and death.” They called Okeanos, the ocean, the son of heaven and earth, and his wife was Tēthis, or Tēthus; together they were the parents of all waters.

“To the great Olympian assembly in the halls of cloud-compelling Zeus came the Rivers, all save Ocean, and thither came the nymphs who dwell in lovely groves and at the springs of streams, and in the grassy meads; and they sate upon the polished seats. Even against Hephaistos, the Fire-god, a River-god dared to stand opposed, deep-eddying Xanthos, called of men Skamandros. He rushed down to overwhelm Achilles and bury him in sand and slime, and though Hephaistos prevailed against him with his flames, and forced him, with the fish skurrying hither and thither in his boiling waves and the willows scorched upon his banks, to rush on no more but stand, yet at the word of white-armed Here, that it was not fit for mortals’ sake to handle so roughly an immortal god, Hephaistos quenched his furious fire, and the returning flood sped again along his channel.”

Neptune was the Latin Sea-god, “the lord of dwelling waves.” When Kleomenes marched down to Thyrea, having slaughtered a bull to the sea, he embarked his army in ships for the Tirynthian land and Nauplia. Cicero makes Cotta remark to Balbus that “our generals, embarking on the sea, have been accustomed to immolate a victim to the waves,” and he goes on to argue that if the Earth herself is a goddess she is no other than Tellus and if the earth, the sea too referred to by Balbus as Neptune. Here, says Tylor[15], is direct nature-worship in its extremest sense of fetish-worship. But in the anthropomorphic stage appear that dim pre-Olympian figure of Nēreus, the Old Man of the Sea, father of the Nereids in their ocean-caves, and the Homeric Poseidon, the Earth-shaker, “who stables his coursers in his cave in the Ægean deeps, who harnesses the gold-maned steeds to his chariot and drives through the dividing waves, while the subject sea-beasts come up at the passing of their lord, a king so little bound to the element he governs, that he can come from the brine to sit in the midst of the gods in the assembly on Olympos, and ask the will of Zeus.”

The third greatest god of the Scandinavians was Niörd, born in Vanaheim (the water home), and living among sailors in Noatun (ship town) ruling the winds, and sea, and quenching the fires of day in his waves. To the Vanir, or sea folk, he was the “rich and beneficent one,” and his children were Frey and Freya. Skadi, “the scathing one”, daughter of Thiassi the giant god of land, took him as her husband, but land and water did not long agree. His consort is also Nerthus, the earth-goddess of Rugen, called by the Germans, the iron lady.

Japan deifies separately on land and at sea the lords of the waters. Midsuno Kami, the water-god, is worshipped during the rainy season and Jebisu, the sea-god, is younger brother of the Sun to whom the Japanese offer cloth, rice and bottles of rum, just as the Greek sacrificed a bull to Poseidon and the Romans to Neptune, before a voyage. The Peruvian sea-god Virakocha, “foam of the lake” or “of the waters,” was often identified with the Creator. Arising from the waters he made the sun and the planets, gave life to stones and created all things.

“It appears from Bosman’s account, about 1700,” says Tylor, “that in the religion of Whydah, the sea ranked only as younger brother in the three divine orders, below the serpents and trees. But at present, as appears from Captain Burton’s evidence, the religion of Whydah extends through Dahowe, and the Divine Sea has risen in rank. The youngest brother of the triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. Formerly, it was subject to chastisement, like the Hellespont, if idle or useless. The Huno, or ocean priest, is now considered the highest of all, a fetish king, at Whydah, where he has 500 wives. At stated times he repairs to the beach, begs ‘Agbwe’, the ocean-god, not to be boisterous, and throws in rice and corn, oil and beans, cloth, cowries and other valuables. At times the King sends as an ocean sacrifice from Agbowe a man carried in a hammock, with the dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a caboceer; a canoe takes him out to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks. While in these descriptions the individual divine personality of the sea is so well marked, an account of the closely related slave coast religion states that a great god dwells in the sea, and it is to him, not to the sea itself, that offerings are cast in. In South America the idea of the divine sea is clearly marked in the Peruvian worship of Mamacocha, Mother Sea, giver of food to men.”[16]

The Egyptians gratefully recognize how much they owe to the Nile and in their hymns they thank the Nile-god. Statues of the god are painted green and red, representing the colour of the river in June when it is a bright green before the inundation and the ruddy hue when its wells are charged with the red mud brought down from the Abyssinian mountains. We have already noticed that the spring was and is still adored as Lord Almighty’s daughter by the Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrian scriptures record how she was worshipped by the Heavenly Father Himself when He wanted her assistance in inducing Zarathushtra to become His prophet. Even to this day a festival is held in her honour by the Parsis in Bombay on the tenth day of the eighth month of the Parsi year. This day as well as the month bear the name Aban. The Parsis flock in numbers on this auspicious day to the sea-beach to offer prayers.

Not unlike the Iranians the Greeks also adored their marine goddess Aphrodite, “born in the foam of the sea.” Greek folklore tells us how this goddess rose from the sea opposite the island of Cythera. She was also the goddess of love and was in earlier times regarded as the goddess of domestic life and of the relations between families, being in some places associated with Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, or regarded, like Artemis, as a guardian of children and young maidens. Odysseus invoked the river of Scheria, Skamandros had his priest and Spercheios his grove, and sacrifice was given to the river-god Acheloos, eldest of the three thousand river-children, and old Okeanos.

Greek saints were believed to bestow wells of water endowed with miraculous properties, and frequently on their feast days an extra supply made the wells overflow. The monastery of Plemmyri, in the south-east of Rhodes, possesses a well of this nature. The priest walks round it, offering up certain prayers and sometimes the water rises in answer to his invocation and flows over into the Court. Another such interesting well exists in the Church of the Virgin at Balukli, outside the walls of Constantinople.[17]

Similarly, the Romans had their water-nymph Egeria. Women with child used to offer sacrifices to her, because she was believed to be able, like Ardevi Sur Anahita and Diana, to grant them an easy delivery. Every day Roman Vestals fetched water from her spring to wash the temple of Vesta, carrying it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In his Golden Bough Sir James Frazer observes that the remains of baths which were discovered near that site together with many terra cotta models of various parts of the human body suggest that the waters of Egeria were used to heal the sick who may have signified their hopes or testified their gratitude by dedicating likenesses of the diseased members to the goddess, in accordance with a custom which is still observed in many parts of Europe. Examples of the survival of this custom in modern times are given by Blunt in his Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Modern Italy and Sicily. It is also widespread among the Catholic population in Southern Germany and the Christian missionaries from those parts have brought the custom to India also. Almost every Sunday the Goans and Native Christians of Bombay, for instance, will be seen dedicating likenesses of diseased limbs made of wax to Virgin Mary at Mount Mary’s chapel at Bandra in gratitude for the cures effected through her grace. The custom has spread amongst other communities and I have heard of several cases in which Parsi ladies have taken such offerings to the Chapel.

This parallelism of beliefs and catholicity of cures remind one of the faith which not only the Greeks and the Roman Catholics, but the Turks and the Jews had in the miracles wrought by the Greek Saints. The best known instance of this, given by Miss Hamilton in her illuminating work on Greek Saints and their Festivals, is the large marble fountain standing in the court of the Panagia’s Church at Tenos. It was the gift of a grateful Turk cured, according to his own conviction, by the Panagia of the Christians. To a certain extent a feeling was prevalent against permitting unbelievers to participate in these boons, but it was futile in effect and the cures of infidels continued. Within the Smyrna Cathedral there is a holy well the water of which is specially renowned for the cure of ophthalmia. Turks, along with Greeks, shared in its benefits to an extent which excited the jealousy of the officials and they resolved to give ordinary water in response to the demands of infidels. This stratagem was, however, ineffectual for the eyes of the Turks were cured nevertheless with the unsanctified medium just as thoroughly as with the holy water. This might have shaken the faith of the believers in the holy well, but fortunately for them no such rude awakening appears to have marred their confidence in the miraculous powers of the well or of the saints.

Numerous proofs of water-worship in Great Britain exist to-day. English folklore is full of these and we shall notice them presently. There is also archæological evidence establishing the prevalence of the cult. On a pavement at Sydney Park, Gloucestershire, on the western bank of the Severn, has been carved the figure of one of the English river divinities. The principal figure is a youthful deity crowned with rays like Phoebus and standing in a chariot drawn, as in the case of Banu Ardevi Sur Anahita of the Iranians, by four horses. Three inscriptions are preserved: (1) Devo Nodenti; (2) D. M. Nodonti and (3) Deo Nudente M. The form Nodens has been identified by Professor Rhys with the Welsh Lludd and with the Irish Nuada. This monumental relic by no means presents the British embodiment of the water-god, the work being Roman it evidently bears the stamp of the Roman interpretation of the British belief in the local god and has been modelled on the Roman standard of the water-god Neptune. The whole find has been fully described and illustrated in a special volume by the Rev. W. H. Bathurst and C. W. King.

In Tylor’s Primitive Culture we find the following American examples of animistic ideas concerning water. “Who makes this river flow?” asks the Algonquin hunter in a medicine song, and his answer is, “The spirit, he makes this river flow.” In any great river, or lake, or cascade, there dwell such spirits, looked upon as mighty manitus. Thus Carver mentions the habit of the Red Indians, when they reached the shores of Lake Superior or the banks of the Mississippi, or any great body of water, to present to the spirit who resides there some kind of offering; this he saw done by a Winnebago chief who went with him to the Falls of St. Anthony. Franklin saw a similar sacrifice made by an Indian, whose wife had been afflicted with sickness by the water-spirits and who accordingly to appease them tied up in a small bundle a knife and a piece of tobacco and some other trifling articles, and committed them to the rapids. On the river-bank the Peruvians would scoop up a handful of water and drink it, praying the river deity to let them cross or to give them some fish, and they threw maize into the stream as a propitiating offering. Even to this day the Indians of the Cordilleras perform the ceremonial sip before they will pass a river on foot or horseback, just as the Hindus and Parsis throw cocoanuts and flowers and sugar.

Tylor also gives the following African rites of water-worship. In the East, among the Wanika, every spring has its spirit, to which oblations are made. In the West, in the Akra district, lakes, ponds and rivers received worship as local deities. In the South, among the Kafirs, streams are venerated as personal beings, or the abodes of personal deities, as when a man crossing a river will ask leave of its spirit, or having crossed will throw in a stone; or when the dwellers by a stream will sacrifice a beast to it in time of drought, or, warned by illness in the tribe that their river is angry, will cast into it a few handfuls of millet or the entrails of a slaughtered ox. Not less strongly marked, says Tylor, are such ideas among the Tartar races of the north. Thus the Ostyaks venerate the river Ob, and when fish is scanty will hang a stone about a rein-deer’s neck and cast it in for a sacrifice. Among the Buræts, who are professing Buddhists, the old worship may still be seen at the picturesque little mountain lake of Ikeougoun, where they come to the wooden temple on the shore to offer sacrifices of milk and butter and the fat of the animals which they burn on the altars.

It is not necessary to overlay this chapter with countless other European and Indian examples. We shall examine these more fully in the subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER VI.
CHRISTIAN TOLERANCE OF THE CULT OF WATER.

Throughout the West the cult of water was flourishing along with the cult of trees and stones when Christianity found its way to Europe. The holy wells which were then plentiful have since changed their names, but a few have still retained their old names. Thus there is or was a spring called Woden’s well in Gloucestershire, which supplies water to the moat around Wandswell Court, also a Thor’s Well, or Thorskill, in Yorkshire. When the faith and usages of the Celtics and the Anglo-Saxons came in contact with Christianity, together with the still older faiths and customs which the Celt and Teuton had continued or allowed to continue, the new religion did not distinguish between the various shades of beliefs and usages. It merely treated all alike as pagan. Kings, Popes and Church Councils issued edict after edict condemning non-Christian practices. Let us cite some of these. The second Council of Arles, held about the year 452, issued the following canon:

“If in the territory of a bishop infidels light torches or venerate trees, fountains, or stones, and he neglects to abolish this usage, he must know that he is guilty of sacrilege.”

King Canute in England and Charlemagne in Europe also conducted vigorous campaigns against these relics of paganism. Here is an extract from Charlemagne’s edict:

“With respect to trees, stones, and fountains, where certain foolish people light torches or practise other superstitions, we earnestly ordain that the most evil custom detestable to God, wherever it be found, should be removed and destroyed.”

It was too much, however, to hope for the total eradication of those faiths and customs of age-long existence. Pope Gregory was not slow to realize this, as will be seen from the following extract from his famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus in the year 601:—

“When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most reverend Bishop Augustine our Brother, tell him what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English, determined upon, namely that the temples of the idols (fana idolorum) in that nation (gente) ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled upon the said temples, let altars be erected and relics placed. For if these temples be well built, it is requisite that they may be converted from the worship of devils (dæmonum) to the worship of the true God; that the nation seeing that their temples are not destroyed may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil (diabolo), but kill cattle to the praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to the giver of all things for their sustenance.”

Thus did the early Christian missionaries come to regard the old phase of water-worship tenderly. Adopting what they could not abolish, they blessed the waters of holy wells and used them for baptism of converts and erected chapels or oratories near by or placed an image of the Virgin, or some saint, near sacred trees and rivers or over holy wells and fountains. Thus did the new faith which aimed in principle at the purity of Christian doctrine permit in practice a continuance of pagan worship under Christian auspices. Curious was the result. Under the transformation of beliefs thus unconsciously wrought the simple-hearted Christians beheld in brilliant images of the virgin and the saints fresh dwelling-places for the presiding deities of the waters whom they and their forefathers had venerated in the past. The belief in the miraculous power of water became linked with the name of Madonna or some saintly messenger of God and so enduring was this combination that it gave a new lease of life to the old beliefs.

One by one the old ideas and customs which were firmly rooted in the multitude came to be absorbed into Christianity. A dual system of belief thus sprang up and this is very strikingly reflected in the supplication of an old Scottish peasant when he went to worship at a sacred well:

“O Lord, Thou knowest that well would it be for me this day an I had stoopit my knees and my heart before Thee in spirit and in truth as often as I have stoopit them after this well. But we maun keep the customs of our fathers.”[18]

What is true of well-worship is true of other phases of nature-worship. A vivid picture of the result of the Christian tolerance of paganism has been drawn by Grimm in the preface to the second edition of his Teutonic Mythology. For our present purpose it will suffice to quote from it only two or three sentences which have a direct bearing on the question of water-worship: “Sacred wells and fountains,” says he, “were rechristened after saints, to whom their sanctity was transferred. Law usages, particularly the ordeals and oath-takings, but also the beating of bounds, consecrations, image processions, spells and formula, while retaining their heathen character, were simply clothed in Christian forms. In some customs there was little to change: the heathen practice of sprinkling a new-born babe with water closely resembled Christian baptism.”

This reference to adapted pagan rites in connection with the baptismal ceremony recalls the words in which Mr. Edward Clodd in Tom Tit Tot traces the early beginnings of the order of the Christian clergy to a prehistoric past. “The priest who christens the child in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” says he, “is the lineal descendant, the true apostolic successor of the medicine-man. He may deny the spiritual father who begot him, and vaunt his descent from St. Peter. But the first Bishop of Rome, granting that title to the apostle, was himself a parvenu compared to the barbaric priest who uttered his incantations on the hill now crowned by the Vatican.”

“We think with sympathy,” continues Mr. Clodd, “of that ‘divine honour’ which Gildas tells us our forefathers paid to wells and streams; of the food-bringing rivers which, in the old Celtic faith, were ‘mothers’; of the eddy in which the water-demon lurked; of the lakes ruled by lovely queens; of the nymphs who were the presiding genii of wells.”

CHAPTER VII.
HOLY WELLS AND TANKS.

With the learned author of Tom Tit Tot we also think with sympathy of the worship of the saint Khwaja Khizr, who is believed by the Syrians to have caused water to flow in the Sabbati fountain in northern Syria and who is ranked among the prophets by the Mahomedans and recognised by the Hindus as a patron saint of boatmen, his Moslem name being Hinduised into Râjâ Kidar or Kawaj or Pir Badra. He is, however, most widely known as the patron saint of the water of immortality. When the great Sikandar, Alexander of Macedon, went in quest of the blessed waters, Khizr accompanied him, as a guide, to Zulmat, the region of darkness, where the spring of the water of immortality was believed to exist. When they reached Zulmat, Khizr said that only 12 persons should enter that region on 12 mares and that each mare’s colt should be tied outside so that should any one lose his way, the mare on which he rode might lead him back to the starting point, following the direction from which she would hear the neighing of her colt. This course was followed. According to one account, the party succeeded in reaching the coveted spring. Khizr drank from it first and then asked Sikandar to drink as much as he liked. The conqueror of the East, however, stood still. He saw before him some very aged birds in a pitiable condition, longing for death and muttering maut, maut, maut, death, death, death! Death, however, would not come to them as they had tasted the water of immortality. This was enough to unnerve Alexander and he turned back without tasting the water. According to another tradition, Khizr slipped away in the region of darkness, went alone to the spring and drank from it. Alexander and his comrades lost their way and were only able to emerge from the darkness with the help of their mares who instinctively followed the direction whence they heard the neighing of their colts.

In India the fish is believed to be the vehicle of Khwaja Khizr. Its image is therefore painted over the doors of Hindus and Mahomedans in Northern India and it became the family crest of one of the royal families of Oudh. When a Mahomedan lad is shaved for the first time, a prayer is offered to the saint and a little boat is launched in his honour in a tank or river. The Hindus as well as the Mahomedans in Upper India invoke his help when their boats go adrift and they worship him by burning lamps and by setting afloat on a village pond a little raft of grass with a lighted lamp placed upon it. A Mahomedan friend who has often taken part in this ceremony which is known as Khwaja Saheb ka Dalya, has favoured me with the following description of it: “On the evening of the ceremony people congregate by the side of the river and bring with them a quantity of dalya, a confection of wheat, and a tiny boat prepared for the occasion. They then light a diva or ghee lamp, and place it by the side of the dalya, which is then consecrated in the name of Khwaja Khizr by reading Fatiha over it. A portion of the confection is then placed in the boat which is launched in the river with the small lamp in it. The remaining portion is distributed amongst friends and relations and the poor.”

As a rule the Mahomedans do not worship water. They, however, hold the well Zumzum in Mecca in great veneration. It is believed that this single well supplies water to the whole city and that its water comes up bubbling on occasions of religious fervour. The water of the well is also credited with miraculous properties and on their return from the pilgrimage to the holy city almost all the Hajis (pilgrims) bring home the water of Zumzum in small tins and distribute it amongst friends who use it as a cure for several diseases and also sprinkle it on the sheet covering the dead.

No other holy well attracts the followers of Islam, but for the Hindus the number of such places of pilgrimage is legion. Particularly do they flock in numbers to the sacred rivers which are regarded as the dwelling places of some of the most benevolent deities. In Northern India the Ganges and the Jumna are known as “Ganga Mâi”, or Mother Ganges, and “Jumnaji” or Lady Jumna. Foremost in the rank of the holy rivers is the Ganges, which, like other rivers, is specially sacred at certain auspicious conjunctions of the planets when crowds of people are seen bathing on her banks. This sanctity is shared by several towns along the shores of the river such as Hardwar, Bithur, Allahabad, Benares and Ganga Sagar. No less sacred is the Godavari, believed to be the site of the hermitage of Gautama. When the planet Brihaspati (Jupiter) enters the Sinha Rashi (the constellation of Leo), a phenomenon which takes place once in twelve years, the holy Ganges goes to the Godavari and remains there for one year and during that year all the gods bathe in this river. Hence the pilgrimage of thousands of Hindus to Nasik to offer prayers to the Godavari. A pilgrimage similar to this is common in Russia. There, an annual ceremony of blessing the waters of the Neva is usually performed in the presence of the Czar.[19] Multitudes flock to the site and struggle for some of the newly blessed water with which they cross themselves and sprinkle their clothes.

In his “Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India” Crooke observes that many of the holy wells in Northern India are connected with the wanderings of Rama and Sita after their exile from Ayodhya. Sita’s kitchen (Sita ki rasoi) is shown in various places, as at Kanauj and Deoriya in the Allahabad District. Her well is on the Bindhachal hill in Mirzapur, and is a famous resort of pilgrims. There is another near Monghyr and a third in the Sultanpur District in Oudh. The Monghyr well has been invested with a special legend. Sita was suspected of faithlessness during her captivity in the kingdom of Ravana. She threw herself into a pit filled with fire, where the hot spring now flows, and came out purified. When Dr. Buchanan visited the place, he heard a new story in connection with it. Shortly before, it was said, the water became so cool as to allow bathing in it. The Governor prohibited the practice as it made the water so dirty that Europeans could not drink it. “But on the very day when the bricklayers began to build a wall in order to exclude the bathers, the water became so hot that no one could dare to touch it, so that the precaution being unnecessary, the work of the infidels was abandoned.”[20]

A bath in the waters of wells is believed to have the same efficacy for expiating sin as a bath in the holy rivers. This belief rests on the theory that springs and rivers flow under the agency of an indwelling spirit which is generally benignant and that bathing brings the sinner into communion with the spirit and purifies him in the moral more than in the physical sense. It is believed that even the dead are benefited by such ceremonies.

A very typical case of the efficacy of such religious baths is that of King Trisanku, who had committed three deadly sins. According to one story he tried to win his way to heaven by a great sacrifice which his priest, Vashishtha, declined to perform. According to another account he ran away with the wife of a citizen, and killed in a time of famine the wondrous cow of Vashishtha. Another story accused him of having married his step-mother. After he had been sufficiently chastised, the saint Viswamitra took pity on him and having collected water from all the sacred places in the world, washed him clean of all offences.

The Brahmins also wash themselves of sins with the washing of their sacred thread every year, with a ceremony of sprinkling of water and cow’s urine. This ceremony is known as Shrávani amongst the Marathas and Mārjan Vidhi amongst the Gujeratis.

It would be impossible to enumerate the numerous sacred wells of India. A few instances may, however, be cited from the Folklore Notes of Gujarat.

Six miles to the east of Dwarka there is a kund called Pind tarak, where many persons go to perform the Shrâddha and the Nârâyan-bali ceremonies. They first bathe in the kund; then, with its water, they prepare pindas, and place them in a metal dish; red lac is applied to the pindas, and a piece of cotton thread wound round them; the metal dish being then dipped in the kund, when the pindas, instead of sinking, are said to remain floating on the water. The process is believed to earn a good status for the spirits of departed ancestors in heaven. It is further said that physical ailments brought on by the avagati, degradation or fallen condition, of ancestors in the other world, are remedied by the performance of Shrâddha on this kund.

The Damodar kund is situated near Junagadh. It is said that if the bones of a deceased person remaining unburnt after cremation are dipped in this kund, his soul obtains moksha or final emancipation.

There is a vav or reservoir on Mount Girnar, known as Rasakupika-vav. It is believed that the body of a person bathing in it becomes as hard as marble, and that if a piece of stone or iron is dipped in the vav, it is instantly transformed into gold. But the vav is only visible to saints and sages who are gifted with a supernatural vision.

Kashipuri (Benares) contains a vav called Gnyan-vav, in which there is an image of Vishweshwar (the Lord of the Universe, i.e., Shiva). A bath in the water from this vav is believed to confer upon a person the gift of divine knowledge.

Ganga Mâi.

Marjan Vidhi: Washing away of sins with the changing of the Sacred Thread.

In the village of Chunval, a few miles to the north of Viramgam, there is a kund known as Loteshwar, near which stands a pipal tree. Persons possessed by ghosts or devils are freed from possession by pouring water at the foot of the tree and taking turns round it, remaining silent the while.

There is a kund called Zelāka near Zinzuvadá with a temple of Naleshwar Māhadev near it. The kund is said to have been built at the time of King Nala. It is believed locally that every year, on the 15th day of the bright half of Bhādrapad, the holy Ganges visits the kund by an underground route. A great fair is held there on that day, when people bathe in the kund and give alms to the poor. There is also another kund close by, known as Bholava, where the river Saraswati is believed to have halted and manifested herself on her way to the sea.

In Bhadakon near Chuda there is a kund called Garigavo. The place is celebrated as the spot of the hermitage of the sage Bhrigu and a fair is held there annually on the last day of Bhādrapad.

Persons anxious to attain heaven bathe in the Mrigi kund on Mount Girnar; and a bath in the Revati kund, which is in the same place, confers male issue on the bather. There is also a kund of the shape of an elephant’s footprint Pagahein on Mount Girnar. It never empties and is held most sacred by pilgrims. People bathe in the Gomati kund near Dwarka and take a little of the earth from its bed for the purification of their souls. In the village of Babera, Babhruvāhan the son of Arjun is said to have constructed several kunds, all of which are believed to be holy.

A man is said to be released from re-birth if he takes a bath in the kund named Katkale-tirtha near Nasik.

A pond near Khapoli in the Kolaba district is held very sacred. The following story is related in connection with it. The villagers say that the water nymphs in the pond used to provide pots for marriage festivities if a written application was made to them a day previous to the wedding. The pots were, however, required to be returned within a limited time. Once a man failed to comply with this condition and the nymphs have ceased to lend pots.

The nymphs of a pond at Varsai in the Kolaba district were also believed to lend pots on festive occasions. Persons held unclean, e.g., women in their menstrual period, are not allowed to touch it. Similarly, a pool at Pushkar in Northern India turns red if the shadow of a woman during the period falls upon it.

There are seven sacred ponds at Nirmal in the Thana district, forming a large lake. These ponds are said to have been formed from the blood of the demon Vimalsur.

There are sacred pools of hot water in the Vaitarna river in the Thana district, in which people bathe on the 13th day of the dark half of chaitra.

At Shahapur there is a holy spring of hot water under a pipal tree, called Ganga.

It is held holy to bathe in the kunds that are situated in the rivers Jansa and Banganga.

The Manikarnika well at Benares was produced by an ear-ring of Shiva falling into it. If one drinks its water, it brings wisdom. The water of the Jânavâpi well in Benares also possesses the same property.[21]

At Sarkuhiya in the Basti district there is a well where Buddha struck the ground with his arrow and brought forth water just as Moses did from the rock.

Crooke says that he was shown a well in the Muzaffarnagar district into which a Faqir once spat, which for a long time after the visit of the holy man ran with excellent milk. The supply had, however, ceased before the visit.

A bath in the Man-sarovar near Bahucharaji is said to cause the wishes of the bather to be fulfilled. There is a local tradition that a Rajput woman was turned into a male Rajput of the Solanki class by a bath in its waters.

The cult of the bath for the purification of the soul is not confined to India and the Indian people. It was also widespread amongst the European people and prevails even to-day on the Continent. We have already seen that water-worship flourished in Europe before the advent of Christianity and that the new faith though antagonistic to it in principle was considerably tolerant in practice. It is not surprising, therefore, that the old practice should, with a varnish of Christianity, survive up to the present day. In an article contributed not long ago to the Good Words magazine, Mr. Colin Bennett observed: “Of all the remnants of ancient pagan worship that which is dying hardest, or more probably has not started to die at all, is the veneration of holy wells and belief in their miraculous properties.”

In the year 1893 was published The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England, including Rivers, Lakes, Fountains and Springs, by R. C. Hope. Unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain a copy of this book, but from the reviews of the work that appeared in the Academy and in the Athenæum in August 1893, one gathers that although confessedly imperfect Mr. Hope’s catalogue gives 129 names of saints in whose honour English wells have been dedicated. The reviewers give additional instances and point out that if inquiries were made, many more such wells would be discovered. From the list it appears that with the exception of Virgin Mary, who has 29 wells, and all Saints to whom 33 wells are dedicated, wells under the patronage of St. Helen are the most numerous. St. Helen was very popular in England, partly as being the mother of Constantine, the First Christian Emperor, and partly because two English cities, York and Colchester, claimed her as a native. The reviewer of Mr. Hope’s work in the Athenæum suggested a third reason also for her popularity. She discovered what was reputed to be the holy cross, hence in many parts of England May 3rd, the festival of “The Invention of the Cross”, was called “St. Helen’s Day in Spring”, and became an important day in village affairs. Menor court rolls bear witness, says the writer, that on that day commons were thrown open for the pasturage of cattle, and occupiers of land adjoining rivers well knew that it was the last day for repairing their banks.

An interesting chapter on Holy Wells is also given in Knowlson’s Origins of Popular Superstitions. On a little island near the centre of Lough Fine there used to be a place for pilgrims anxious to get rid of their sins, the journey over the water being an important part of the business. In Scotland (Tullie Beltane) there is a Druid temple of eight up-right stones. Some distance away is another temple, and near it a well still held in great veneration, says a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine (1811). “On Beltane morning superstitious people go to this well and drink of it; then they make a procession round it nine times; after this they in like manner go round the temple. So deep-rooted is this heathenish superstition in the minds of many who reckon themselves good Protestants, that they will not neglect these rites even when Beltane falls on a Sabbath.”

Thomas Quiller-Couch took a deep interest in the holy wells of Cornwall. He visited many of them and the notes taken by him he intended to weave into a volume illustrative of their history and the superstitions which had gathered around them. Unfortunately the intention could not be carried out during his lifetime, but with the help of these notes a volume was subsequently published on the Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall by M. and L. Quiller-Couch. This volume is not obtainable in Bombay and in this case also I owe my information concerning the work to the review which appeared in the Athenæum of 10th August 1895. During a pilgrimage of several months’ duration the joint authors were able to discover more than ninety of such wells. From the account given by the authors it would seem that the Cornish wells are rarely haunted by spirits of any kind. They are holy, and cure all kinds of sickness, madness included. They also tell us of the future, provided proper rites are observed, and we may secure good fortune by dropping a pin or a small coin into the water.

Major-General Forlong cites St. Peter’s well at Houston in Renfrewshire, St. Ninian’s well at Stirling with its vaulted cell, St. Catherine’s well at Liberton, St. Michael’s well near the Linlithgow cathedral, and the well of Loch Maree as some of the examples. Another sacred well is St. Mungo’s over which the Glasgow cathedral stands. In Ireland “we everywhere find peasants kneeling at sacred wells.” Of the well of St. Margaret under the black precipitous cliffs of Edinburgh Castle Major-General Forlong says that it is exactly such a spot as he had seen in Central India, “where pious persons precipitated themselves from the rock to please Siva or Kali.”[22]

CHAPTER VIII.
HEALING WATERS.

Many of these wells are renowned no less for their medicinal properties than for their sanctity. Their waters are believed to be under the care of sanitary guardians and are held to be extremely efficacious in curing many a distemper.

The use of water for therapeutic purposes is mentioned in the Old Testament, where it is stated that Naaman, who suffered from skin disease, dipped himself seven times in the Jordan and was cured. The New Testament records a case of congenital blindness cured by washing in the River Siloa. Balneotherapy and Hydrotherapy were not unknown in Talmudic times. The Talmud mentions a special season between Easter and Whitsun during which people used to go to the spas to take the waters or mudbaths. The cure lasted twenty-one days. In the Temple a special doctor was appointed to attend the priests for intestinal trouble caused by their excessive eating of the flesh of sacrifices and the treatment prescribed for them was the drinking of the water of Siloa.[23]

In Bombay the Manmala tank at Matunga, the major portion of which has been recently filled up and on which the Sassoon Reformatory now stands, has a reputation for curing measles. People from distant parts bring their children to this tank and the nymphs residing in it seldom fail to cure them of the malady. We are not aware of any other city well or tank gifted with such healing powers, but there are several in the Bombay Presidency. The Folklore notes of Gujarat mention a few. The water of the Krukalas well in the island of Shankhodwar is believed to cure fever and diseases caused by morbid heat. A draught of the water of the Gomukhi-Ganga, near Girnar, gives one absolute immunity from an attack of cholera. The water of a gozara well (i.e., a well which is polluted owing to a person drowned in it) cures children of bronchitis and cough. There is a well near Ramdorana, of which the water is effective against cough, and the water of the Bahamania well near Vasawad is credited with the same virtue. The water of the Mrigi Kund near Junagadh cures leprosy. The Pipli well near Talawad is well-known for the stimulating effect of its water on the digestive organs. The residents of Bombay, however, need not go to Talawad for this boon. There are in the city the Bhikha Behram well on Churchgate Street and the High Court well on Mayo Road renowned for similar properties of their water. In Northern India hydrophobia is believed to be cured if the patient looks down seven wells in succession, while in Gujarat when a person is bitten by a rabid dog, he goes to a well inhabited by a Vâchharo, the spirit who curses hydrophobia, with two earthen cups filled with milk with a pice in each, and empties the contents into the water. In the island of Shiel there is a vav called Than-vav where mothers who cannot suckle their children for want of milk wash their bodices which, when subsequently put on, are believed to cause the necessary secretion of milk.

It was recently brought to my notice that the guardian spirit of a well in Lonavla also possessed the gift of blessing mothers with milk. After that well had been dug, a goat was offered by the owner of the well to the spirit. This offering proved most unacceptable and the waters of the well at once dried up. The owner implored pardon and vowed that no animal sacrifice would ever again be offered, and that milk and ghee would be presented instead. This had the desired effect and the guardian spirit of the water has since been most friendly. “A few months ago,” said my informant, “a young lady was desirous of getting milk for her new-born babe. After fruitless attempts for a fortnight, she took an oath that she would present to the water-saint ghadas of milk and ghee and she was forthwith blest with milk for the infant.”

In the Konkan the water of a well drawn without touching the earth or without being placed upon the ground is given as medicine for indigestion.

There are ponds at Manora in the Goa State and Vetore in the Savantwadi State, the water of which is used for the cure of persons suffering from the poison of snakes, mice, spiders and scorpions.

If a person is bitten by a snake or other poisonous reptile, no medicine is administered to him, but holy water brought from the temple of the village goddess is given to him to drink and it is said that the patient is cured.

At Shivam in the Ratnagiri district people use the tirtha of a deity, or the water in which its idol is washed, as medicine for diseases due to poison. It is the sole remedy they resort to in such cases.

The water of seven tanks, or at least of one pond, in which lotuses grow, is said to check the virulence of measles and smallpox.

A bath in a tank in the Mahim district is said to cure persons suffering from skin diseases.

The well at Sihor in Rajputana is sacred to Gautama and is considered efficacious in the cure of various disorders.

In Satara King Sateshwar asked the saint Sumitra for water. The sage was wrapped in contemplation, and did not answer him. The angry monarch took some lice from the ground and threw them at the saint, who cursed the king with vermin all over his body. This affliction the wretched monarch endured for twelve years, until he was cured by ablution at the sacred fountain of Devarâshta.[24]

The birth of a child under the mul nakshatra endangers the life of its father, but the misfortune is averted if the child and its parents bathe in the water drawn from 108 wells. A draught of such water is said to cure Sannipat or delirium.

One of the sacred tanks of India is “the Lake of Immortality” at Amritsar. The name of the city is taken from the sacred tank in which the Golden Temple is built. Originally, the place was only a natural pool of water and a favourite resort of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion. It was known at first as Guru-ka-chall, but later when the tank was built, the name Amritsar was adopted, amrit meaning water of immortality and sar meaning a tank. A holy woman once took pity on a leper, and carried him to the banks of the tank. As he lay there, a crow swooped into the water and came out a dove as white as snow. Seeing the miracle, the leper was tempted to bathe in the river and was healed. The woman could not recognize her friend, and withdrew in horror from his embraces. But the Guru Ram Dâs came and explained matters, and “the grateful pair assisted him in embellishing the tank, which has now become the centre of the Sikh religion.”[25]

The tank at Lalitpur is similarly famous for the cure of leprosy. One day, a Râjâ afflicted with the disease was passing by, and his Râni dreamt that he should eat some of the confervæ on the surface. He ate it, and was cured; next night the Râni dreamt that there was a vast treasure concealed there, which when dug up was sufficient to pay the cost of excavation. At Qasur is the tank of the saint Basant Shâh, in which children are bathed to cure them of boils.[26]

There are several hot springs in India renowned for their curative powers. These also are believed to be sacred to certain deities. A typical example is that of the hot kund, called Devki-Unai, about 30 miles to the south of Surat. Many pilgrims visit the place on the fifteenth day of the bright half of Chaitra, when the waters are cool, to offer money, cocoanuts, and red lead to the Unai Mata, whose temple stands near the kund. It is said that king Rama built this kund while performing a sacrifice and brought water from the pâtâl (nether regions) by shooting an arrow into the earth.

Similarly, the famous hot springs forming one group in a line along the bed of the Tansa river in the village of Vadavli are sacred to the goddess Vajrabai or Vajreshvari, the Lady of the Thunderbolt. According to tradition, this neighbourhood being full of demons the goddess Vajrabai became incarnate in the locality to clear it of the wicked spirits. She routed the whole lot of them, and the hot water of these springs is nothing but the blood of one of the demons slain by her. Her chronicle, or Mahatmya, is kept at the village of Gunj, some six miles to the north, and her temple is placed at the top of a flight of steps on a spur of the Sumatra range. A large fair is held here in Chaitra (April). There are other hot springs in the neighbouring villages of Akloli, known as the Rameshwar hot springs, whose waters are gathered out in stone cisterns. In the eighteenth century these springs were much used both by Indians and Europeans as a cure for fevers. In his Oriental Memoirs James Forbes describes the springs as consisting of small cisterns of water with a temperature of 120°. “Except that it wanted a small element of iron the water tasted like that of Bath in England.” In the Ganeshpuri village, about three miles west of Vajrabai, are the two hottest springs of the group. These are resorted to by people troubled with skin diseases.

The Arabs regard the hot springs at Terka Main to be under the control of a Vali who makes the fire and keeps it burning. Those who go there to be healed of rheumatism invoke the saint and keep up the fire so that the water may be hot. At the Lunatic Asylum of Hamath there is a pool believed to be the abode of a Vali who is the patron saint of all insane people. He appears in the night and blesses the insane by touching them. Even troublesome children come under the spell of his influence. The Arabs take the robes of refractory urchins to the pool and wash them in it so as to instil wisdom and obedience in the children.

Similarly, the special function of the Altarnum well was the cure of madness. The afflicted person was made to stand with his back to the pool and was then tumbled headlong into the water by a sudden blow in the breast. In the water again stood a strong fellow who took him and tossed him up and down.[27] This ritual appears to be a survival of human sacrifice, while the ritual followed in connection with St. Tecla’s well, renowned for the cure of epilepsy, bears testimony to the practice of offering animal sacrifices to the presiding spirits of water.

In his Tour in Wales, speaking of the village of Llandegla, where is a church dedicated to St. Tecla, virgin and martyr, who after her conversion by St. Paul suffered under Nero at Iconium, Pennant says: “About two hundred yards from the church, in a quillet called Gwern Degla, rises a small spring. The water is under the tutelage of the saint, and to this day held to be extremely beneficial in the falling sickness. The patient washes his limbs in the well; makes an offering into it of four-pence; walks round it three times; and thrice repeats the Lord’s Prayer. These ceremonies are never begun till after sunset, in order to inspire the votaries with greater awe. If the afflicted be of the male sex, like Socrates, he makes an offering of a cock to his Aesculapius, or rather to Tecla, Hygeia; if of the fair sex, a hen. The fowl is carried in a basket, first round the well, after that into the churchyard, when the same orisons and the same circumambulations are performed round the church. The votary then enters the church, gets under the communion-table, lies down with the Bible under his or her head, is covered with the carpet or cloth, and rests there till break of day, departing after offering six pence, and leaving the fowl in the church. If the bird dies, the cure is supposed to have been effected and the disease transferred to the devoted victim.”

The most famous healing well in England is perhaps the Holywell, the Lourdes of Wales. The story of this well is the story of St. Winefride, the waters of whose fount were declared by the Protestant antiquarian, Pennant, to be “almost as sanative as those of the Pool of Bethesda.” In the 7th century the picturesque valley of Sychnant had as its chieftain Thewith, whose wife was the sister of St. Beuno, and whose daughter, Winefride, was a very beautiful girl, who had many suitors, but who resolved to consecrate herself to God in a life of virginity. One of the most persistent of her suitors was Prince Caradoc, who, enraged at his rejection, made a furious onslaught on the girl, compelling her to seek safety in flight. With drawn sword he pursued and overtook her on the majestic hill which overlooked the town. Here he cut off her head, which rolled to the foot of the hill. Till then, Sychnant had been waterless—its name, indeed, signifies the dry valley, but at the spot where the severed head rested, a copious stream burst forth, forming a well, the sides of which were lined with fragrant moss, whilst the stones at the bottom were tinctured with the youthful martyr’s blood. The head itself was reunited by St. Beuno to Winefride’s body, which was immediately restored to life by the Almighty in response to the saint’s prayers. Winefride subsequently became a nun, dying at Gwytherin on November 3rd, 1660.

Around the Well in Sychnant Valley grew a town which the Saxons named Treffynion, and which became known to the Normans as Haliwell, the hallowed or holy well, to which pilgrims fared from all parts of the kingdom, inspired by the belief that through the intercession of St. Winefride they would obtain spiritual and temporal blessings. Through the centuries preceding the Reformation, the Welsh Princes, the monarchs of England and the nobles of both countries delighted to bestow marks of their favour on Holywell and its shrine and Well of St. Winefride. One of the greatest of these benefactors was the mother of Henry VII., Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, who, in the fifteenth century, erected the handsome Gothic chapel and the Well beneath it. The water was received in a magnificent polygonal basin, covered by a groined arch, supported on pillars. The roof was elaborately carved in stone, and many fine ribs secured the arch, whose intersections were completed with sculpture. On one side of the wall was painted the history of St. Winefride, whilst the arms of the foundress and those of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Catherine of Aragon, and other benefactors were incorporated in the decorations.

Though the church of Holywell was devoted to other uses after the Reformation, and recourse to the well was regarded as a “superstitious practice,” the tide of visitors never completely ceased to flow. In 1629, for example, a spy is found reporting Sir Cuthbert Clifton as being one of a great number of “Papists and priests assembled at St. Winefride’s Well on St. Winefride’s Day.”

The following paragraph from Archbishop Laud’s account of his Province for the year 1633 also shows that in spite of all repressive measures pilgrims resorted in great numbers to the well:—

“The Bishop of St. Asaph returns. That all is exceedingly well in his diocese—save only that the number and boldness of some Romish Recusants increaseth much in many Places, and is encouraged by the superstitions and frequent concourse of some of that party to Holy-Well, otherwise called St. Winifride’s Well. Whether this Concourse be by way of Pilgrimage or no, I know not; but I am sure it hath long been complained of without remedy.”

One of the visitors in the year 1686 was James II: and in the following year Father Thomas Roberts was appointed priest in charge. The well has ever since been a favourite resort of stricken pilgrims and the modern tourist in North Wales can still witness numerous pilgrims journeying to St. Winefride’s in the hope of leaving their infirmities behind them. The deaf, the dumb, the blind and the paralysed have for centuries betaken themselves to this well in search of spiritual as well as physical health and the votive crutches, chairs and barrows left hanging over the well by the pilgrims who have been able to discard them bear testimony to the healing virtues of its water or at least to the faith of the people in such virtues.

In Lilly’s History of his life and times a story is given of Sir George Peckham, Kt., who died in St. Winefride’s Well, “having continued so long mumbling his paternosters and Sancta Winifreda ora pro me, that the cold struck into his body and after his coming forth of that well he never spoke more.”

Two recent Holywell cures were reported in the Catholic Times and Catholic Opinion of 21st July 1916. Mr. John MacMullan, whose address was 49 Station-Road, Shettleston, Glasgow, decided to try the water of St. Winefride’s Well after suffering for three years with chronic spinal disease. He bathed in the waters for the first time on July 5th, and again on July 6th, when he experienced a sharp shooting pain all through the body. On July 10th after getting in the well he found that he was able to walk up the steps which descended into the outer basin of the well quite unaided and up to the 12th of July, when he returned to Scotland, he was able to walk about freely.

The other noteworthy case following on a visit to St. Winefride’s Well is that of Miss Elizabeth Stanley of 54, John Thomas Street, Blackburn. She had her hand cut in a mill while working as a weaver and was unable to work for two years. In quest of a cure she made a pilgrimage to St. Winefride’s Well on the Feast of Corpus Christi. “Since her return from Holywell,” it is reported, “she has followed her work without any ill effects and is at present in the best of health.”

While this chapter was being written, a great calamity befell Holywell. Owing to the boring operations of the Halken Draining Company the waters of this famous well that had been flowing for 1400 years were drained away on the 5th January 1917. The valley of Sychnant became once more “the dry valley”, but to the great joy of the people of Holywell and of the Catholic community everywhere the water was restored to the well on the 22nd September 1917.

A few more healing wells in Great Britain may be noted. The “Hooping Stone” on a farm near Athol, is a channeled boulder which catches rain, and the water, especially if ladled out with a spoon made from the horn of a living cow, cures many ailments. The “Fever Well” hard by is also still in high repute. The Mayor and Burgesses of Shaftesbury still go to dance round the sacred springs of Enmore Green, hand in hand to the sound of music—or did so until recently. They carried a broom decked with feathers, gold rings, and jewels, called a “prize bezant”, and presented to the bailiff of the manor of Gillingham (where are the springs) a pair of gloves, a raw calf’s head, a gallon of beer and two penny loaves.[28]

Another holy well, Roche Holy Well of Cornwall, is famous for curing eye diseases. This well, which is dedicated to the lonely hermit by name St. Conan, is endowed on Holy Thursday, and also the two Thursdays following, with the property of curing eye diseases alike in young and old.

At Chapel Uny rickety children are dipped three times in the well against the sun, and dragged three times round the well in the same direction.

In several instances such miraculous cures appear to be well authenticated. Mr. Colin Bennett says that Jesus Well, St. Minver, and Madron Holy Well, near Penzance, are cases in point. Bishop Hall, of Exeter, who visited the latter well in 1640, absolutely vouches, in his treatise on the Invisible World, for the cure of a man by name John Trelille who had been lame from birth and had to crawl on all fours from place to place. At last he decided to try the virtue of the waters of this holy well for his complaint and, like Naaman of old, bathed himself in the little spring, afterwards reclining for an hour and a half on a grassy bank situated near by and known as St. Madrne’s bed while a friend offered up simple prayers on his behalf. On the first occasion of this treatment he got some relief, on the second he was able to stand on his legs with the aid of a staff and on the third occasion he found himself entirely cured. It is even said that in later life he enlisted in the army and was eventually killed in battle, having previously done good work for his country’s cause. Others have also been cured of the same affliction in later times by precisely the same means. Close by this well is the ancient oratory of St. Madrne, where on the first Sunday in May a service is still held by the Wesleyans in commemoration of the saintly man who once preached in that lonely spot the word of God. After the service the Holy Well is visited by the people, some of whom, says Mr. Bennett, “go so far as to consult it concerning futurity.”

Many springs in Macedonia are known and venerated as “sacred waters”; dedicated to St. Friday and St. Solomoné among feminine saints, or to St. Paul and St. Elias among their male colleagues. The water of these springs is regarded as efficacious against diseases, especially eye-complaints. Even so stood enclosed the “fair-flowing fountain built by man’s hand, whence the citizens of Ithaca drew water,” and close to it “an altar erected in honour of the Nymphs, upon which the wayfarers offered sacrifice.” Like the Homeric “fountain of the Nymphs” many a modern “holy spring” is overshadowed by “water-bred poplars or broad-leaved fig-trees, and weeping willows.”[29]

Hundreds of cures are effected even now at the Church of the Annunciation over the Chapel of the well during the Festival of Annunciation at Tenos. During her visit to the place Miss Hamilton saw priests spooning out the sacred water to an eager crowd, one by one, “after the fashion of a medicine-giving nurse.” Miss Hamilton is, however, guilty of repeating a very blasphemous story concerning a spring of therapeutic fame. Up to quite recent times the festival at Kaisariani was very popular among the Athenians and sick people were taken there for cure at the spring on the Ascension Day, the only day on which the spring water ran into the little Chapel, and in a miraculous way a white dove, the Holy Spirit, appeared and wet its wings in the holy water. Then all the sick people drank of the water or washed in it and expected to be healed. One festival day this dove failed to appear, and the priest knocked with his foot and whispered, “Let out the Holy Spirit.” A voice from the hole replied audibly, “The cat has eaten it.” This was enough to suppress the miracle.

The pilgrimage described by Miss Hamilton recalls the vivid scenes in Emile Zola’s famous novel Lourdes. In that masterpiece of his the great master of Médan has given us a marvellously animated and poetic narrative of the annual national pilgrimage to the famous Continental shrine. The idea of human suffering pervades the whole story and the woful account of the despairing sufferers given up by science and by man and of the religious enthusiasm with which they address themselves to a higher Power in the hope of relief and hasten to Lourdes and crowd themselves round the miraculous Grotto, is touching indeed. The author, no doubt, accompanies the stricken pilgrims without sharing their belief in the virtues of the water of Lourdes. He witnesses several instances of real cure, accepts the extraordinary manifestations of the healing power of the waters, but tries to account for them on scientific grounds. Be the explanation as it may, Lourdes affords striking illustrations of the faith of the people in the miracles of the enchanted fountain.

CHAPTER IX.
PROCREATIVE POWERS OF WATER SPIRITS.

Water-spirits being authors of fertility in general, it is natural that they should be credited with the power of fertilizing human beings as well as animals. In many places the power of bestowing offspring is ascribed to them, and several wells in India have a reputation for conferring the blessings of parenthood.

The Hindus believe that “a son secures three worlds, a grandson bliss, and a great grandson a seat even above the highest heavens. By begetting a virtuous son one saves oneself as well as the seven preceding and seven succeeding generations.” Childless women, therefore, resort to various expedients. Of these pilgrimages to shrines of saints and visits to Faqirs and Mullas who have miraculous charms in their possession are most common. But the most effective charm is water. In many parts of India the water of seven wells is collected on the night of the Dewali, or feast of lamps, and barren women bathe in it as a means of procuring children. A more elaborate ritual is observed by the domiciled Hindus of Baluchistan. There the childless woman takes water from seven different wells, tanks or springs and places into it leaves of seven kinds of fruit-bearing trees. She then doffs her clothes, wraps a cotton sheet around her and sits over the board of a spinning wheel under the wooden spout of a house, with some of the leaves under her feet. Another woman, blest with living children, mounts to the top of the house, and pours the mystical water on the roof so that it trickles over the childless woman through the spout. After the bath she dons new clothes and greets her husband and impregnation takes place immediately. The same ceremony is resorted to in cases in which successive girls have been born, and the birth of a son is assured.[30]

In a vav in Orissa priests throw betel-nuts into the mud and barren women scramble for them. Those who find them will have their desire for children gratified. For the same reason, the mother is taken after childbirth to worship the village well. She walks round it in the course of the sun and smears the platform with red lead, which is a survival of the original rite of blood sacrifice. In Dharwar the child of a Brahman is taken in the third month to worship water at the village well. There is also a belief in Gujarat that barren couples get children if they bathe in a waterfall and offer cocoanuts.

In the Punjab sterile women desiring offspring are let down into a well on a Sunday or a Tuesday night during the Dewali. After the bath they are drawn up again and they perform the Chaukpurna ceremony with incantations. When this ceremony has been performed, the well is supposed to run dry. Its quickening and fertilizing virtue has been abstracted by the woman.[31] This practice has its counterpart in a custom observed by Syrian women at the present day. Some of the channels of the Orontos are used for irrigation, but at a certain season of the year the streams are turned off and the dry bed of the channels is cleared of mud and other impurities, obstructing a free flow of water. The first night that the water is turned on again, it is said to have the power of procreation. Accordingly, barren women take their places in the channel, waiting for the entrance of the water-spirit in the rush of the stream.

Sir James Frazer says that in Scotland the same fertilizing virtue used to be, and probably still is, ascribed to certain springs. Wives who wished to become mothers formerly resorted to the well of St. Fillan at Comrie and to the wells of St. Mary at Whitekirk and in the Isle of May. In the Aran Islands, off the coast of Galway, women desirous of children pray at St. Eany’s Well and the men pray at the Rag Well by the Church of the Four Comely Ones at Onaght. Similarly, Child’s Well in Oxford was supposed to have “the virtue of making barren women to bring forth.” Near Bingfield in Northumberland there is a copious sulphur spring known as the Borewell. About Midsummer day a great fair is held there and barren women pray at the well that they might become mothers.

Some folklorists, Sir James Frazer included, consider that sterility was believed by people to be a disease due, as in the case of other maladies, to the work of demoniacal agency. They therefore include this practice of bathing in wells for the blessings of motherhood in the same category in which they place the cult of the bath based on popular faith in the healing powers of water. But there is probably another explanation for this practice. Students of the rites and customs observed by the Semitic people are aware that procreative power was attributed by these people to the spirits. Professor Curtiss bears testimony to this and he says that even Moslems and Christians of Syria conceived of God as possessed of a complete male organism. It was a common belief amongst the Syrians that the genii, both male and female, had sexual intercourse with human beings and the view that the spirits of the dead may beget children also prevailed. When a man had been executed for murder in Jerusalem, about fifty years ago, some barren women rushed up to the corpse. It may be, says Curtiss, that they felt that, inasmuch as the man had been released by death from previous nuptials and was free, as a disembodied spirit, he was endowed with supernatural power to give them the joy of motherhood by proximity to his dead body. After his recent researches in Syria Curtiss says that this belief in the procreative powers of the dead is still common.

There are three places at the so-called baths of Solomon in Syria, where the hot air comes out of the ground. One of these hot air vents, called Abu Rabah, is a famous shrine for women who are barren and desire children. They in fact regard the Vali (Saint) of the shrine as the father of children born after such a visit, as appears from the English rendering of an Arabic couplet, which they repeat as they go inside the small inclosure and allow the hot air to steam up their bodies:

“Oh, Abu Rabah,