A fondness for flesh, blood and various kinds of ardent spirit, blank shamelessness, extreme cruelty, courageousness, irritability, extraordinary strength, stirring out in the night and an entire disregard of cleanliness are the traits which mark a person attacked by a Rákshasa Graha. Haughtiness, emaciation of the frame, roughness of behaviour, garrulousness, fetid smell from the body, extreme uncleanliness and restiveness, voracious eating, fondness for cold water and lonely places, stirring abroad in the night (D. R. fondness for walking about the out-skirts of forest) and roaming about weeping and engaged in vicious pursuits (D. R. anxious looks) are the features which show that a person has been possessed by a Pisácha Graha. 12-13.
Prognosis: — If a person possessed by a Graha, has swollen eyes, quick pace, foam at the mouth which he licks himself, drowsiness, staggering gait which sometimes compels him to fall down on the ground or if he is possessed by a Graha after his fall from a hill, an elephant, a tree or such other high place, or if he be old,*[1] he should be regarded as incurable. 14.
Times of possession:— A Deva Graha strikes i.e. possesses a man at full moon; an Asura Graha at the meeting of day and night i.e. in the morning and evening twilights; a Gandharva generally on the eighth and a Yaksha on the first day of the fortnights. A Pitri Graha possesses a man on the new moon day; and a Sarpa Graha (serpent-devil) enters on the fifth day of the new or full moon. A Rákshasa Graha possesses a man at night and a
- ↑ * In place of " " Mádhava reads " " i.e. it is also incurable) when it has continued for thirteen years.
