CHAPTER XI.

MALEFICENT WATER-GOBLINS.

So far we have met beneficent spirits of the divine sea and blessed springs and wells. Let us not forget that there are also maleficent deities and mischievous water-goblins infesting ill-omened streams and wells. In India where the lives and fortunes of cattle and people alike hang on the precarious seasonal rainfall, the water-spirits are as a rule regarded as friendly dispensers of life and fertility. Even the sea-gods are on the whole beneficent beings. The _Darya-Pirs_ of the Luvanas (merchants) and Kharvas (sailors) are devoid of mischief and are regarded as patron saints. Elsewhere, however, the perils of the deep and rapid rivers and treacherous pools gave the water-spirits a bad name and their fury emphasized the need for propitiating them with sacrifices. Thus it comes to pass that western folklore abounds in blood-thirsty water-demons who are very often conceived as hideous serpents or dragons. But, as we have already noticed, people of India also have their mischievous water-sprites, the _Mâtâs_ and _Shankhinies_ who haunt wayside wells and either drown or enterthe persons of those who go near their wells. These ghosts and goblins—_bhuts_ and _prets_—are known as _Jalachar_, _i.e._, living in water, as contrasted with _Bhuchar_, those hovering on the earth. One has to propitiate these malignant deities and spirits.

It is believed that most of the demons haunting wells and tanks are the spirits of those who have met death by drowning. There are also the spirits of those who die of accidents before the fulfilment of their worldly desires or the souls of the deceased who do not receive the funeral _pindas_ with the proper obsequies. These fallen souls in their _avagati_ or degraded condition reside near the scene of their death and molest those who approach the water. There is a _vav_ called _Nilkanth vav_ near Movaiya, in which a _Pinjari_ (a female cotton carder) is said to have been drowned and to have been turned into a ghost, in which form she occasionally presents herself to the people.

Another _vav_ in Vadhwan is haunted by a ghost called Mahda, who drowns one human being every third year as a victim. But a male spirit, named Kshetrapal, resides in the _kotta_ (or entrance) of the _vav_, and saves those who fall near the entrance. Those who fall in any other part are, however, sure to be drowned.

There is in Mirzapur a famous water-hole, known as Barewa. A herdsman was once grazing his buffaloes near the place, when the waters rose in fury and carried him off with his cattle. The drowned buffaloes have now taken the form of a dangerous demon known as _Bhainsasura_, or the buffalo-demon, and he lives there in company with the Naga and the Nagin and none dare fish there until he has propitiated these demons with the offerings of a fowl, eggs and goat.

Until recently the Bengalis believed that a water-spirit in the form of an old hag called _Jaté Buddi_ haunted tanks and ponds and fettered with an invisible chain the feet of persons who approached her territories. Even to this day the name of this witch is taken to frighten naughty children. Another Bengal spirit, called _Jakh_, was believed to reside in tanks and to guard hidden treasure. Woe to the man who threw covetous eyes on that treasure! The Sion Indians believe in a water-demon called Unk-tahe who, like the Siamese spirit Pnuk, drags underneath the water those who go to bathe in it.[39]

Corresponding to these haunted wells are the water holes in Scotland, known as the “cups of the fairies,” and the Trinity Well in Ireland into which no one can gaze with impunity, and from which the river Bayne once burst forth in pursuit of a lady who had insulted it.

In Indian folklore this wicked class of water-nymphs is known as Apsarás. The village of Mith-Báv in Ratnagiri is a well-known resort of these nymphs and the villagers relate many a thrilling story of persons drowned and carried off by them in the river. Another favourite habitat of these water-spirits is a tank in the village of Hindalem in the same district. Every reservoir of water in Thana is believed to be a habitat of water-nymphs. Some, however, believe that they dwell only in those lakes in which lotuses grow. The images of seven _apsarás_ are particularly worshipped by the people, _viz._, Machhi, Kurmi, Karkati, Darduri, Jatupi, Somapa and Makari.

Greek folklore represents these nymphs as tall and slim, clad in white, with flowing golden hair, and divinely beautiful, so much so that the highest compliment that can be paid to a Greek maiden is to compare her in loveliness to a Neraida. Such beauty, however, is fatal to the beholder and many a story is related of people who having exposed themselves to its fascination were bereft of speech or suffered otherwise. A single illustration will suffice. In the island of Chios is a bridge called the Maid’s Bridge, which is popularly believed to be haunted by a water-spirit. Early one morning a man was crossing the bridge on his way from the village of Daphnona to the capital city, when he met a tall young woman dressed in white. She took him by the hand and made him dance with her. He was foolish enough to speak and was immediately struck dumb. He recovered, however, some days after, thanks to the prayers and exorcisms of a priest.

So too the sirens frequent an island near the coast of Italy and entice seamen by the sweetness of their song which is so bewitching that the listeners forget everything and die of hunger. In Homeric mythology there were only two sirens, later writers named three, and the number has since been augmented by those who loved “lords many and gods many.”

Plato says there are three kinds of sirens—the celestial, the generative and the cathartic. The first are under the government of Jupiter, the second under the government of Neptune, and the third under the government of Pluto. When the soul is in heaven, the sirens seek, by harmonic motion, to unite it to the divine life of the celestial host; and when in Hades, to conform them to the infernal regimen, but on earth they produce generation, of which the sea is emblematic.

We may tarry a little here to greet a beneficent class of sea-nymphs. These are the Nereids, fifty in number, named after Nereid, daughter of Nereus, the sea-god whose sway extended over the Ægean Sea. Camoens, in his _Lusiad_, has spiritualised their office, and he makes them the sea-guardians of the virtuous. According to a legend they went before the fleet of Vasco da Gama, and when the treacherous pilot supplied by the King of Mozambique steered his ship towards a sunken rock, these guardian nymphs pressed against the prow, lifting it from the water and turning it round.

To turn back to the malevolent spirits. At Dervinato, a village in the island of Chios, there is a fountain-head, or “water mother,” the common Greek expression for a spring, called Plaghia, which is reputed to be the haunt of a Black Giant. This monster is a crafty demon of Oriental origin who lures the guileless to destruction by various stratagems, generally by assuming the form of a fair maid. He is a being mortally dreaded by the peasantry, and is not so often met with as the water-spirit.

There is also the Drakos, a cousin-german to the Black Giant. Like the Black Giant he also haunts the wells and works mischief on the people by withholding the water. This trick of the monster is alluded to in the following lines, which form the beginning of a song heard at Nigrita:—

Yonder at St. Theodore’s, yonder at St. George’s, A fair was held, a great fair. The space was narrow and the crowd was large. The Drakos held back the water and the people were athirst, Athirst was also a lady who was heavy with child.

In Greek legends the Drakos figures as a large uncouth monster akin to the Troll of Norse and the Ogre and Giant of British and Continental fairy tales. His simplicity of mind is only equalled by his might and he is easily bamboozled. He is also regarded as a performer of superhuman feats. As in Ireland there is a Giant’s Causeway, so in Macedonia we find a “Drakos’s Weight” (a big stone to the south of Nigrita), a “Drakos’s Shovelful,” (a mound of earth), a “Drakos’s Tomb,” a rock in the same neighbourhood, resembling a high-capped _Dervish_, resting against the slope of the hill, and a “Drakos’s Quoits,” two solitary rocks standing in the plain of Serres.

Various superstitions concerning drowning can be easily traced to this belief in mischievous water-spirits. These spirits demand human sacrifices and those who get drowned are supposed to be their victims. Thus, when in Germany a person comes by his death from drowning, the Germans say: “The river-spirit claims his annual sacrifice,” or that “the nix has taken the drowned man.” In India _pujas_ are invariably offered to propitiate these spirits before any member of a family starts on a journey involving the crossing of the deep or of the rivers. While passing over creeks and streams, travellers on the Indian Railways will notice even to-day many a traveller, Hindu and Parsi, male and female, throwing from the train cocoanuts, sugar and flowers in the water in the devout hope of averting accidents. The followers of Islam, however, believe that God Almighty would, by reason of the benign influence of His name, preserve them from drowning. Therefore, whilst starting on a voyage they chant the following couplet from Surah Nooh of the _Koran_, as a protective from drowning:—

_Bismillaheh Majriha O Mursaha inna Rabi-ul-ghafur ul-Rahim_, meaning, “The moving and stopping (of this boat, Noah’s Ark) depends upon the influence of the Name of God, for, in truth, our Lord is pre-eminently a Pardoner of sins and merciful.”

In the same way Bengal boatmen cry “Badar,” “Badar,” when a boat is in danger of capsizing, in the hope that the saint Khwaja Khizr would protect them.

Others wear amulets to ward off the danger of drowning. In “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,” Miss Bird says that the amulet which saves the Japs from drowning is “a certain cure for choking, if courageously swallowed.” Some sailors believe that if a portion of the cowl which covers the face of some children at the time of birth be worn as an amulet round the neck, the person wearing it will not get drowned, while some Bengalees believe that if a person accidentally eats ants along with sweets or any foodstuff, he will not get drowned.[40]

Once, however, a man is in the grip of the water-spirit, to venture to save him is, according to various widespread beliefs, sure to bring on disaster. In several places, therefore, including Great Britain, people show great reluctance to save a drowning person, because, as suggested by Tylor, they fear the vengeance of the water-spirit, who would, in consequence, be deprived of his prey.

Thus we gather from Tudor’s _Orkney and Shetland_, that amongst the seamen of those places it was deemed unlucky to rescue persons from drowning since it was held as a matter of religious faith that the sea was entitled to certain victims, and that, if deprived, it would avenge itself on those who interfere. The still more cautious and considerate people in the Solomon Islands go a step further. If a man accidentally falls into the river and a shark attacks him, he is not allowed to escape. If he does succeed in eluding the shark, his fellow-tribesmen will throw him back to his doom, believing him to be marked out for sacrifice to the god of the river.[41]

In his “Folk Medicine” Black accounts for this superstition on the ground that it is believed that the spirits of people who have died a violent death may return to earth if they can find a substitute and that hence the soul of the last dead man would feel insulted or injured by anyone preventing another from taking his place. Some people on the other hand believe that the reluctance to save drowning persons is due to the belief that the person rescued from being drowned would inflict mischief on the man who saves his life. It would seem from Walter Scott’s novel[42] that this belief prevailed in Scotland. In it asks the pedlar Bryce: “Are you mad? You that have lived so long in Zetland to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not if we bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you capital injury?”

This superstition appears to have been confined to the West only. In the East, luckily, there is no such antipathy to extend a helping hand to the drowning. It may be mentioned, however, that in his _Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India_ Crooke seems to suggest that this feeling is also common in India, but he cites no examples although he gives several instances and quotes several authorities concerning the Western ideas on the subject. We, however, find no such instance recorded anywhere. In the year 1893 Mr. Sarat Chandra Mitra read before the Anthropological Society of Bombay a paper on some superstitions regarding drowning. He quoted several Western examples concerning the aversion to save drowning people but gave no parallel for any of these from the folklore of Bengal and Upper India with which he is intimately familiar. If such antipathy did exist, that indefatigable student of Indian folklore would have certainly heard of it.

Crooke appears to have confounded two separate, though analogous, ideas, and to have assumed that the prevalence of one connotes the existence of the other. There is, of course, abundant evidence in Indian folklore to show that it was believed throughout this country that the spirits of those persons who got drowned wandered for a hundred years if their corpses were not properly and solemnly buried with all the requisite ceremonies. The spirits of the drowned are, therefore, believed to haunt those rivers and wells and tanks in which they have found their graves, just as the fisher-folk of England believed that the spirits of the sailors who were drowned by a shipwreck frequented those parts of the shores near which the shipwreck took place. In his “Romances in the West of England” Hunt refers to these superstitions. The mere prevalence, however, of one of the superstitious beliefs of the same class in two countries does not warrant the sweeping assertion that the other beliefs also prevail in both the countries.