Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 2.djvu/83

 Chap. II.]

HINDOO FESTIVALS.

47

In order to obtain a full display of the Hindoo religion, and tlie monstrous a.d — practices which it permits and encourages, it will be necessary after having seen how it operates in everyday life, to behold it when crowds are gathered to Hindoo celebrate its greater festivals. As it would be difficult, if not impossible, to give a common description applicable to all, the advisable course will be to select as a specimen the festival of Kali, to whose delight in carnage reference has already been made, and the festival of Juggernaut, which, through the early attention which was drawn to it, is perhaps more familiar and interesting to the British mind than any other.

Kali or Maha Kali is, as will be remembered, identical with Parvati the Festival of wife of Siva, and is celebrated in an annual festival, which receives the name Charak Pujah from the chaJcra or discus, emblematical of the wheeling or swinging employed in its most characteristic performance. Owing to the savage character of Kali, and the numerous crimes of which she is re- garded as the patroness, the Brah- mins and more respectable native classes of Calcutta, in the neighbour- hood of which the festival is held, keep aloof from an open participation

Charak Pujah. — From Gold's Oriental Drawings, and Parke's Wanderings of a Pilgrim.

in it, but at the same time show v^here their sympathies lie by contributing largely to the expsnse, and countenancing the proceedings by their presence as spectators. By the more zealous votaries a whole month before the festival, by others three days, are emjjloyed in initiatory ceremonies of purification and devotion. When the first day devoted to it arrives, an upright pole twenty to thirty feet in height is erected, and across its summit a horizontal beam is placed to move round on a pivot. From each end of the beam hangs a rope, the one loosely and the other with two hooks attached to it. The performance