dreams are supposed to foretell events. Thus it is a good thing to dream of being bitten by a cobra, especially if the bite drew blood.
It is believed that a barren tree will bear if a naked man cuts a piece off it on the day of an eclipse; that the nesting of a clay-building fly in a house foretells the birth of a child; that the appearance of a swarm of ants or a blood-sucker in the house foreshadows some benefit; that a child which sneezes on a winnowing fan or on the door-frame will meet with misfortune unless balls of boiled rice-flour are thrown over it; and that a man who sneezes during his meals, especially at night, will also be unlucky unless water is sprinkled over his face and he is made to pronounce his own name and that of his birth-place and his patron deity. People who have lost two children and expect to have a third generally beg small pieces of gold from their neighbours with which they make a gold ornament to put in the nose of the new-born baby. The child is called, if a boy, Pullayya or Pentayya, and if a girl, either Pullamma or Pentamma, meaning respectively 'used up leaf-plates' or 'refuse.' The idea is to propitiate by due humility the nemesis of the power whose enmity has caused the death of the previous children, and is common in other districts.
Scarcity of rain is dealt with in various ways. It is considered very efficacious if the Bráhmans take in procession round the village an image of Varuna (the god of rain) made of mud from the bank of a river or tank. Another method is to pour 1,000 pots of water over the lingam in the Siva temple. Málas tie a live frog to a mortar and put on the top of the latter a mud figure representing Gontiyálamma, the mother of the Pándava brothers. They then take these objects in procession, singing 'Mother frog, playing in water, pour rain by pots full.' The villagers of other castes then come and pour water over the Málas.
Besides the orthodox gods of the Hindu pantheon, three other classes of supernatural beings are commonly worshipped. These are the village goddesses referred to below, who are essentially local in character; the caste deities, who are objects of special reverence among special castes; and the family deities, namely the virudu, or soul of some dead bachelor of the family, and the pérantam or spirit of some woman outlived by her husband, who have been accorded apotheosis because they appeared in a dream to some member of the family and announced that they had been made immortal.
