the same manner, because in the absence of verbs or
abstract terms their proper relation to the subject and object could
not be stated or understood. Thus if a woman's labour in child-birth
is prolonged she is given to drink water in which the charred wood of
a tree struck by lightning has been dipped. Here it is clear that the
quality of swiftness is held to have been conveyed by the lightning
to the wood, by the wood to the water, and by the water to the woman,
so as to give her a swift delivery. By a similar train of reasoning
she is given to drink the water of a swiftly-flowing stream which thus
has the quality of swiftness, or water poured through a gun-barrel in
which the fouling of a bullet is left. Here the quality of swiftness
appertaining to the bullet is conveyed by the soiling to the barrel and
thence to the water and to the woman who drinks the water. In the above
cases all the transfers except that to the woman are by contact. The
belief in the transfer of qualities by contact may have arisen from
the sensations of the body and skin, to which heat, cold and moisture
are communicated by contact. It was applied to every kind of quality. A
familiar instance is the worship of the marks on rocks or stone which
are held to be the footprints left by a god. Here a part of the god's
divine virtue and power has been communicated through the sole of his
foot to the rock dented by the latter. Touching for the king's evil
was another familiar case, when it was thought that a fraction of
the king's divine life and virtue was communicated by contact to the
person touched and cured him of his ailment. The wearing of amulets
where these consist of parts of the bodies of animals is based on the
same belief. When a man wears on his person the claws of a tiger in an
amulet, he thinks that the claws being the tiger's principal weapon
of offence contain a concentrated part of his strength, and that the
wearer of the claws will acquire some of this by contact. The Gonds
carry the shoulder-bone of a tiger, or eat the powdered bone-dust,
in order to acquire strength. The same train of reasoning applies
to the wearing of the hair of a bear, a common amulet in India, the
hair being often considered as the special seat of strength. [124]
The whole practice of wearing ornaments of the precious metals and
precious stones appears to have been originally due to the same motive,
as shown in the article on Sunar.

If the Gonds want a chil