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I 1 6 Symbolism of the East and West
fulness for blessings received may be seen in every Roman
Catholic countr)' : at Lourdes in the Pyrenees they number
hundreds of thousands of various kinds. In many countries
they ma)- be seen at shrines by the wayside and as pictures
hung up on trees.
At Nagkanda (or the shoulder of the snake), a place in
India about forty miles north of Simla, there are several
small trees and shrubs on the highest part of a low moun-
tain pass decorated with numerous votive rags. These
streamers are of various colours :
they
are, it is said, thank-
offerings placed there by native travellers on attaining the
summit of the hill—a rather perilous journey in the winter for
those coming from the north.
In his Travels in the East, more particularly Persia
(published in 1 821), Sir William Ouseley writes: " Barbaro,
who went to Persia, as the Venetian envoy, two centuries
earlier than either Chardin or Angelo, observed in his
journey through Persia some thorn bushes to which were
attached vast numbers of old rags and scraps of garments.
These were (as was supposed) efficacious in banishing
fevers and other disorders. The Persians, who are
Muhammedans, and abhor idolatry in any form, still continue
to imagine that, in their addresses and offerings to these trees,
they only invoke the true God."
In another place the same author speaks of a monolith,
about ten feet high, at a place called Tang-i-Karm in Persia,
surrounded by a dwarf wall to denote its sacredness. The
top of this stone was hollowed out, as he thought, for fire ; it
was locally known as the stone of the fire temple. On a tree
near it he found remnants of garments left there as votive