Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/204

 178 '^Hook-Swinging'" in India.

among whom my photographs were taken, including some of the men actually " swung," it was impossible to form any other conclusion than that they were, generally speaking, uninterested in anything beyond its bare performance, and that it was carried out principally, if not indeed wholly, from force of custom. The priest who was in charge of the ceremony could or would at the time throw no light on it further than that it was good for those who took part in it, and that their god (symbolised by a piece of wood painted red and draped with a bit of cotton cloth of the same colour) was pleased with it. One man who had been through the ordeal said that, so far as he himself was con- cerned, two of his children had died and the performance of this rite would save the rest of his family from a similar fate. By some it was explained as being penitential, by others as expiatory, while others again regarded it as an expression of gratitude to their god (or goddess) for benefits received. It seemed not improbable that some of those taking part in it were impelled only by a spirit of bravado or the power of diistoor (custom), and that of those who were really actuated by any definite or indefinite spiritual or religious motive it might almost be said Qnot Jioniines, tot sententiae.

As for the myth related by the people among whom my photographs were taken,^^ it seems, as might be expected, to bear unmistakeable traces of manufacture by or for a mixed population of aborigines, semi-aborigines, and Hindus, such as is to be found inhabitating that particular part of the country. In it, in my view, the cloak of Hindu respectability and prestige has been thrown over a rite which, as I hope to show later, was in all probability an aboriginal one ; and upon Siva has been fathered a practice that was no doubt in vogue long prior to the time at which he became a recognised member of the village pantheon. Indeed, if "hook-swinging" was, as it will later appear it

"^^ Supra, pp. 153-4.