Page:Durga Puja - With Notes and Illustrations.djvu/35

 Roxburghianus, Arn) yearlings, dried ulu grass, (Imperata cylindrica, Beauv) and a plank from mango timber. The carpenter then drills holes in the plank at an auspicious moment, and the kumar builds the framework upon it. Rough skeletons of the idols are made with ulu straw, and then a dough of earth from the Hugli, cow-dung, and husk of rice is made up, and with the earth thus prepared the kumar moulds up the figures. These are seven in number, four of which are removeable, and the principal three, which are centrical in the group, are attached to one another. All the figures, except one of the lower-most figures of the central group and the right-most one, are first made headless. The heads are prepared by the kumar at his house. The figures are then allowed to dry for about a fortnight or twenty days, when again an auspicious moment is fixed upon for covering over the idols with a plaster of finer earth, and it is then that the heads to those figures, which had not been fixed unto them, and the fingers of all the figures, are put on. The snake, which encircles one of the centrical figures, is at this time formed, so also the top-piece or chal as it is called. The small nooks on both sides of the frame-work are next fitted up with two groups of figures, and miniature weapons and the head of