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CHAPTER XXIII
SNAKES AND EAGLES
If one ask which is the more dangerous venom, that of a wicked man or that of a serpent, the answer is, that however subtle the poison of a serpent may be, it can at any rate be counteracted by virtue of mantrams ; but it is beyond all power to save a person from the venom of a wicked man.–Sloka.
The isolated hills of Trichinopoly are not peculiar to that district. They occur all over the Peninsula. On the Mysore plateau many of them have a number of boulders strewn at their base ; others seem to be nothing but piles of detached boulders and look like magnified heaps of stones. Every hill has its demon. If no temple has been raised for the purpose of propitiation and sacrifice, a stone will be found set up somewhere close at hand, like the stone beneath my tamarind tree, and pujah is done before it. The performance of pujah to these demons follows no particular rule. If the seasons are good and epidemics are absent in the neighbourhood the demon gets very little attention. Should the monsoon fail, the harvests be poor, or cholera make its appearance, offerings are brought and muntrums recited to appease his wrath.
The scattered boulders at the base of the hills, lying broadcast over the level plain, bring to mind the story told in the 'Arabian Nights' of the cruel princess who turned her lovers into stone. There are small boulders and large ones, lying as if the knight and his horse had fallen with his men-at-arms and retainers round him,
