Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/160

 14S "Hook-Swinging'' in India.

wheel or something that revolves, and that the literal translation of charak-pnja would perhaps be the " wheel form of worsliip," or "revolving ceremony."  Sivinging postulates movement of a suspended body in a vertical plane as an important, \{ not essential, feature of the rite, whereas, not only as carried out at the present day is it a rotatory movement only that is practised, but from descrip- tions of older forms of the ceremony it would appear that swinging never occurred, but that suspension on hooks and rotation in some form or other were the peculiar and characteristic notes of the ceremony. Even where rotation was absent, swinging does not appear to have taken its place. I emphasize the fact that it is a rotatory and not a vertical motion that is practised, not only because it is necessary to the understanding of my description and the photographs accompanying it, but because it is in itself an important point to which I shall have occasion to revert later.

So far as I am aware, "hook-swinging" in the forms in which it is recorded and in which it still takes place is a purely Indian custom, and, therefore, so far as possible, its origin and significance are mainly and most profitably to be sought, not in ceremonies of remote if not entirely fancied affinity and resemblance in some widely separated part of the world, — assuming, as is very possibly the case, that such exist,^ — but in India itself I therefore propose, firstly, to describe a "hook-swinging" festival of which I was recently an eye-witness ; secondly, to collect, examine, and compare such other descriptions and data as are avail- able ; and, thirdly, in the light thus afforded to suggest the origin and significance of a ceremony which has so far almost escaped serious notice. Indeed, the fact that the rite has not yet been at all closely analysed by others con- stitutes my only excuse for attempting to deal with it.

'Some North American Indians perform a Sun Dance which lias certain features in common with the "hook-swinging" ceremony.