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The work presents a systematic ethnographic survey of northern Indian popular religion and folk-lore, recording beliefs, rituals, and everyday preventative practices. It examines the evil eye and its remedies, tree and serpent cults, totemic and fetish practices, animal worship, witchcraft and black art, and seasonal rural festivals, drawing on local testimony and observed customs. The account describes naming taboos, protective marks and charms, sacrificial and ceremonial forms, and the social logic that underpins ritual responses to misfortune. Chapters conclude with bibliographic references and an index to aid further study.
The funeral feast is evidently a survival of the feast when the dead kinsman was consumed by his relatives, who wished thus to partake of the properties of the dead. By another theory the feasting of the mourners is intended to resist the attempt of the ghost of the dead man to enter their bodies, food being offensive to spirits.