plentiful they rested the ark on them; but where no stones were to be
found, they deposited it on short logs. "The Indian ark is deemed so
sacred and dangerous to be touched, either by their own sanctified
warriors, or the spoiling enemy, that they durst not touch it upon any
account. It is not to be meddled with by any, except the war chieftain
and his waiter, under the penalty of incurring great evil. Nor would the
most inveterate enemy touch it in the woods, for the very same reason."
After their return home they used to hang the ark on the leader's
red-painted war pole.[26] At Sipi, near Simla, in Northern India, an
annual fair is held, at which men purchase wives. A square box with a
domed top figures prominently at the fair. It is fixed on two poles to
be carried on men's shoulders, and long heavily-plaited petticoats hang
from it nearly to the ground. Three sides of the box are adorned with
the head and shoulders of a female figure and the fourth side with a
black yak's tail. Four men bear the poles, each carrying an axe in his
right hand. They dance round, with a swinging rhythmical step, to the
music of drums and a pipe. The dance goes on for hours and is thought to
avert ill-luck from the fair. It is said that the box is brought to
Simla from a place sixty miles off by relays of men, who may not stop
nor set the box on the ground the whole way.[27] In Scotland, when water
was carried from sacred wells to sick people, the water-vessel might not
touch the earth.[28] In some parts of Aberdeenshire the last bunch of
standing corn, which is commonly viewed as very sacred, being the last
refuge of the corn-spirit retreating before the reapers, is not suffered
to touch the ground; the master or "gueedman" sits down and receives
each handful of corn as it is cut on his lap.[29]

[Sacred food not allowed to touch the earth.]

Again, sacred food may not under certain circumstances be brought into