Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/187

 '" Hook-Sivinging in India. i6i

The Abbe Dubois refers to the custom as Chidi-juari, but does not specifically state that he was ever an eye- witness of it. He is writing of the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century, and gives the following information: —

" Chidi-mari is another torture to which devotees submit them- selves in honour of the goddess Mari-amma, one of the most evil-minded and bloodthirsty of all the deities of India. At many of the temples consecrated to this cruel goddess there is a sort of gibbet erected opposite the door. At the extremity of the crosspiece, or arm, a pulley is suspended, through which a cord passes with a hook at the end. The man who has made a vow to undergo this cruel penance places himself under the gibbet, and a priest then beats the fleshy part of the back until it is quite benumbed. After that the hook is fixed into the flesh thus prepared, and in this way the unhappy wretch is raised in the air. . . . After swinging in the air for the prescribed time the victim is let down again, and, as soon as his wounds are dressed, he returns home in triumph." ^^

In 1S53 the Government of Madras called upon the Chief Magistrate and Superintendent of Police, the District Magistrates, and the Agent to the Governor at Kurnool, to report whether the swinging festival was being still generally observed within their several jurisdictions, and from the replies it would appear that, with the single exception of the Malabar collectorate, the practice at that time prevailed over the whole of the Madras Presidency.

In the Trichinopoly district it was an annual festival celebrated in about ten villages and chiefly by the lower castes of Hindoos, such as the Pullars, Pullies, and Pariahs.

The Chief Magistrate and Superintendent of Police reported that the festival had been held yearly at various places which he enumerated, but that, with the exception of Royapuram, where it took place on the sea-sliore, some

'"J- A. Dubois (trans. H. K. Beauchamp), Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies (3rd ed. ), pp. 597-S.

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