Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/206

 I So "" Hook- Swinging in India.

original ritual, and in course of time been overlaid or even partially superseded by other rites foreign to its nature at its point of departure from human sacrifice. But for all that its main features stand out fairly clear, and it is hardly open to doubt that the authorities I have cited are referring to ceremonies so very closely related that they may for our present purpose be regarded as essentially and in origin one and the same. It is perfectly certain that the Madras rite illustrated in photograph 15 and the Bengal one depicted in photographs 1-14 are different only so far as regards unim- portant details, and that the other Southern form, described by Anantha Iyer and Hoole, in which the victim is suspended from a scaffolding erected on a car or trolly which itself is drawn round a temple,^^ is very closely allied to them and either an "early" or "late" form of the ceremony, or, as is equally likely, a local variation. Duarte Barbosa,*° it is true, makes no mention of any rotatory movement, but) if my theory be correct, he has either omitted to record this or, which I regard as perhaps still more probable, we have here a case of pre-nuptial sacrifice performed on the pattern of a com.muted form of human sacrifice offered for other purposes, — a pattern that had become more or less stereo- typed. Gaspero Balbi,'*^ again, makes no reference to any rotatory movement, but in the case described by Hamilton,'*- it would appear that the victim, after having the hooks in- serted in his back, was made to dance round the black stone for two minutes prior to being suspended. Nor, it is true, does the Abbe Dubois *^ describe a circular movement, but, as I have already observed, he does not say that he per- sonally witnessed the ceremony, and it is probable that he did not. The term "hook-swinging" is so very generally used, even by those who have never seen the ceremony itself, that although, as has been pointed out, a misnomer, it has probably been current from the time when the rite

^^ Supra, pp. 166-8, 159-60. ^'^ Supra, pp. 155-6. ^'^ Supra, pp. 156-7.
 * ^ Supra, pp._l57-8. *^ Supra, p. 161.