not visited for a long time or reached for the first time is bu-ku-ru.  On our return from the ascent of Pico Blanco, nearly all the party suffered from little calenturas, the result of extraordinary exposure to wet and cold and of want of food.  The Indians said that the peak was especially bu-ku-ru since nobody had ever been on it before.”  One day Mr. Gabb took down some dusty blow-guns amid cries of bu-ku-ru from the Indians.  Some weeks afterwards a boy died, and the Indians firmly believed that the bu-ku-ru of the blow-guns had killed him.  “From all the foregoing, it would seem that bu-ku-ru is a sort of evil spirit that takes possession of the object, and resents being disturbed; but I have never been able to learn from the Indians that they consider it so.  They seem to think of it as a property the object acquires.  But the worst bu-ku-ru of all, is that of a young woman in her first pregnancy.  She infects the whole neighbourhood.  Persons going from the house where she lives, carry the infection with them to a distance, and all the deaths or other serious misfortunes in the vicinity are laid to her charge.  In the old times, when the savage laws and customs were in full force, it was not an uncommon thing for the husband of such a woman to pay damages for casualties thus caused by his unfortunate wife.”  See Wm. M. Gabb, “On the Indian Tribes and Languages of Costa Rica,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia, xiv. (Philadelphia, 1876) pp. 504 sq.

[156] J. Chaffanjon, L’Orenoque et le Caura (Paris, 1889), pp. 213-215.

[157] Shib Chunder Bose, The Hindoos as they are (London and Calcutta, 1881), p. 86.  Similarly, after a Brahman boy has been invested with the sacred thread, he is for three days strictly forbidden to see the sun.  He may not eat salt, and he is enjoined to sleep either on a carpet or a deer’s skin, without a mattress or mosquito curtain (ibid. p. 186).  In Bali, boys who have had their teeth filed, as a preliminary to marriage, are kept shut up in a dark room for three days (R.  Van Eck, “Schetsen van het eiland Bali,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie, N.S., ix. (1880) pp. 428 sq.).

[158] (Sir) H.H.  Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1891-1892), i. 152.

[159] Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), vii. 63 sq.

[160] Edgar Thurston, op. cit. iii. 218.

[161] Edgar Thurston, op. cit. vi. 157.

[162] S. Mateer, Native Life in Travancore (London, 1883), p. 45.

[163] Arthur A. Perera, “Glimpses of Singhalese Social Life,” Indian Antiquary xxxi, (1902) p. 380.

[164] J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge (Paris, 1883), i. 377.

[165] Etienne Aymonier, “Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,” Cochinchine Francaise:  Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), pp. 193 sq. Compare id., Notice sur le Cambodge (Paris, 1875), p. 50 id., Notes sur le Laos (Saigon, 1885), p. 177.