S UPERSTITIONS. Amongst Hindus the left side is the lucky side in a woman, the right in a inan. The purport of the palpitations of the eyes, or throbbing of the eyeballs, is fancied, and seems to have been sitnilarly understood by the Greeks. The powder of white mustard is applied to the top of the head and forehead and other parts of a new-born child as a protection against evil spirits. A mixture of the same with oil and rice is scattered about to every quarter upon the commencement of a sacrifice, to keep off ghosts and fiends. Hindus stain a new cloth with turmeric to keep off demons and disease. Amongst the avenging scourges sent direct from the gods, the Singhalese regard both the ravages of the leopard and the visitation of the small-pox. The latter they call Inaba ledda,' the great sickness ; tbey look upon it as a special manifestation of Devi ; and the attraction of the cheetas to the bed of the sufferer they attribute to the same displeasure of the gods. A few years ago, the capwa, or demon priest of a dewale,' Oggalbadda, a village near Caltura, when suffering tinder small-pox, was devoured by a cheeta, and his fate was regarded by those of an opposite faith as a special judgment from heaven. Such is the awe inspired by this belief in connection with the small-pox, that a person afflicted with it is always approached as one in immediate connuunication with the deity ; his attendants address him as, my lord' and your lordship,' and exhaust on him the whole series of honorific epithets in which their language abounds for approaching pers.onages of the most exalted
rank. At evening and morning, a lamp is lighted before him, and invoked with prayers to protect his family from the dire calamity which has befallen himself. And after his recovery, his former associates refrain frotn communication with him until a ceremony shall have been perfonned by the capwa, called awasara-pandema, or the offer ing of lights for permission,' the object of which is to entreat permission of the deity to regard him as freed from the divine displeasure, with liberty to his friends to renew their intercourse as before. With the Burmese, if a hen lay an egg upon a cloth, its owner will lose money ; to see mush rooms at the beginning of a journey is a fortu nate sign ; a snake crossing the path denotes delay ; if a dog carry any unclean thing into its master's house, the man will become rich. Auguries are drawn from the flight and numbers of birds, from the barking of dogs, the flight of bees, and in many other ways.—Minf. neat pp.15, 115 ; Tennenes Ceylon, p. 28.