If a woman's husband is not in love with her, a prescription of a
_Mohani_ or love-charm given by the wise women is that she should kill
an owl and serve some of its flesh to her husband as a charm. "It has
not occurred," Mr. Kipling writes, "to the oriental jester to speak
of a boiled owl in connection with intoxication, but when a husband
is abjectly submissive to his wife her friends say that she has given
him boiled owl's flesh to eat." [33] If a man is in love with some
woman and wishes to kindle a similar sentiment in her the following
method is given: On a Saturday night he should go to a graveyard and
call out, 'I am giving a dinner tomorrow night, and I invite you all
to attend.' Then on the Sunday night he takes cocoanuts, sweetmeats,
liquor and flowers to the cemetery and sets them all out, and all the
spirits or Shaitans come and partake. The host chooses a particularly
big Shaitan and calls to him to come near and says to him, 'Will you
go with me and do what I ask you.' If the spirit assents he follows
the man home. Next night the man again offers cocoanuts and incense
to the Shaitan, whom he can see by night but not by day, and tells
him to go to the woman's house and call her. Then the spirit goes
and troubles her heart, so that she falls in love with the man and
has no rest till she goes to him. If the man afterwards gets tired of
her he will again secretly worship and call up the Shaitan and order
him to turn the woman's inclination away. Another method is to fetch
a skull from a graveyard and go to a banyan tree at midnight. There,
divesting himself of his clothes, the operator partially cooks some
rice in the skull, and then throws it against the tree; he gathers
all the grains that stick to the trunk in one box and those that fall
to the ground in another box, and the first rice given to the woman
to eat will turn her inclination towards him, while the second will
turn it away from him. This is a sympathetic charm, the rice which
sticks to the tree having the property of attracting the woman.