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avoid sleeping with this face turned to the west or north."

Mrs. Sehula was to leave the next day. The morning came and there were no signs of departure. She had made a mistake she had forgotten what day it was. Saturday. And one never travels east on a Saturday. [actually never sets out on, or begins a journey.]

Another superstition is that three people should never set out together on a journey. it is bad luck. Two will start and the third meets them later at the station or they will not all walk together etc.

*Water burial is given to small children, because they are thought to be too innocent to require purification. In most cases they are thrown into rivers and no impurity period is observed by the parents.

I find continually a big gap between research done by scholars on a subject, say for example Hindu marriage ceremony, and the thing as it is actually practiced today. The scholars are always listing impressive references from obscure Vedas etc. but rarely from life. The popular or mass conception of legends, rites, religious ceremonies is often very different from the official written down one. The oral tradition is still the most prevalent form of communication, people do not read books for the verification of information. This makes for endless variants and contradictions, the oldest part of any culture is always frozen. Most scholars who come to India seem to concentrate only on the dead parts, it is the safe way. And another thesis on the Christian Missionary

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agricultural effect of some remote village in 1920 is added to the shelf.

This is not meant to be an indictment of classical Indian scholarship which is valid and needed.

Change:

All societies are constantly changing at different rates, adjusting to continual pressures. But change in India never seems to throw out an old concept for a new one, it just adds a new elaboration, a new complication to an already top heavy outworn cultural tradition. The communists predict revolution in 10 years, sweeping changes. The question is, is revolution possible in India?

The standard statement is, "America is a rich country." The standard answer is, "Yes, but India is rich in the spiritual things" - that realistically should be "was rich in the spiritual things." May 28

Magic Mountain p 275

. . . life? It was warmth, the warmth generated by a form - preserving instability, a fever of matter which accompanied the process of ceaseless decay and repair. . .

It was the existence of the actually impossible-to-exist, of a half-sweet, half-painful balancing, or scarcely balancing, in this restricted and feverish process of decay and renewal, upon the point of existence. . . . it was conveyed and shaped by the somehow awakened voluptuousness of matter, of the organic dying-living substance itself, the [ILLEGIBLE: looks like "reeling"] flesh."