Ceremonies to Avert Blight, etc.
There are various ceremonies intended to save certain crops from the ravages of blight and insects. Blight is very generally attributed to the constant measurement of the soil which goes on during settlement operations, to the irreligious custom of eating beef, or to adultery, or to a demon of the east wind, who can be appeased with prayers and ceremonies.32 No pious Hindu, if the seed fails, will re-sow his winter crop.
When sugar-cane germinates, the owner of the crop does worship on the next Saturday before noon. On one of the days of the Naurâtrî in the month of Kuâr the cultivator himself, or through his family priest, burns a fire sacrifice in the field and offers prayers. In the month of Kârttik he has a special ceremony to avert a particularly dangerous grub, known as the Sûndi. For this purpose he takes from his house butter, cakes, sweets, and five or six lumps of dough pressed into the shape of a pear, with some clean water. He goes to the field, offers a fire sacrifice, and presents some of the cakes to the field spirit. He then buries one of the lumps of dough at each corner of his field, and, having eaten the rest of the cakes, goes home happy.33
When field-mice do injury to the crop the owner goes to a Syâna, or cunning man, who writes a charm, the letters of which he dissolves in water and scatters it over the plants. The ancient Greek farmer was recommended to proceed as follows: “Take a sheet of paper and write on it these words, ‘Ye mice here present, I adjure ye that ye injure me not, neither suffer another mouse to injure me. I give you yonder field (specifying the field), but if ever I catch you here again, by the help of the Mother of the gods, I will rend you in seven pieces.’ Write this and stick the paper on an unhewn stone in the field where the mice are, taking care to keep the written side uppermost.”34
General Sleeman gives a case of a cowherd who saw in a vision that the water of the Biyâs river should be taken up in pitchers and conveyed to the fields attacked with blight, but that none of it should be allowed to fall on the ground in the way. On reaching the field a small hole should be made in the bottom of the pitcher so as to keep up a small but steady stream, as the bearer carried it round the border of the field, so that the water might fall in a complete ring except at a small opening which was to be kept dry, so that the demon of the blight could make his escape through it. Crowds of people came to fetch the water, which was not supposed to have any particular virtue except that arising from this revelation.35