Meanwhile, the Brahman priest requested a pitcher of water and an empty bowl. Furnished with these by Doorah, Bhawanee's sister, he sat himself down in the middle of the room and began to transfer the water from the jar into the empty bowl, drop by drop, repeating over each drop the "Gayatree," the holiest text of the Vèdas, the most sacred and effacious prayer of the Brahmans, and thought by them to be absolutely necessary to salvation, while the soothsayer sat apart waiting his turn to perform certain magical enchantments for the benefit of the poor sick man. The latter opened his eyes once more and looked at his Guru,[29] or priest, and said solemnly, "I am dying." "Dying? you are not dying," said the doctor. "I will soon make you well," whereupon he opened a bag and drew out of it some pieces of iron, which he placed on a charcoal fire. While these were being heated he took out various roots and dried herbs and began to rub them on a small stone, occasionally moistening the stone with a little water. Having compounded several queer, dark-looking doses, he, to my utter astonishment, deliberately began pinching, thumping, and slapping poor Govind--now on his back, anon on the soles of his feet. His sides, palms, shoulders, elbows, knee-joints were all slapped and beaten. This done, he branded with the hot pieces of iron the poor patient on the pit of his stomach, the inside of his arms, and the calves of his legs; then administered his queer-looking doses, which the unhappy-looking Govind swallowed without a sign of remonstrance; and, finally covering him from head to foot with a thick quilt, the Hindoo physician beckoned to the soothsayer to complete the cure. The soothsayer robed himself in a dress covered with strange designs of men exorcising fiends, put on a cap to which was attached two or three long cords, at the end of which hung little brooms made of kusah-grass (a grass sacred to the Hindoo gods). He then took up the pan of burning coals and scattered them over the quilt which covered the patient; these he brushed off as rapidly as possible with the sacred brooms hanging from his cap. This was to dispossess the sick man of some extraordinary but invisible devil, which he then drove out at the door, running after the spirit and howling terrific invectives on it for having dared to enter the "divine precincts occupied by the _liver_ of a Brahman." All this while the Guru, or priest, prayed, chanting in a monotonous tone, over each drop of water that passed from the pitcher to the bowl, and each of which was supposed to carry off with it the cholera of the sick man. Strange to say, violent and absurd as were the remedies administered to poor Govind, he not only bore them patiently, but seemed better; a profuse perspiration having broken out upon him, it was looked upon as a most hopeful sign and an especial interposition of Brahm.