some Russian saint; and when they sit down to their meals, the Ostiaks are
careful to offer it the daintiest morsels, smearing its lips with fish or raw game;
this sacred duty fulfilled, they attack with eagerness the viands set before them.
The Ostiak priests are called Schamans. Their influence is very great, but is
wholly employed in the promotion of their own selfish interests, through the
encouragement of the basest superstitions.
WEATHER-CONJURING AMONG THE MONGOLS.There are many allusions in Mongol history to the practice of weather-conjuring.
The operation was performed by means of a stone supposed to be endowed with
magical virtues, called Yadah or Jadah Tásh; this was suspended over or hung in
a basin of water with sundry ceremonies. Ibn Mohalhal, an early Arab traveller,
asserts that the Kímák, a great tribe of the Turks, possessed such a stone. In the
war waged against Chinghiz and Aung Khan by a powerful tribal confederation
in 1202, it is recorded that Sengun, the son of Aung Khan, who had been
despatched to arrest the enemy’s advance, caused them to be enchanted, so that
all the movements they attempted against him were defeated by dense mists and
blinding snow-storms. So thick was the mist, so intense was the darkness, that
men and horses stumbled over precipices, and many also perished with cold.
The celebrated conqueror, Timur, in his Memoirs, records that the Jets resorted
to incantations to produce heavy rains which hindered his cavalry from acting
against them. A Yadachi, or weather-conjuror, was taken prisoner, and after he
had been beheaded the storm ceased.
Babu refers to one of his early friends, Khwaja ka Mulai, as conspicuous for his
skill in falconry and his knowledge of Yadageri, or the science of inducing rain
and snow by means of enchantment. The Russians were much distressed by
heavy rains in 1552, when besieging Kazan, and universally ascribed the
unfavourable weather to the arts of the Tartar queen, who was an enchantress.
Early in the 18th century, the Emperor Shi-tsung issued a proclamation against
rain-conjuring, addressed to the Eight Banners of Mongolia. “If,” indignantly
observes the Emperor, “if I, offering prayers in sincerity, have yet cause to fear
that it may please heaven to leave MY prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable
that mere common people wishing for rain should of their own fancy set up
altars of earth; and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and