chap, xvi CEREMONIES ON STARTING WORK 59
on
the mill, the never-failing test for correctly ascertaining the water
is afforded by taking the stone under a leafy tree, and in the green
shadow one can easily detect if it is blue.
The
first time I was at this mine there were nearly 60,000 persons working
there, including men, women, and children, who are employed in diverse
ways, the men in digging, the women and children in carrying earth, for
they search for the stones at this mine in an altogether different
manner from that practised at Rammalakota.
After
the miners have selected the place where they desire-to work, they
smooth down another spot close by, of equal or rather greater extent,
round which they erect an enclosing wall of two feet in height.
At
the base of this little wall they make openings, at every two feet, for
the escape of the water, which they close till it is time for the water
to be drawn off. This place being thus prepared, all who are about to
engage in the search assemble, men, women, and children, together with
their employer and a party of his relatives and friends. He brings with
him a figure in stone of the god whom they worship, which is placed
standing on the ground, and each person prostrates himself three times
before it, their priest, however, offering up the prayer.1
This prayer being finished, he makes a particular kind of mark upon the
forehead of each one with a paste composed of saffron and gum, in order
that it may sustain seven or eight grains of rice, which he places upon
it.2 Then they wash their bodies with the water which each
of them carries in a vessel, and sit down in ranks to eat that which is
presented at the feast given by their employer at the beginning of
their work, in order to give them courage and induce them to acquit
themselves faithfully. This feast merely consists of a portion of rice
to each, which is distributed by the Brahman, because every idolater
can eat what is
1 The prayer is an appeal for protection from the mine spirits, which are much dreaded (Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, i. 282 f.).
s The sectarian mark, known as tilak or nâma, of which see an illustration in Russell, Tribes and Castes, Central Provinces, ii. 102. (See Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 4th ed. 66 f.; Linschoten, i. 255.)
