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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32: Chapter 22. Magic in the Ritual

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32

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Contents

Chapter 22. Magic in the Ritual

§ 1. The Relations of Magic to Religion

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THE theory that all religion is later than magic has already been discussed, and its fundamental weakness pointed out,¹ and it is therefore possible to consider the question of the relation of these two factors apart from any preconceived doctrine of the priority of magic. The position in the literature of Vedic India is a simple one: with very few exceptions the Rigveda is a book in which magic is not dealt with: a few late hymns are indeed found there, but these stand out as exceptions in a religious milieu. The Atharvaveda is a book of magic, mingled with some theosophy: that it is priestly magic, and not popular magic uninfluenced by the priests is clear: the priests have constantly altered, and changed much of what they dealt with, but the book itself is conclusive proof that the priests of that time were keenly concerned with magic rites. The position is further made clear by the Brāhmaṇas, which show beyond possibility of doubt that the whole of the sacrifice was penetrated by conceptions of magic. Scarcely any rite but can be so adapted as to produce magic ends: the rites are often varied in detail for this very purpose, the mode in which the post is covered with the cord will determine the amount of rain which will fall, the priest can bring to nothing the kingdom if he varies by manipulations the offering; he is constantly told how to alter the words, when he dislikes the sacrificer, or when he seeks to obtain for him such special blessings as a male child.

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¹ Cf. also Jevons, *Idea of God* (1910).

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The Atharvaveda and the Brāhmaṇas prove, therefore, that the India of their period was one in which magic and religion were inextricably blended: the same conclusion is suggested by the Rigveda itself: the man who is pure complains that he is called a magician and a companion of evil spirits,² and doubtless many among the priests who composed the songs of the Rigveda were not devoted to magic or specially interested in it. The exaltation which saw in the poetry of the Rigveda the highest form of honour which the gods could receive, would scarcely trouble itself about the lower field of magic. But we cannot believe³ that there was ever a time when the Vedic sacrifice was not filled with magic elements,⁴ and all that we can say with certainty is that the desire to see magic in everything was one which was growing in the period of the Brāhmaṇas, which degrade the sacrifice from the position of an appeal to the bounty of heaven to the position of the greatest power on earth, which controls the gods and produces whatever is desired by the priests. Magic thus won a powerful support from theosophy, and we cannot in the Vedic literature say that magic was regarded as a wicked thing, except when it was practised by others against a man. If he could, he would himself use magic to confound his enemies.¹ The code of Manu² in effect well sums up the point of view of its own, and also of the earlier Vedic period, in the doctrine that, while witchcraft is a bad thing, the Brahman who is wronged need not seek redress tamely by civil process through the intervention of the royal authority, but should assert his own power by his magic arts. The position is natural enough; all religions have to contend with magic, and, while the higher religions cast much aside, they cannot be successful in removing all. The Vedic religion had, however, developed no such moral or religious basis as would render it possible to demand the disappearance of magic rites, and thus magic flourished under its aegis in almost a disconcerting degree. Nothing shows how much the idea of the magic power of the sacrifice and its importance superseded moral considerations in the minds of the priests than the offerings prescribed by one text³ to enable a man to break faith at pleasure without punishment by Varuṇa.

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² RV. vii. 104. 16.

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³ Magic and sacrifice represent two different aspects of man's efforts to accomplish his desires. They are essentially distinct and are felt to be so in the higher faiths. But in primitive religions the elements lie side by side in no strongly felt differentiation.

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⁴ So the Babylonian and in less degree the Greek; Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 158, 176–9, 291–301; Fossey, *La magie assyrienne*; R. C. Thompson, *Semitic Magic* (1908). For Vedic magic, see V. Henry, *La magie dans l'Inde antique*, and Caland, *Altindisches Zauberritual*; Macdonell, *ERE.* viii. 311–21. For the Roman attitude to magic, see Warde Fowler's *Religious Experience of the Roman People*.

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¹ AV. vii. 70. 2.

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² xi. 32, 33. Cf. Henry, *op. cit.*, p. 253; Jevons, *Idea of God*, pp. 8 ff.

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³ TS. ii. 2. 6. 2.

§ 2. The Nature of Vedic Magic

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In the sphere of Vedic magic we have to do both with personal and with impersonal substances. The conception of all sorts of demons as threatening man is one which is supplemented by the more impersonal view of substances or potencies, which dwell in things, and which are often, therefore, of value in magic rites. It is possible that the earlier view is that which conceives these potencies either animatistically as actually alive, or animistically as spirits, but in the Vedic literature the two views, personal and impersonal, are both clearly found, and, like everything in the Veda, they are never clearly kept apart. Such powers⁴ are the power of error in the sacrifice which clings to the sacrificial post, and therefore may pass to the sacrificers,⁵ if care is not taken to render it harmless, the nature in woman, which causes her to slay her husband or to bear no children to him, and to bring death and disease among his cattle.⁶

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⁴ One term for these is *tanū*, body, e. g. used of hunger and thirst in TA. iv. 22; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 478. The instances given show that this is not by any means the same as *mana* as defined by Marett (*The Threshold of Religion*).

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⁵ Kauç. cii. 2; HGS. i. 16. 16.

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⁶ ÇGS. i. 18. 3.

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It is not vitally to be distinguished from the strength of the tiger, which is found in its hair and its skin, and which makes these things suited for use in many magic performances, by which man seeks to attain for himself strength and kingship over men, such as the tiger exercises over animals. The frog and the Avakā plants can be used for cooling, for they have in them the nature of the water, a fact which shows clearly how real the presence of the deity in a symbol was to the Vedic conception. The banished king uses a clod of earth from his home in his desire to regain his kingdom: the lightning¹ leaves its strength in the tree which it blasts, the boar in the earth which it kicks up :² the name, the image, the hair, the very footprints³ of man, are so connected with him as to be suitable modes of injury. Hence we can understand such legends as the theory that in laughing Makha⁴ allowed his brilliance to depart from him, that the gods placed it in the plants, and thus was millet produced. Or again the white Vālakhilyas⁵ practised asceticism : half of it with the resulting power Tārkṣya drank, and thus created the bird Garuḍa. The same idea displays itself in the constant fear of being affected by the mouth, which is one of the motives, no doubt, of the fasting recommended often by the Veda; of being affected by mere inhalation, whence often the holding of the breath is laid down; or of being affected by sight, whence often the eyes must be shut, or the sacrificer must at least not look round. The constant play of fancy between the real substance and the spirit is seen in the treatment of such ideas as Pāpman,⁶ impersonal evil, or the spirit of a thousand eyes, or of Takman, the actual fever disease,⁷ which seizes the patient, and makes him shiver, and the spirit which brings this about.

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¹ Kauç. xlviii. 37.

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² Kauç. xv. 2.

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³ Kauç. xlvii. 25.

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⁴ TA. v. 1. 3.

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⁵ Suparṇādhyāya, 2.

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⁶ AV. xi. 8. 19; vi. 26.

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⁷ Grohmann, *Ind. Stud.* ix. 383; cf. Jambha, ‘convulsions’, AV. vii. 10. Kaṇva, a disease demon (AV. ii. 25), may be a case of a soul of the dead as a demon.

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Of the means, which we may describe as magic in opposition to the rule of petition and offering which is religion, much of course is based on actual observation of fact, and much is based on mistaken fancies : magic, indeed, is doubtless in some sense and in fact the forerunner of science,⁸ and like science is slow in clearing away misconceptions of all kinds. At times it is desirable to attract substances or spirits, at times urgently necessary to drive away such things : another branch of the subject is divination, which rests on the same foundation of contiguity or similarity, upon which rest the other laws of magic. The means are various: the word is of great importance, and so again are figures or representations of things which may be used as substitutes for or in addition to articles connected with the things or persons, who form the subjects of the conjuration. The time again is of importance: many things should be done at night, but others at special times of the day or the year, and various places are specially favourable, such as cross-roads, or graveyards, where spirits do mostly congregate, and where are the evil birds of prey and the jackals. But in special circumstances almost any place is suited specially for the rite.

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⁸ Cf. Henry, *La magie dans l’Inde antique*, pp. 241–60; Frazer, *The Magic Art*. Both, however, have unsatisfactory views of the relation of magic and religion. See also L. Thorndike, *The History of Magic* (1923).

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It is natural, that, representing as it does a part of the primitive science of man, magic should be found in similar forms all the world over. There is little that is of special character in Indian magic, and the variety of its rites is enormous: fortunately or unfortunately for our opinion of the intelligence of the Vedic Indian not only has the Atharvaveda come down to us, but the Kauçika Sūtra contains (vii–lii) in the fullest detail, often however unintelligible to us, the nature of the rites which were used with the texts of that Veda. Other details occur in the Pariçiṣṭas of the Atharvaveda, in the Sāmavidhāna Brāhmaṇa, in the Ṛgvidhāna and minor texts. The antiquity of these works is by no means very great: the age of most of the practices may be indefinitely remote. The only practices of which we can say definitely that they are innovations are those, not at all few in number, in which priestly ingenuity has used mythical ideas, in order to found on them a magic practice. Thus in one rite laid down in the Kauçika Sūtra¹ we find that as a means of driving away evil spirits the use of a food is prescribed, which has been cooked with wood of a tree in which birds nest: this is due merely to the fact that in accompanying verses Indra, the averter of evil spirits, is invited to come as a bird to a tree.

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¹ xxix. 27. Based on AV. vi. 2. 2; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 480, n. 3.

§ 3. The Removal of Hostile Influences

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In a modified degree the principle is adopted in Vedic ritual that hostile powers should be propitiated. Thus the Rakṣases are given the portions that fall away from the grain, when it is pounded for the offerings: the blood, the entrails, the excrement of the animal victim, are made over to them or the snakes. Diseases treated as demons are propitiated and shown reverence in the hope, which is expressed, that they will depart, being satisfied with what is done for them. The disease Takman is entreated to depart, and addressed as a god, just as among the Esths down to modern times the same procedure of paying homage was adopted to make a disease depart.² What is more interesting is that both methods might be tried in close conjunction: the jackal might be addressed with formulae of reverence at the one time, and at the same time a fire brand be thrown at it.³ The ants receive an offering, but, if that fails, a poisonous mixture is made for them, and the aid of the gods in their utter extirpation is invoked.⁴ Snakes are simultaneously treated with reverence, and their extinction invoked: in the snake offering itself, while the snakes are fed, the sacrificer draws round the house a line of water to keep them away from it. But as a rule the attitude of the Vedic Indian to the hostile powers is the desire to banish them far from his life, to deceive and cheat them in every way: hence such actions as fasting to forbid them entrance, refraining from breathing, from intercourse, from looking round and so on. The same idea is also to be seen in the fact that on certain occasions disguises are adopted, and that the hair which is cut from the child or youth is carefully buried. In this last instance, however, in many cases the hair is prescribed to be buried in such a place as a cow stall, and in that instance it may be that the burying was rather to bring prosperity to the cows¹ than as a piece of prophylactic magic, or the two ideas may have been merged into one. The difficulties of realizing the precise sense of magic rites is far greater than that of interpreting religious ceremonies. Other modes of avoidance are mentioned, in addition to not looking round at any dread sight, or not coming into physical contact with what is dangerous: thus the mother is impure for ten or twelve days after birth and is avoided, and the bricks for Nirṛti at the setting up of the fire altar are put in place without actual contact. Steps are taken to efface the footsteps of the priest, who carries the fire of the sacrifice, just as a clog is bound to the foot of the dead to wipe out the tracks. Similarly the use of different doors from the normal may be prescribed: the child attacked by the doggie demon cough is taken into the assembly hall, where the spell to exercise the demon is to be performed, through a hole made in the thatch.² When the sacrificer dies, and the fire hitherto maintained by him becomes the place of resort of powers of death, it is removed, but not by the door. Or, again, something may be interposed to shut out the demons: water they cannot cross,³ and the use of water prevents the evil influence of the bricks for Nirṛti⁴ or the funeral rite exercising its power. Similar cases of the interposition of obstacles are presented by the use of a stone to sever the living from the dead, the mat⁵ employed for the same purpose, and at the sacrifice the enclosing sticks placed round the fire in order to keep off the demons.

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² Grohmann, *Ind. Stud.* ix. 413; cf. AV. i. 12, 13; v. 7; vi. 13, 20; PGS. i. 16. 24; HGS. ii. 7. 2; BDS. ii. 1. 32.

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³ HGS. i. 16. 20 ff.

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⁴ Kauç. cxvi.

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¹ Cf. Frazer, *The Magic Art*, i. 28 ff.

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² HGS. ii. 7. 2.

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³ MS. iv. 8. 5.

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⁴ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* iii. 243.

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⁵ Kauç. lxxxvi. 14.

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The use of water for actual washing away different forms of evil is extremely common, as in the final bath: the place where a pigeon has alighted is washed clean: the bride is washed to rid her of all evil influences: after dealings with Rudra, demons, or the Fathers, it is necessary to purify oneself by touching water, but not rain water, which is deemed to have some degree of impurity and to spoil offerings on which it falls. The face is wiped after an evil dream.⁶ Lead and wool are used also for cleansing purposes.⁷ The urine of a cow has as in Iran and in modern India great properties of cleansing.⁸ The new-born child is washed, and also the breast of the mother: but smoke is also used to purify the child, while fire is a constant source of protection. The sickle with which is cut the grass for the sacrifice is made glowing by means of fire, thus driving off the Rakṣases.

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⁶ HGS. i. 16. 5.

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⁷ Kauç. lxxi. 16, 17.

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⁸ KÇS. xxv. 11. 16.

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The use of noise to drive away demons is common: the drums at the Mahāvrata rite are paralleled by the sounds made by the Soma stones at the pressing, which are made doubly resonant by the device of putting under them sounding holes. The noise of the Sāman is also powerful to drive away evil, if the critics of the Sāman singers also make it a ground for the breaking off of the holy study for the day on which it is heard. Pots are beaten at burial. When a gong is beaten, it is expected that the demon which has a child in its grip will be driven away.¹ The fragrant bdellion also serves to drive away demons, while the Apāmārga plant is famed for this service, which, as its name denotes, it derives from its power to wipe off the influences of such powers. The ritual use of beating is not unknown: it occurs during the royal consecration, when the priests gently beat the prince,² and it may perhaps be recognized in the beating of their thighs by the maidens who dance round the fire at the Mahāvrata, bearing on their heads the water pitchers.³

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¹ Kauç. lxxxvi. 15; HGS. ii. 7. 2.

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² KÇS. xv. 7. 6; Weber, *Rājasūya*, p. 63.

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³ Cf. PB. ix. 8. 9; Vait. xxxiv. 9, 10.

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The use of a staff is of special interest: the student is given a staff, and is forbidden ever to let anything intervene between his body and it. When his studentship is over, it is thrown in the water with the rest of his outfit, but he obtains a new staff, and this is expressly stated to be of use not merely for protection against human foes but also from Rakṣases and Piçācas.⁴ The Soma offerer has a staff, which he receives from the priest to guard him, and which he ought never to let go.⁵ The Maitrāvaruṇa priest stands through the service with staff in hand, slightly bending forward, in the attitude of readiness to smite the demons.⁶ A specially consecrated staff brings fortune wherever one goes: if a circle is drawn with it and one thinks of a place, then no enemy can enter that place.⁷ The wooden sword of the sacrificer is used to cut up the earth on the altar place, and it is thrown into the dust heap, being treated as the enemy, Araru, who is destroyed.⁸ After an offering to the Fathers the sword is drawn over the altar to send away the demons. Small staves are shot in the air at the wedding ceremony to destroy the sight of the Rakṣases.

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⁴ GGS. iii. 1. 14, 27; iv. 9. 17; AGS. iii. 8. 20; ÇGS. ii. 13. 1, 2, 8; PGS. ii. 6. 31, &c.

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⁵ ÇB. iii. 2. 1. 32.

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⁶ TS. vi. 1. 4. 2; AÇS. iii. 1. 20; KÇS. vi. 4. 6.

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⁷ SVB. ii. 4. 1, 2.

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⁸ VS. i. 29 ff.; ÇÇS. iv. 4. 2.

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Yet another form is that of shaking: the black antelope skin used at a sacrifice is shaken out with the view of removing any evil that may have crept there: the corner of the garment of him who offers to the Fathers is similarly shaken to remove any evil spirit. Remains of Surā were thrown away on an ant heap. Akin to these rites is the use of a comb to purify the hair of the bride from dangerous influences of any sort, and also the passing of people through narrow holes, of which the classical example is that of Apālā in the Rigveda,⁹ whom Indra dragged through the hole of the chariot, of the cart, and of the yoke, and so healed of a skin disease, and which is to be seen also in the marriage ritual, when the hole of the yoke of a car is placed on the bride.¹ The aim of this rite is probably also to be seen in the making of a hole in the roof of the assembly hall for the introduction of the boy who is ill: the narrowness was probably a feature of the rite. The question which arises in this case, as in the case of the passing of an army under the yoke in the Roman usage,² is whether the guilt of blood or the disease is considered to be wiped away by the contact with the sides of the hole, or whether it is to be classed as one of the devices by which an enemy is deceived and the angry demons or spirits of the dead are baulked of their prey.

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⁹ Cf. Kauç. xv. 4; lxxii. 16; RV. viii. 91. 7; von Schroeder (VOJ. xxii. 223 ff.) has a fanciful explanation of the legend; cf. Oldenberg, *Ṛgveda-Noten*, ii. 142, 143; Zachariae, *Zeitsch. des Vereins f. Volksk.* xx. 154 ff.

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¹ Winternitz, *Hochzeitsrituell*, pp. 43 ff.

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² Warde Fowler, *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 267, 268; Frazer, *Balder the Beautiful*, ii. 192; Caland, *Altindisches Zauberritual*, p. 31; Henry, *La magie dans l'Inde antique*, p. 133.

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In many other cases the plan is adopted of the transfer of the evil to some other person or thing. The principle is at work in the case of the scapegoat, of which the classic example is to be found at the final bath of the horse sacrifice. The bride's garment after marriage is hung up on a tree or post, so that the evil influence in it may be disposed of. Similarly the cloth with which she is wiped is given to the guardian of the maiden, who puts it in a cowstall or hangs it up in the wood.³ The Vrātyas at the end of the festival, by which they are admitted to the Brahmanical community, hand their apparel and utensils to other Vrātyas, or an inferior Brahman of Magadha, who bears away the defects inherent in them. A cow which is unfit for a fee is given to an enemy. After a miscarriage the woman is taken to three different huts: she is made to stand on lead and washed, her dark garment is taken off, and the hut burned.⁴ The sufferer from a headache goes out with a turban on and scatters grains: when an attack comes on, he deposits the turban, the winnowing fan which he has used, and a bowstring: apparently the demon is to come out of the head into the turban and to make for the grains, when he will be attacked by the bow.⁵ To avert a bad omen a hook is tied to the foot of a black bird, a cake attached, and it is sent away to hang on to the enemy as the hook hangs to it. Sleeplessness is banished to Trita Āptya or to an enemy. An offering is prescribed, by which it is possible to prevent two enemies transferring to a third person their mutual hatred. For a person who is possessed of an evil spirit various devices are combined: fragrant substances are mixed together and burned, the person concerned stands against the water of a stream, and water is poured over him, an offering is hung up on a bird-frequented tree, in each case to take away the evil.⁶ Fever is banished to the distant people of Gandhāra and the Mūjavants. A ceremony is prescribed by which when a man is thirsty in illness he transfers the thirst to another man.⁷ The disease jaundice is transferred to birds of appropriate hue, like the thrush or parrot. Fever is transferred to a frog by pouring water over the patient and putting a frog under the bed;¹ the connexion of the frog with the disease may be very old. An interesting means of finding out the presence in a house of a demon like a Piçāca is to hang up in the house kindling wood, and the strew for the sacrifice: if they are moved, the presence of the spirit is certain.²

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³ Kauç. lxxvi. 1; lxxix. 24; AV. xiv. 2. 48-50.

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⁴ Kauç. xxxiv. 3.

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⁵ Kauç. xxvi. 2. Cf., however, Henry, *La magie dans l'Inde antique*, pp. 206, 207.

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⁶ Kauç. xxvi. 29 ff.

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⁷ Kauç. xxvii. 9 ff.

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¹ Kauç. xxvi. 18 ff.; xxxii. 17; cf. Hubert and Mauss, *Année sociol.* ii. 92; Bloomfield, *JAOS.* xvii. 173.

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² Kauç. xxv. 34.

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Diseases are specially often the subjects of exorcism in one form or another: a woman suffering from lung disease must be rubbed by a chaste man with balls of fresh lotus leaves, limb by limb, and thereafter the leaves are thrown to the west.³ He who suffers from an inherited disease is deluged with water and a plough is held, apparently a mixture of washing and contact.⁴ Diarrhœa is dealt with by tying a string round a bunch of Muñja grass, and giving the patient to eat earth from a field and from an ant-heap.⁵ Sick cows are made to drink salt water.⁶

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³ ApGS. ix. 10.

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⁴ Kauç. xxvii. 1; Henry, *op. cit.*, p. 204.

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⁵ Bloomfield, *Seven Hymns of AV.*, p. 3.

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⁶ Kauç. xix. 1. Other rites in TA. iv. 36; KhGS. iv. 3. 13.

§ 4. The Attraction of Beneficial Substances and Powers

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The sacrificer must avail himself of the same means to attack his enemies as they use to attack him: if the enemy assail, the skilled priest can send against them the demon Apvā which seems to be the diarrhœa caused by terror, and to symbolize in emphatic fashion the fear produced by panic in battle: this performance is already recorded in the Rigveda.⁷ So also it is perfectly in keeping with the ideas of magic that terror and fear would be conveyed to the enemy by the process of sending a white-footed one, presumably a sheep, against the opposing host.⁸ In such a case Apvā is indeed a dreadful thing, but it is in the control of the priest and therefore useful to him. In other cases he has more direct control: he can use one substance for washing himself, another he can drink or eat, another use as an amulet; with yet another he can rub or anoint himself.⁹ The avoidance of the touch of anything dangerous is one side of a practice, of which the other is the touching of things which are beneficial. The touching of the victim has two sides: it may convey the death to which the victim is being led, but it may also convey—and this is the view which Brahman logic¹⁰ finally adopts—the power and strength of the divine essence. Hence we have an enormous number of rites, the standing on a tiger-skin to obtain royal power, the use of an antelope-skin, the placing of the wife on a bull's hide, the placing of her and of the student upon a stone to attain firmness, the depositing at the fire-piling and other offerings on the place of the fire altar of a piece of earth from an ant-heap, since the ants as finders of waters give richness: the same ants *per contra* are often used to destroy dangerous substances like the remnants of offerings.

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⁷ RV. x. 103. 12; Kauç. xiv. 21.

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⁸ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xvii. 269; Kauç. xiv. 22, 23. Caland, however, thinks that an arrow with white feathers is meant.

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⁹ AV. xix. 45. 5.

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¹⁰ ÇB. iii. 8. 1. 10.

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Various strange messes are prescribed for eating: the least unpleasant may be the mixture of milk, of cow-dung, of bdellion, and salt which is taken at an agricultural offering: the burying of a similar mess could, however, produce equal results.¹ The wife must eat a barley-corn with two beans attached to secure a male² and a strong infant. A peculiarly unpleasant drink, in which the members of a cow form an element, will secure all desires. The common eating of the king and the priest³ and of the bride and bridegroom show that unity of essence was thus produced: it may be conjectured⁴ that the Tānūnaptra ceremony was originally of this kind, though the common eating has disappeared. The idea would then be that he who injured any of those united to him by the common meal would injure himself. The use of anointing is often recorded: an enemy might be injured by anointing sweat on reed arrow-points and offering them.⁵ The king and the sacrificer at the royal consecration and the Sautrāmaṇī were formally anointed and so on. Other means are breathing, as upon the new-born child to give it life, and the putting of substances in the nose to produce offspring.⁶

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¹ Kauç. xx. 25; xix. 9.

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² HGS. ii. 2. 2, 3; AGS. i. 13. 2.

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³ Weber, *Rājasūya*, p. 140; Kauç. xvii; Kauç. xii. 7 has a ceremony of eating in common to procure harmony.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*¹, p. 502, n. 4; cf. below, § 7.

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⁵ Kauç. xlvii. 44.

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⁶ ÇGS. i. 24. 2.

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The eyes should not see many things, such as the taboos imposed on the Snātaka and his teacher, but, on the other hand, the eye may have purifying influence, and hence with the eye of Mitra the guest may look on what is given to him.⁷ But the glance of a snake is deadly,⁸ and so may the glance of the bride be: therefore her husband places salve on her eyes to secure his safety.⁹

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⁷ VS. v. 34.

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⁸ AB. vi. 1; KB. xxix. 1.

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⁹ RV. x. 85. 44; ÇGS. i. 16. 5. On the evil eye see Caland, *Zauberritual*, p. 79, n. 27.

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In a number of interesting cases effective results are produced by using in the rite things connected with the object to be attained. Thus for a prince in exile it is well in the rite to use, for the kindling wood to cook a magic drink, wood from a stump of a tree which has grown again, or to place on the fire altar earth from his old realm. To defeat the ants when troublesome the use of a ladle of Bādhaka wood is valuable, as Bādhaka means ‘repelling’. If victory in battle is the object, earth which a boar has torn up may be placed on the altar, and thus give the rite the strength of the boar.

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In other cases burying things produces good results, as in the burying above referred to of a curious mixture for the prosperity of the herds: so too the burying of hair and other objects such as nails. On the other hand, it is necessary to provide rites to dig up objects, such as one’s own hair and nails, which an enemy has buried: a special ceremony for this is mentioned in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā.¹⁰

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¹⁰ v. 2. 11; ÇB. iii. 5. 4.

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For the purpose of protection the use of amulets is very common indeed: it is not indeed quite clear exactly what idea was conceived to be embodied in the use of these amulets. In the opinion of Oldenberg,¹ the view taken of the amulet was, in the first instance, that there was in it a spirit which took its abode therein, but in the period of the Vedic belief the view had been altered by a process of development, so that the effect of the amulet is produced by a substance resident therein.² It is, however, a little difficult to accept this view of the development of ideas. The view that the first element is spirit, and that the belief in the utility of the amulet is due to the view that a spirit is living in it, is unnecessarily refined: the fact, admitted by Oldenberg, that the amulet is not rarely addressed and treated as having an actual spirit in it, is most naturally of all explained by the fact of animatism: the amulet is conceived to be a living substance: only by a natural development of thought is there any element of a non-spiritual substance found. Animism in the strict sense of the word, therefore, need hardly come into operation, in so far as it postulates the belief in a mere detachable spirit.

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¹ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 512, 513. Cf. AV. x. 6. 5 for a clear case of the amulet as living. Henry (*La magie dans l'Inde antique*, pp. 89–92) suggests that the *srāktya* amulet owes its name to its form, which was like that of the Semitic ‘seal of Solomon’ amulet and was borrowed from Semites, but this is needless; cf. AV. ii. 11; viii. 5; Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. 675. For comparison of Teutonic use of amulets see SBE. xlii. 409.

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² Cf. ERE. ii. 392 ff.; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 22 f.

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The potency of nakedness as a magic rite is seldom mentioned save for rain spells: the Kauçika³, however, tells how to expiate a day of ill omen by sitting naked and rubbing the forehead, and in its collection of spells for inducing slumber in women it prescribes nakedness in the performer of a rite, consisting in the besprinkling of the place where she is from a vessel full of water and the remains of an offering.

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³ xxxviii. 4 and xxxvi. According to Henry (*op. cit.*, p. 109) nudity has this value because it brings man back to his primitive dress; cf. Zachariae, *Kl. Sch.*, pp. 238 f.; Samter, *Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod*, pp. 112 ff.; Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, p. 188. For nudity in rain ritual cf. Mitra, JRAS. 1897, pp. 471–84; Frazer, *Golden Bough*³, i. 283 ff.

§ 5. Mimetic Magic

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In one special class of cases the effect which it is desired by magic means to produce in nature is brought about by the simple plan of representing in sensible form, within the means available to man, the operations which it is desired should take place. Thus when an enemy is to be defeated⁴ it is useful to break in two a piece of grass which is thrown towards the opposing host: the breaking of the grass symbolizes the breaking in two of the armed foemen. Or the rite can be made more effective in quite a simple way: as a daughter-in-law by an old taboo is expected to shrink away from her father-in-law, so by taking the hostile enemy as the daughter-in-law, and by addressing to it the remark that the father-in-law is looking at it, the hostile army will then break up in utter confusion.¹ More elaborate instances of the same thing are of course the ceremonies of the Mahāvrata where the water thrown on the fire produces rain, and the winning of the white round skin which represents the sun is a spell representing the recovery of the sun from the hostile powers affecting it. In the royal consecration the victory of the king over his rival is graphically depicted in mimic form: his success in dicing² is a picture of his success in the position of king on earth. The fertility of the earth and of the crops is produced by the mimicry of sexual relationships at the Soma sacrifice, at the horse sacrifice, and by the actual performance of ritual intercourse at the Mahāvrata offering. At the Vājapeya the chariot race is a magic performance to secure the pre-eminence of the sacrificer, just as in the rite he is made to be the victor in the race in question.³ The Sautrāmaṇī offering is a clear imitation of the story of the healing of Indra from his intoxication with Soma after the slaying of the demon Namuci:⁴ it is used to secure the sacrificer the success for which he is anxious in whatever sphere of life he may live. This sort of magic is particularly common in rain magic:⁵ herbs are often dipped in water, black garments assumed, black victims offered. One rite is of interest: the heads of a dog and a ram, hairs, and old shoes are fastened to the end of a bamboo, and passes are made in the air as if in combat with a demon: the animals may be intended to aid in the breaking open of the sky, just as at the Mahāvrata the shooting of arrows through, but not so as to penetrate, a skin, is presumably intended to let the waters of the skies flow down on the earth.

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⁴ Kauç. lvi. 10; xiv. 19–22 gives other devices, noted above.

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¹ AB. iii. 22. 7; Liebich, VOJ. xxvii. 474-7.

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² ĀpÇS. v. 19. 2 ff.; 20. 1 ff.; Weber, *Rājasūya*, pp. 69 ff.

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³ Weber, *Vājapeya*, pp. 27 ff.

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⁴ Oldenberg, GN. 1893, pp. 342 ff.

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⁵ For these rites cf. Henry, *La magie dans l’Inde antique*, p. 110; Caland, *Altindisches Zauberritual*, p. 141.

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The death of a man can be, as in all lands, compassed thus in many ways: an image of him may be made of wax and melted or it may be pierced to the heart, or again his shadow, which is in some degree the man, may be likewise treated: again a chameleon may be killed and formally burned in mimicry of the rite of the burning of the dead man.⁶ The footmark of a maiden can be used as a means of winning her love:⁷ the footmark of a beleaguered king is scattered to the winds.⁸ Worms are generally to be banished by the crushing and the burning of twenty-one selected Uçīra worms.⁹ The running away of a slave or some other persons may be prevented by the idiotic rite of pouring round the person affected the urine of the performer from the horn of a living animal, a symbol of strength: the urine represents the person to whom the slave belongs, and thus the person in living presence is in the vicinity and prevents the slave from running away.¹⁰ The destruction of misfortune of any kind often takes the shape of the burning or throwing away in water of old things such as garments, sunshades or shoes.¹ To destroy the borer insect which is damaging crops, one of the species is buried, head downwards, the mouth closed with thread, to prevent further depredations.² When the Soma is being pressed, he who desires to destroy a foe should think of him as he pounds with the pressing stone: the pounding will directly affect the foe. More amusing is the device to be adopted to secure the transfer of a stream from one course to another: the new bed desired is watered, plants like the Avakā are put along it, and a frog is also put there. The stream will therefore follow the path thus laid down.³ The same principle is at work in the rule by which objects to be attained are often expressed in a speech as so won. Thus when the wife is given an offering to look at in the ceremony of the parting of the hair and is asked, 'What dost thou say?' she replies, 'Offspring.' Similarly in the rite to attain male offspring her answer as to what she drinks, in the magic drink given to her, is the producing of a son. The husband and wife on the fifth day after the wedding ask a young Brahman what he sees, to which he replies, 'Sons and cattle.'⁴ So in the rite of the animal offering the question, 'Is it ready?' has always the answer that it is; in the plough festival⁵ the question of the wife whether the ploughing has been accomplished receives an affirmative reply; and such cases are to be found in every important rite. A mode of divination can be made a mode of conveying good fortune in this way: thus a merchant, going on a journey, places balls of dung on the limbs of a friendly Brahman and asks what sort of day it is, to which the latter replies that it is good and lucky.⁶

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⁶ Kauç. xlvii. 54 ff.; 39 ff.; Caland, *op. cit.*, pp. 164, 166.

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⁷ SVB. ii. 6. 8; Caland, *op. cit.*, p. 163.

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⁸ MS. ii. 2. 1; cf. Caland, *l. c.*

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⁹ Kauç. xxix. 24.

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¹⁰ HGS. i. 14; PGS. iii. 7.

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¹ Kauç. xviii. 9 ff.; cf. Henry, *op. cit.*, p. 163.

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² Kauç. xi. 19; AV. vi. 50. 1.

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³ Kauç. xl. 1-9; Henry, *op. cit.*, p. 101 Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xvii. 243.

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⁴ GGS. ii. 7. 10; AGS. i. 13. 3; Winternitz, *Hochzeitsrituell*, p. 101.

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⁵ Kauç. xx. 16 ff.

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⁶ Kauç. l. 15; Henry, *op. cit.*, p. 70; Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. 532 ff.

§ 6. Divination and Ordeal

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The principle of divination is in large measure directly due to the doctrine of mimetic magic:⁷ if the use of a representation of things can produce them, it is also legitimate, if less easy, to deduce the future of events from the behaviour of things, which are supposed to be an imitation of the events. This, however, is no doubt not the whole ground of the belief in the power to read the future, and, moreover, the fact that the future was uncertain must have induced many people to resort to the gods for aid in unravelling it. In these cases the performances are indeed much the same as in an ordinary species of divination, but the belief is different: it is the view that the future is revealed by the god, through the means employed: magic here is supplemented as often by religious conceptions.

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⁷ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 484, 507 ff.; Henry, *op. cit.*, pp. 59-62. Divination from the entrails of the victim, which is specially Babylonian (Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 248, 249), is not Vedic. For Babylon, cf. Meyer, *Gesch. d. Alt.*³ I. ii. pp. 585-7; for Greece, W. R. Halliday, *Greek Divination* (1913).

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The use of means is very varied: the fire of the sacrifice and the victim at the sacrifice are specially suited to give knowledge by their magic connexion with the gods as well as religious conceptions: more clearly connected with the activity of divine powers in Vedic belief is the drawing of omens from the flight and the movements of animals, which are specially clearly connected with birds or beasts, with gods or spirits of the dead or demons. When a ceremony is performed to win for a maiden a husband, the side from which crows first appear is that from which her wooer will come.¹ The movement of the cow at a particular moment in the Soma sacrifice shows the fortune of the sacrificer.² The clear flaming of the fire at a sacrifice brings with it the prospect of twelve villages for the sacrificer; if it smokes, of at least three.³ More interesting is the rule that, when the body of the dead is being burned, the soul will go to the heaven, atmosphere, or the earth according as the eastern, western, or southern fire first reaches it.⁴ The owl is invoked to fly round the village and give signs for the future: it is a bird which flies to the dwellings of the gods, and the Rigveda already knows birds of omen.⁵ The hyena's howl is uttered either of its own will, or on the prompting of other powers.⁶ The battle's result can be judged by the lighting of a special fire on a suitable place and observing the movements of the fire, or it can be forecasted by taking three bowstrings, and placing them on a fire: the movements of the three, of which the middle one is treated as death, will show the event: that which keeps clear from it will represent the victorious army, that which comes into contact with it the army which is to be ruined.⁷ The character of the bride can be judged by the choice by her of balls of earth chosen from very various places:⁸ the sex of the future child by the fact whether the member of the body of the prospective mother which a Brahman boy touches has a masculine or feminine name.⁹

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¹ Kauç. xxxiv. 24.

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² ÇB. iv. 5. 8. 11.

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³ GGS. iv. 8. 15.

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⁴ AGS. iv. 4. 2 ff.

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⁵ HGS. i. 17. 3; RV. ii. 42 and 43.

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⁶ HGS. i. 17. 1.

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⁷ Kauç. xiv. 31; xv. 15.

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⁸ GGS. ii. 1. 3 ff.

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⁹ Kauç. xxxiii. 19. For other modes see Henry, *op. cit.*, p. 67.

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The meanings of dreams is an interesting part of Vedic magic and is dealt with in various passages, including an Atharvan Pariçiṣṭa. The Rigveda ¹⁰ already regards as ominous the making of a garland or neckband in a dream. Ten dreams which forebode death are recorded in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka:¹¹ when one sees in a dream a black man with black teeth who kills him, when a boar kills him, when a wild cat springs on him, when one eats and then spits out gold, when one eats honey and lotus roots, when one goes to a village with asses or boars, or when one drives south a black cow with a black calf, wearing a garland of nard. If one has a dream, one should, as we have seen, wash one’s mouth. The view is also held that certain stars are unlucky, especially Mūla.¹ Moreover, many sights forebode evil: the sun seeming as the moon, the heaven red like madder, when one’s shadow appears upside down in a mirror or water, or when one’s head smells like a crow’s nest.² Evil is further portended by meteors and lightning. Of ominous birds the main classes are those which are black or whose appearance or utterance is horrible: the pigeon, the owl, the vulture, the Dīrghamukhī, &c., but the bird is also called generally the mouth of Dissolution. Birds,³ too, are said to go about in the semblance of the Fathers, other animals are seldom mentioned in this regard; the fact that a horse on several occasions is used to forecast prosperity, or other results, is rather due to its connexion with the offering than to its intrinsic nature as ominous, though fortune in popular superstition can be inferred from the neighing of a horse.⁴ Other prodigies are the appearance of an ant-heap in the house, the making of honey there by the bees, the scream of a jackal, the drinking of one cow from another, the cows giving blood for milk, and so on.⁵

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¹⁰ viii. 47. 15; Oldenberg's note to x. 164.

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¹¹ iii. 2. 4. For an evil dream one should turn over on the other side, saying AV. vii. 100, and for expiating the dream of eating in sleep should say AV. vii. 101 (cf. Caland, *Altindisches Zauberritual*, p. 151; Pischel, *Album-Kern*, pp. 115 ff.); Kauç. xlvi. See also J. von Negelein, *Der Traumschlüssel des Jagaddeva* (1912), p. 378.

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¹ Kauç. xlvi. 25 ff. Cf. Bloomfield, *Atharvaveda*, pp. 83, 85.

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² AA. iii. 2. 4; cf. LÇS. iii. 3. 6 ff.; ApÇS. ix. 20. 10. The sight of the dead presages death to the seer; JUB. iii. 29.

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³ AB. ii. 15. 4; BDS. ii. 8. 14. 9, 10.

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⁴ Grimm, *Deutsche Myth.*⁴ iii. 442.

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⁵ ÇGS. v. 11. 10; HGS. i. 16. 19; 17. 6; Kauç. cxii.

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The existence of men skilled in the interpretation of omens is natural and is also recorded, as for instance in the case of the men who could tell the marks which led to luck or otherwise in the choice of a wife. We hear also of a prophet who made his prophecies on the basis of the smoke of dung, the Çakadhūma of the Atharvaveda, whose business it was, it is clear, to forecast the weather.⁶ We learn also of men who by the means of plants such as the Sadampuṣpā⁷ were able to behold sorcerers male and female, whether they went in the sky or on the earth: the same idea of the power of socerers to assume various forms is found in the Rigveda⁸ where it asks for the destruction of the demons, who in form of birds fly about the village at night. Necromancy, however, is not apparently known,⁹ nor the inspection, on a system, of the entrails of the victims, in order to read the future.

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⁶ Bloomfield, *Atharvaveda*, p. 81; Henry, *op. cit.*, pp. 68 ff.

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⁷ Kauç. xxviii. 7; AV. iv. 20.

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⁸ vii. 104. 18.

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⁹ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 569, n. 2.

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The ordeal is nothing more than a form of divination in one of its aspects: the idea in it is not that the deity would actually punish an accused person so much as that it should by its treatment of him show whether or not he is innocent of the charge made against him. But the analogy of the ordeal to the oath in which the swearer invokes a penalty on himself, if he is telling untruth, shows that the separation of the ideas of punishment and discrimination cannot be assumed to have been present to the Vedic mind:¹⁰ the form of ordeals recorded for early Vedic times shows the prevalence of punishment at the same time as the test of fact: the Rigveda has not any certain example of the ordeal: the only Brāhmaṇa cases are those in which Vatsa asserts his purity of Brahmanical origin by walking through the fire without harm affecting him,¹ Triçoka's assertion of superior Vedic knowledge by a fire ordeal and the successful crossing of a stream, and the glowing axe which is brought up for the purpose of testing the accused thief.² The fire as a sentient power by failing to burn or by burning shows innocence or guilt: but it punishes at the same time, and this is roughly speaking true of some of even the later ordeals, such as the poison and water ordeals.³ A procedure to prevent the burning of the hand in the ordeal of plunging the hand into boiling oil to extract a piece of gold is prescribed in the Kauçika.⁴

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¹⁰ *Ibid.*, p. 508; Jolly, ZDMG. xliv. 346; Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 364, 365, 392; Glotz, *L’ordalie* (1904);

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¹ PB. xiv. 6. 8; JB. iii. 233 ff. Keith, *ERE. s. v.* Ordeal; Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, p. 256.

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² CU. vi. 16. Cf. the use of fires to discriminate after death, ÇB. i. 9. 3. 2; below, Chap. 28, § 10.

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³ As weighing ordeal, without punishment directly, is hinted at in ÇB. xi. 2. 7. 33, where a man's fate after death is determined by weighing his good and evil deeds.

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⁴ lii. 8, 9; Henry, *La magie dans l'Inde antique*, p. 100.

§ 7. The Magic Spell

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The power of the word is very marked in all systems of magic and naturally not least in India. The magic spell is sometimes in prose, in the style of the formulae used by the Adhvaryus at the sacrifice, more often in verse, sometimes newly made for the purpose, sometimes, and indeed very often, chosen without any appropriateness from the vast body of existing sacred literature. Of this latter tendency two examples may be given: the number available is legion. The finest hymn to Varuṇa in the Vedic literature is found in the Atharvaveda where it has been preserved in a charm.⁵ The great hymn of the Rigveda, which celebrates the god Prajāpati in the form of questions, has the second verse used in a spell for preventing the miscarriage of a cow, doubtless for no better reason than that the idiotic system on which names of authors were assigned to every hymn of the collection resulted in postulating an author Hiraṇyagarbha, 'he of the golden womb', really an epithet of the supreme god, and the fact that the deity was Prajāpati.⁶

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⁵ iv. 16. It is not clear if the spell is against an enemy who curses or is cursed: *çapyantam* may (*pace* Caland on Kauç. xlviii. 7) be an irregularity (cf. *badhya*, BD. v. 134; vi. 14). See Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xviii. 66; Henry, *op. cit.*, pp. 235-9.

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⁶ Kauç. xliv. 5; RV. x. 121. 2.

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Of the spell one characteristic is the regularity with which many gods are invoked: it is absurd to suppose that in these enumerations there was normally any sense of the different deities invoked: all that was desired was to strengthen the spell by the utterance of as many names of deities as possible: in some cases the mention of individuals is dropped and merely the numbers are given, 99 or 88 or 77 and so on: the fondness for such numbers is a feature of many forms of magic.¹ Analogous to this feature is the fact that when anything is to be dealt with every conceivable place where it may be is enumerated: a disease is banished, not merely from the place where it is paining the person afflicted, but from all his members. On the other hand, where possible the exact name and origin of the thing dealt with must be given: if one can name father and mother so much the better: the drum² is described as coming from the lord of the forest and strung by the cows. Sometimes names of, to us, inexplicable and perhaps esoteric character are given, such as *hrūḍu* applied in the Atharvaveda³ to fever, in accordance with the well-known rule that in magic a mysterious name is the most potent of all.⁴

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¹ AV. xix. 47. 3 ff.; vi. 25; Kuhn, *KZ.* xiii. 128 ff. For the motive of such invocations see Henry, *op. cit.*, pp. 12, 19.

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² AV. v. 20. 1 ff. Cf. Babylonian parallels in Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 296–9.

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³ i. 25. 4. Henry’s guess (*op. cit.*, p. 184) of a Semitic source of this word is as impossible as Halévy’s derivation from Greek.

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⁴ Legge, *Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity*, ii. 33.

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A second characteristic of the spells is the stress laid on the recital of comparisons which have magic effect in producing the results desired. The kidneys are made to settle themselves firmly by comparison with the mountains which abide for ever, or the bird which is at rest in its nest, or the cows which have come back to the stall.⁵ The amulet is made effective by the fact that it was the one bound by the Dākṣāyaṇas on Çatānīka.⁶ The dying round the Brahman, which is prescribed in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa⁷ as the spell *par excellence* of the Purohita against the foes of his master, is accompanied by comparison with the mode in which the constellations appear and set again. The birth of the embryo is encouraged by the comparison with the wind which moves the lotus pond on all sides,⁸ and so on indefinitely. The use of the word ‘grow’ is necessary when the Arundhatī plant is addressed in order to heal a broken bone: ‘below’, ‘away’, are used when a disease is expelled: if one practises witchcraft, one should use the word ‘broken’ when offering a cup: in bringing about harmony the word ‘in unison’ is of value. The importance of the name has already been mentioned: it results in the giving to each child of a secret name. Nor is there missing the rite by which a formula is repeated backwards: if the offering priest is interrupted by the servants of the sacrificer, he should repeat backwards the Daçahotṛ formula, and thus bring the sacrifice to ruin.⁹ The use of harsh words like *phaṭ*, &c., is mentioned possibly even as early as the Rigveda.¹⁰

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