Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/199

 '" Hook-Sivinouio'' in India.

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" hook-swinging " has been practised in various parts of that Presidency,

I find only one reference to the performance of the hook- swinging ceremony in other parts of India. Crooke tells us that formerly at Hoshangabad men used to swing themselves from a pole, as in the famous Bengal cJiarak- fnja, but that within British territory it is now uncommon as the village headmen, afraid of being held responsible in case of accident, swing a white pumpkin.-^

The writers upon Hinduism and the religions of India generally are, with one or two exceptions, which I shall notice, silent upon the subject. Wilson, writing in 1832, and referring among other tortures inflicted upon them- selves by the followers of Kali to hook-swinging, states that, the practices " have become familiar to Europeans from the excess to which they are carried in Bengal at the Charak Piijd, a festival which, as a public religious observance, is unknown anywhere else, and which is not directed nor countenanced by any of the authorities of the Hindus, not even by the Tantras." -^ I expect that, so far from being unknown anywhere else than in Bengal, hook- swinging was at that date in a very flourishing condition throughout Madras. However, the fact that Wilson's obser- vations appear to have been m.ide over a very limited area does not in any way detract from the importance and value of the concluding portion of the quotation, to which I shall have occasion to revert later.

Wrlkins, in Modern Hinainsin, refers to the cliarak-puja as taking place in the month Chaitra. " It is said," he proceeds, "that an ancient king, by reason of his great austerities, obtained an interview with Siva, in commemora- tion of which this festival is held. The peculiarity of the worship consists in the fact that the devotees of Siva

^* W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk- Lore of Northern India, vol. ii., p. 175.

"11. H. Wilson, Works, vol. i., p. 265.