Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.12971

c10.12971

1885.—"My father had one (a Salagram). It was a round, rather flat, jet black, small, shining stone. He paid it the greatest reverence possible, and allowed no one to touch it, but worshipped it with his own hands. When he became ill, and as he would not allow a woman to touch it, he made it over to a Brahman ascetic with a money present." — Sundrábái, in Punjab Notes and Queries, ii. 109. The sálagráma is in fact a Hindu fetish.