(Mongolia.) “When famous lamas die and their bodies are burnt, little white pills are reported as found among the ashes, and sold for large sums to the devout, as being the concentrated virtue of the man and possessing the power of insuring a happy future for him who swallows one near death. This is quite common. I heard of one man who improved on this by giving out that these little pills were in the habit of coming out through the skin of various parts of the body. These pills, called Sharil, met with a ready sale, and then the man himself reaped the reward of his virtue and did not allow all the profit to go to his heir.”—(“Among the Mongols,” Rev. James Gilmour, London, 1883, p. 231.) This writer says that these sacred pills are white; another one, already noted, describes them as black, while those obtained by the author from Mr. W. W. Rockhill are red. Vambéry instances one of the holy men of the Turkomans who, after reciting a number of sacred verses, “used to place before him a cup of water into which he spat at the end of each poem, and this composition ... was sold to the best bidder as a wonder-working medicine.”—(“Travels in Central Asia,” New York, 1865, p. 272.) Such use of the excrement of ecclesiastical dignitaries was indicated in Oriental literature. In the “Arabian Nights” King Afrida says to the Emirs, among other things, “‘And I purpose this night to sacre you all with the Holy Incense.’ When the Emirs heard these words, they kissed the ground before him. Now the incense which he designated was the excrement of the Chief Patriarch, the denier, the defiler of the truth, and they sought for it with such instance, and they so highly valued it, that the high-priests of the Greeks used to send it to all the countries of the Christians in silken wraps, after mixing it with musk and ambergris; hearing of it, kings would pay a thousand gold pieces for every dram, and they sent for and sought it to fumigate brides withal; and the Chief Priests and the Great Kings were wont to use a little of it as a Collyrium for the eyes, and as a remedy in sickness and colic; and the Patriarchs used to mix their own skite (excrement) with it, for that the skite of the Chief Patriarch would not suffice for ten countries.”—(Burton’s edition, vol. ii. pp. 222, 223). In Burton’s Index this is called “Holy Merde.” Burton also says, “The idea of the Holy Merde might have been suggested by the Hindus; see Mandeville, of the archiprotopapaton (prelate) carrying ox-dung and cow-urine to the king, who therewith anoints his face and breast, etc. And, incredible to relate, this is still practised by the Parsis, one of the most progressive and sharpest-witted of the Asiatic races.”—(Idem.) Rochefoucauld tells us that we ascribe to others the faults of which we ourselves would be guilty, had we the opportunity. The Arabians no doubt were fully acquainted with just such customs; possibly, the Greeks also.