Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 6 of 7Thurston, Edgar
History
Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 6 of 7
Thurston, Edgar
Caste -- India, South; Ethnology -- India, South; India, South -- Social life and customs; Tribes -- India, South
A pig and a goat are killed outside the
village to Kitung. The blood must flow on the stone. Then liquor and
grain are set forth, and a feast is made. About Kolakotta the belief
in the active malevolence of Kulbas is more noticeable than in other
parts, where deities cause nearly all mischief. Sickness and death are
caused by deities or Kulbas, and it is the Kudang who ascertains which
particular spirit is in possession of, or has hold of any sick person,
and informs him what is to be done in order to drive it away. He
divines in this way usually. He places a small earthen saucer, with
a little oil and lighted wick in it, in the patient's hand. With his
left hand he holds the patient's wrist, and with his right drops from
a leaf cup grains of rice on to the flame. As each grain drops, he
calls out the name of different deities, and Kulbas, and, whichever
spirit is being named as a grain catches fire, is that causing the
sickness. The Kudang is at once in communication with the deity or
Kulba, who informs him what must be done for him, what sacrifice made
before he will go away. There is, in some parts of the Saora country,
another method by which a Kudang divines the cause of sickness. He
holds the patient's hand for a quarter of an hour or so, and goes
off in a trance, in which the deity or Kulba causing the sickness
communicates with the Kudang, and says what must be done to appease
him. The Kudang is generally, if not always, fasting when engaged in
divination. If a deity or Kulba refuses to go away from a sick person,
another more powerful deity or Kulba can be induced to turn him out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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