"Again, as the wife of Vishnu, the holy basil is married to the Salagrama, a black fossil ammonite resembling a ram's horn, which is regarded as an embodiment of Vishnu. In North-Western India this marriage of the plant to the fossil has to be performed before it is lawful to taste of the fruit of a new orchard. ... [a man personating the fossil bridegroom and a woman the basil bride]. Further, no well is considered lucky until the holy fossil has been solemnly wedded to the holy basil, which stands for the garden that the well is intended to water. . . . The same marriage of the sacred fossil to the sacred plant is celebrated annually by the Rajah of Orchha at Ludhaura. A former Rajah used to spend a sum equal to about thirty thousand pounds ... on the ceremony. On one occasion over a hundred thousand people are said to have been present at the rite, and to have been feasted at the expense of the Rajah. The procession consisted of eight elephants, twelve hundred camels and four thousand horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. The most sumptuously decorated of the elephants carried the fossil god to pay his bridal visit to the little shrub goddess. On such an occasion all the rites of a regular marriage are performed, and afterwards the newly-wedded pair are left to repose together in the temple till the next year."
A fuller account is given in the same author's Golden Bough. He adds that a draught of the water in which the shell has been washed is supposed to purge away all sin and secure temporal welfare.[1] These fossils are found in Nepaul on the upper Gandaka, a tributary of the Ganges. Hence the district is called Salagrami, and is considered holy, and an object of pilgrimage. In a letter of May 26th, 191 1, Mr. W. Crooke wrote me:—
"The Salagrama, to which numerous references are given by Frazer in his new Golden Bough (Pt. i., ii., 26 f.) is undoubtedly a very ancient "fetish." It was specially adopted as a symbol of
- ↑ Vol. ii., pp. 26-7 (3rd ed.). Cf. Carew, p. 57 ante. I may add that Mr. E. Lovett has informed me of two cases in which ammonites were carried by fishermen to bring kick in fishing,—one at Oban and the other at Folkestone, the ammonites themselves being called fish at the latter place.
