Folklore of Wells: Being a Study of Water-Worship in East and WestMasani, Rustom Pestonji
Religion
Folklore of Wells: Being a Study of Water-Worship in East and West
Masani, Rustom Pestonji
Holy wells; Water -- Folklore; Water -- Religious aspects
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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