Benares, Hindoo gentleman worshipped as a god at, 100
Bengal, marriage ceremony at the digging of wells, 144; rule of succession of kings of, 277; ceremony over a Karma-tree in, 342; human sacrifices in, 434; seclusion of girls at puberty in, 602; stories of the external soul in, 670
Benin, king of, worshipped as a god, 99, 200; human sacrifices in, 433
Blood, sympathetic connection between a wounded person and his shed, 43; human, in rain-making ceremonies, 65; as a means of inspiration, 94; smeared on woodwork of nouse, 117; put on doorposts, 175; of childbirth, 209, 229; smeared on person as a purification, 221; tabooed, 227–230; royal, not to be shed on the ground, 228; unwillingness to shed, 228; received on bodies of kinsfolk, 229; drops of, effaced, 229; of chief sacred, 230; fetish priests allowed to drink fresh, 238; Day of, in the festival of Attis, 349, 353; bath of bull’s, in the rites of Attis, 351; remission of sins through the shedding of, 356; sprinkled on seed and scattered on field, 432, 434, 438; of sacrificial horse, 478; of men drunk to acquire their qualities, 497, 498; as a means of communion with a deity, 535; of children used to knead a paste, 553; girls at puberty forbidden to see, 600; menstruous, 603, 604
Bogota, rigorous training of the heir to the throne of, 595
Bohemia, Midsummer tree burned in, 122; throwing Death into the water in, 125; May King and Queen in, 130–132; Whitsuntide mummers in, 298, 299; carrying out Death in, 309, 310; bringing in Summer in, 311; the last sheaf in, 404; harvest customs in, 429, 456, 457; cure for fever in, 544; expulsion of witches in, 561; bonfires in, 621, 626; charm to make corn grow high in, 647; fern-seed on St. John’s Day in, 704, 705
Bombay, belief as to absence of sleeper’s soul in, 183
Bones, of dead in magic, 30, 71; human, buried as a rain-charm, 72; departing souls bottled up in hollow, 180; used as charms, 201, 495; cakes baked in the shape of, 489; of animals, treatment of, 525–529; burnt in bonfires, 616
Bonfires, Midsummer, 122, 622, 629, 645; leaping over, 318, 610; supposed to protect against conflagration, 610; lit by persons last married, 610; a protection against sickness, witchcraft, and sorcery, 610, 620, 621; fertilising influence of, 645, 646; protect fields against hail and homesteads against thunder and lightning, 649
Borneo, the Dyaks of, 14; rules observed by camphor-hunters in, 21; telepathy in war in, 25; hooks to catch souls in, 180; rice used to prevent soul from wandering, 181; precautions against strangers in, 195; use of puppets as substitutes for living persons, 492; sickness expelled in a ship from, 564; expulsion of evils in, 566; seclusion of girls at puberty in, 597; birth custom in, 679; tree as life-index in, 682
