This last custom is an example of an entirely different mode of procuring rain, to which people sometimes have recourse in extreme cases, when the drought is long and their temper short. At such times they will drop the usual hocus-pocus of imitative magic altogether, and being far too angry to waste their breath in prayer they seek by threats and curses or even downright physical force to extort the waters of heaven from the supernatural being who has, so to say, cut them off at the main. Thus, in Muzaffarnagar, a town of the Punjaub, when the rains are excessive, the people draw a figure of a certain Muni or Rishi Agastya on a loin-cloth and put it out in the rain, or they paint his figure on the outside of the house and let the rain wash it off. This Muni or Rishi Agastya is a great personage in the native folklore, and enjoys the reputation of being able to stop the rain. It is supposed that he will exercise his power as soon as he is thus made to feel in effigy the misery of wet weather.​[1019] On the other hand, when rain is wanted at Chhatarpur, a native state in Bundelcund, they paint two figures with their legs up and their heads down on a wall that faces east; one of the figures represents Indra, the other Megha Raja, the lord of rain. They think that in this uncomfortable position these powerful beings will soon be glad to send {p297} the much-needed showers.​[1020] In a Japanese village, when the guardian divinity had long been deaf to the peasants’ prayers for rain, they at last threw down his image and, with curses loud and long, hurled it head foremost into a stinking rice-field. “There,” they said, “you may stay yourself for a while, to see how _you_ will feel after a few days’ scorching in this broiling sun that is burning the life from our cracking fields.”​[1021] In the like circumstances the Feloupes of Senegambia cast down their fetishes and drag them about the fields, cursing them till rain falls.​[1022] In Okunomura, a Japanese village not far from Tokio, when rain is wanted, an artificial dragon is made out of straw, reeds, bamboos, and magnolia leaves. Preceded by a Shinto priest, attended by men carrying paper flags, and followed by others beating a big drum, the dragon is carried in procession from the Buddhist temple and finally thrown into a waterfall.​[1023] When the spirits withhold rain or sunshine, the Comanches whip a slave; if the gods prove obstinate, the victim is almost flayed alive.​[1024] [Sidenote: Chinese modes of compelling the gods to give rain. Siamese modes of constraining the gods to give rain.]