Sinhala: aes-vaha, literally, “eye-poison”, the malevolent and destructive gaze which has the power to make a victim sicken and die. Children in particular are instructed to avoid the presence of those who are believed to possess either aes-vaha or kata-vaha (literally, “mouth-poison” or “evil tongue”).

—Yasmine Gooneraine, 2005, in the newly revised and annotated publication, of The Village in the Jungle by Leonard Woolf, 1935.