IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
AT THE BASE OF THE MOUNTAINS 167
the region. The sheikh whom I addressed looked sheepish; the bystanders laughed, and some one said : -
" Oh, yes, he knows how to drive them away. There are many here, not only in the mountains and the desert, but in the village. Look at that man. A `jin' struck him. Can you heal him ? "
The man referred to suffered from a large excrescence on the side of the head above the ear. In Khotan and Yarkand, where the people suffer terribly from goitre and stiff necks, it is commonly believed, so I was told, that the ill-natured "jins" have a habit of gripping a sleeping man around the throat, after which the neck swells with goitre. Sometimes the " jins " vary their mischief by cuffing the side of a man's head, causing a stiff neck.
The four Imams who died so sadly at Imamla must have been well-to-do, to say the least. According to the sheikhs, they cooked their rice in a golden pot, which is still preserved in a rickety mosque, and is used for cooking the sacrifices of pilgrims. The pot is so holy that whoever looks at it is struck blind. I naturally inquired how, then, the meat could be cooked.
" Oh," answered Kassim Sheikh, my host, "when a sheikh becomes sixty years old, he can see the pot without injury. Even I have never seen it."
Later, I had a conversation with the old sheikh who acts as "chef of the golden pot," but refrained from asking questions. He looked like a man able to keep a secret.
An equally remarkable fact was brought to light when I sought for geological information. On asking the source of numerous cobbles and small round boulders of vesicular
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