the top off and lays the little bundle, half in and half out of the cavity.  Having retired, he returns in about an hour to see if the rice is consumed, and according to the rapidity with which it is eaten he predicts the sacrifice which will appease the spirit.  This ranges from a fowl to a buffalo, but whatever it may include, the pouring out of blood is an essential.  It must be noted, however, that the mati never tells who the najo is who has excited the malignity of the spirit.

But the most important and lucrative part of a deona’s business is the casting out of evil spirits, which operation is known variously as ashab and langhan.  The sign of obsession is generally some mental alienation accompanied (in bad cases) by a combined trembling and restlessness of limbs, or an unaccountable swelling up of the body.  Whatever the symptoms may be the mode of cure appears to be much the same.  On such symptoms declaring themselves, the deona is brought to the house and is in the presence of the sick man and his friends provided with some rice in a surpa, some oil, a little vermilion, and the deona produces from his own person a little powdered sulphur and an iron tube about four inches long and two tikli.* Before the proceedings begin all the things mentioned are touched with vermilion, a small quantity of which is also mixed with the rice.  Three or four grains of rice and one of the tikli being put into the tube, a lamp is then lighted beside the sick man and the deona begins his chant, throwing grains of rice at each name, and when the flame flares up, a little of the powdered sulphur is thrown into the lamp and a little on the sick man, who thereupon becomes convulsed, is shaken all over and talks deliriously, the deona’s chant growing louder all the while.  Suddenly the convulsions and the chant cease, and the deona carefully takes up a little of the sulphur off the man’s body and puts into the tube, which he then seals with the second tikli.  The deona and one of the man’s friends then leave the hut, taking the iron tube and rice with them, the spirit being now supposed out of the man and bottled up in the iron tube.  They hurry across country until they leave the hut some miles behind.  Then they go to the edge of some tank or river, to some place they know to be frequented by people for the purposes of bathing, &c., where, after some further ceremony, the iron is stuck into the ground and left there.  This is done with the benevolent intention that the spirit may transfer its attentions to the unfortunate person who may happen to touch it while bathing.  I am told the spirit in this case usually chooses a young and healthy person.  Should the deona think the spirit has not been able to suit itself with a new receptacle, he repairs to where a bazaar is taking place and there (after some ceremony) he mixes with the crowd, and taking a grain of the reddened rice jerks it with his forefinger and thumb in such a way that without attracting attention it falls on