Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/29

 Til c Legends of Kr ish na. 19

custom is represented by the Equirria or Mamuralia, the Matronalia Festa, the Liberalia and the Lupercalia, in which there was a mock human sacrifice, the foreheads of the youths being smeared with the knives still dripping from the slaughter of the victims.^ This, we know, was a common charm to promote the fertility of the crops, and a survival of rites like these may possibly be traced in the modern carnival.

In India we have many instances of the same type — the Bagwah or stone-throwing in Kumaun; the Barra, or tug of war between adjoining villages, which is part of the funeral rites of the Maghs ; the combat between the people of the two quarters of the town of Pushkar; the sham fights in the Hindu Kush, where women are privileged to abuse the Ra or chief ; the stone-throwing rite at Ahmadnagar, which if discontinued causes a plague of rats, if well done brings abundant rain ; and among the Bhils a branch of a tree is planted in the ground which the men try to uproot and are belaboured by women. -

Going further afield, we have the scramble to ascend a tree among the Nahuas of Western America ; the flinging of cocoanuts as a rain charm in Ceylon; the Dayak combat to scare evil spirits; the stoning custom at Seoul in Corea; the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush flinging an iron ball on a holiday or fighting with snowballs at the Taska feast ; the Burmese women at the new year flinging water over each other ; the abuse of women and unrestrained sexual licence at the Nanga rites in Fiji, which may be a survival of group- marriage, now invested with a ritual significance ; the fling- ing of stones at the doors of the cells occupied by holy men

• Smith, loc. ciL, i., 753.

- Crooke, loc. cit., ii., 321; North Indian Notes and Queries, iii., 99; Risley, Tribes and Castes, ii., 34; Broughton, Letters fioni a Mahratia Camp, 356 seqq. And compare Frazer, Pausanias, ii., 492; iii., 267; Indian Antiquary, v., 5 ; vi., 29.

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