Читать книгу Folklore of Wells: Being a Study of Water-Worship in East and West - Rustom Pestonji Masani - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Close by Nowroji Wadia’s house was another habitat of spirits. The owner of the house, a Parsi lady, was asked to cover it. In view of the sad experience of the fate of the owner of the neighbouring house she was reluctant to do anything that might offend the spirits, but the Malaria Department was insistent. She therefore first implored the presiding deities of the well to forgive her as she had no option in the matter, and then consented to cover the well provided a wire-gauze trap-door was allowed so as not to interfere with the work of worship. I understand that on every full moon eve she opens the trap-door, garlands the well and offers her puja there.

Further down the same street, once renowned for the abodes of Parsi Shethias, is a house belonging to a well-known Parsi family. A well in this house was and still is most devoutly worshipped by the inmates of the house. I hear from a very reliable source that whenever any member of the family got married, it was the practice to sacrifice a goat to the well-spirit, to dip a finger in the blood of the victim and to anoint the bride or bridegroom on the forehead with a mark of the blood. Once however this ceremony was overlooked and, as fate would have it, the bridegroom died within forty days.

This practice of besmearing the forehead with the blood of the sacrifice is a survival of primitive ideas concerning blood-shedding and blood-sprinkling, the taking of the blood from the place where the sacrifice was given being regarded as equivalent to taking the blessing of the place and putting it on the person anointed with the blood. Thus when an Arab matron slaughters a goat or a sheep vowed in her son’s behalf, she takes some of the blood and puts it on his skin. Similarly, when a barren couple that has promised a sacrifice to a saint in return for a child is blest with the joys of parenthood, the sacrifice is given and the blood of the animal is put on the forehead of the child.

Remarkable as is the survival of this primitive ritual in Bombay and its prevalence amongst people such as the Parsis, there is nothing very extraordinary about it. A little patch of savagery as it appears to be in the midst of fair fields and pastures new of western culture, it merely affords an illustration of the fact that localities preserve relics of a people much older than those who now inhabit them. It also shows that various systems of local fetichism found in Aryan Countries merely represent the undying beliefs and customs of a primitive race which the Aryans eventually incorporated into their own beliefs and rituals, for it will be seen as we proceed that in India as in Great Britain the entire cult of well-worship was imbibed rather than engendered by Aryan culture.

What, however, is most extraordinary is that of all the communities in Bombay the Parsis show the greatest susceptibility to these beliefs. Amongst the Hindus worship of water is, no doubt, universal. Belief in spirits is also general amongst them. Amongst these spirits there are water-goblins also, Jalachar, as contrasted with Bhuchar, spirits hovering on earth, mostly inimical, mâtâs and sankhinis, bhuts, and prets who hover round wells and tanks, particularly the wayside ones, and drown or enter the persons of those who go near their haunts. Many of these goblins are the spirits of those who have met with an accidental death or the souls that have not received the funeral pindas with the proper obsequies. The Hindus believe that these fallen souls reside in their avagati, or degraded condition, near the scene of their death and molest those who approach it. Almost all the old wells in the Maidan were in this way believed to be the haunts of such spirits who claimed their annual toll without fail. Thus it was believed that the well that stood in the rear of the Bombay Gymkhana must needs have at least three victims, and sure enough there were at least three cases of suicide in that well during a year! However, so far as domestic well-spirits are concerned, while almost all the wells of a Parsi house were until recently and many of them still are under the protection of a Bâwâ, or Sayyid, or Pir, or Jinn, or Pari, or other spirits, one rarely comes across such wells in Hindu household. Wells are worshipped by the Hindus no doubt, without exception, but it is the sacred character of the water that accounts for the worship, not the belief in the existence of well-spirits. Again, as a result of my investigations, I find that the worship of wells amongst the Parsi community is in some cases much ruder and more primitive than amongst the Hindus. What can be the explanation for it? Is it simply a continuation of their own old beliefs in the land of their adoption? Is it merely old wine in new bottles?

Water-worship was, no doubt, a general cult with the Parsis in their ancestral home. Of the antiquity of this worship amongst them we have ample evidence in their scriptures. In the Aban Yesht the spring is addressed as a mighty goddess, Ardevi Sura Anahita, strong, sublime, spotless, erroneously equated by some authors with the Mylitta of the Babylonians and the Aphrodite of the Greeks. Ahurarmazda calls upon Zarathushtra to worship Ardevi Sura Anahita:—