Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/167

 ""^ Hook-Sivinging"' in India. 151

are placed in his loin cloth (for purposes that will appear later), a circlet of bells is fixed on either ankle, and he is then taken up to the ricketty scaffolding already referred to, where two or three men are waiting to bind him to the cross pole. Photographs No. 10, 11, and 12 (Plates IX., X., and XI.) were taken while one of the victims was thus on his way. The method of binding is shown, unfortunately somewhat out of focus, in photograph No. 13 (Plate XII.). The rope attached to the hooks {vide photographs No. 8, 9. 10, II, 12, and 13) is wound several tim.es very tightly round the pole, but was not, in the cases I saw, even once passed round the body of the man himself, whose whole weight was carried by those portions of the flesh through which the two hooks had been inserted. During the binding process the victim bends slightly backwards across the pole, so as to leave as little play as possible between it and himself, and in one or two instances I noticed that during the first two or three revolutions the weight on the hooks was to some slight extent eased by allowing his arms to rest along the pole as seen in photograph No. 14 (Plate XIII.), but for the greater part of the time they are free as shown in photographs 2, 3, and 4. [Here I digress for a moment to remark that, in so far as the method of suspension admits of the arms resting on the cross pole, it would appear to be less cruel than the Madras one illustrated in photograph No. 15 (Plate XIV.), and referred to in detail later on. 2] The binding having been completed, the victim is gently raised from the plat- form in the way already described, and is then rotated for from two to five minutes, during part of which time petals of the flowers with which he has been provided are carelessly strewn on the ground and spectators below. One man while on the pole played a primitive wind instru- ment of the flute type, while another shielded himself from the sun with an umbrella.' The devotee remains suspended


 * Infra, p. i6o.