Page:An Introduction to the Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India.djvu/218

204 next birth, be reborn as a Bhútní, Pretní or Rákshasí. At present among low caste women the process of tattooing is regarded as a species of initiation and usually marks the attainment of puberty. It thus corresponds with the ceremony of ear piercing among males. To the east of the North-Western Provinces a girl is not allowed to cook until she is tattooed with a mark supposed to represent the cooking house of Sítá (Sitá ki rasoí), and in Bengal high caste people will not drink from the hands of a girl who does not wear the ullikhi or star-shaped tattoo mark between her eyebrows. A Chamár woman who is not tattooed at marriage will not, it is believed, see her father and mother in the next world. This reminds us of the idea prevalent in Fiji that women who are not tattooed are liable to special punishment in the next world. In Bombay the custom has been provided with a Bráhmanical legend. One day Lakshmí, the wife of Vishnu, told her husband that whenever he went out on business or to visit his devotees she became frightened. Hearing this Vishnu took his weapons and stamped them on her body, saying that the marks of his weapons would save her from evil.

Hence women in Bombay tattoo themselves with the figures of the lotus conch shell, and discus, and from this the present custom originated. In Upper India the forms of the tattoo marks fall into various classes. Some are rude or conventialised representations of animals, plants, or flowers. The operators carry round with them sketches of the different kinds of ornament, and the girl selects these according to taste. The peacock, the horse, the serpent, the scorpion, tortoise, centipede, appear constantly in various forms. Others again are representations of jewelry actually worn—necklaces, bracelets, armlets, or rings. Others again are purely religious, such as the trident or matted hair of Siva, the weapons of Vishnu, and the cooking house of Sítá, the stock type of wifely virtue. Some of these marks were originally, it is most probable, of totemistic association, but