nted some variation passed without record in his mind, as
they still do very largely in those of primitive savages. And since he
made no distinction between the different classes of events, holding
them all to be the acts of volitional beings, he applied this law of
the recurrence of events to every incident of life, and thought that
whenever anything happened, reason existed for supposing that the same
thing or something like it would happen again. It was sufficient that
the second event should be like the first, since, as already seen,
he did not distinguish between similarity and identity. Thus, to give
instances, the Hindus think that if a man lies full length inside a
bed, he is lying as if on a bier and will consequently soon be dead
on a real bier; hence beds should be made so that one's feet project
uncomfortably over the end. By a similar reasoning he must not lie with
his feet to the south because corpses are laid in this direction. A
Hindu married woman always wears glass bangles as a sign of her state,
and a widow may not wear them. A married woman must therefore never
let her arms be without bangles or it is an omen that she will become
a widow. She must not wear wholly white clothes, because a widow wears
these. If a man places one of his shoes over the other in the house,
it is an omen that he will go on a journey when the shoes will be in
a similar position as he walks along. A Kolta woman who desires to
ascertain whether she will have a son, puts a fish into a pot full of
water and spreads her cloth by it. If the fish jumps into her lap,
it is thought that her lap will shortly hold another living being,
that is a son. At a wedding, in many Hindu castes, the bride and
bridegroom perform the business of their caste or an imitation of
it. Among the Kuramwar shepherds the bride and bridegroom are seated
with the shuttle which is used for weaving blankets between them. A
miniature swing is put up and a doll is placed in it in imitation
of a child and swung to and fro. The bride then takes the doll out
and gives it to the bridegroom, saying:--"Here, take care of it,
I am now going to cook food"; while, after a time, the boy returns
the doll to the girl saying, "I must now weave the blanket and go
to tend the flock." Thus, having performed their life's business at
their wedding, it is thought that they will continue to do so happily
as long as they live. Many castes, before sowing the real crop, make
a pretence