Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/207

Rh first came to notice of the English, and it is surprising that the accounts we have of it have not been more coloured by its particular connotation. On the whole we may say that the differences not only in the ceremony as actually performed in different places at different times but also in the accounts we have of it are no greater than in the circumstances might be expected.

As regards the geographical distribution of "hook-swinging," all recorded cases come from what for the purpose of this paper I may style Dravidian India, that is to say, from that part of India where the Dravidian race either preponderates or forms a large element in the population, and the assumption that it is an aboriginal or Dravidian ceremony is supported by both positive and negative evidence. From the whole of the Madras Presidency, from certain of the Kolarian districts of Bengal, from the Belgaum district of Bombay, from the Malabar coast, from Hoshangabad in the Central Provinces, the ceremony has been reported, and it cannot be doubted that it has been certainly more widely, if not indeed more frequently, practised than the record would indicate; for when we know that in 1853, with one exception, the rite was a very common one in every district of Madras, we cannot for one moment suppose that its practice suddenly stopped at the political boundary of that province. There are also other indications that the rite has been widely performed. In some parts it may have ceased earlier than in others; in some places it may be a ceremony of comparatively recent importation; all I am concerned here to establish is that over a large tract of Dravidian India the ceremony has at one time or other been a fairly common one. Not only is this the case, but it is not recorded from any other part of India, and there is no mention of it in the sacred books of the Hindus, not even in the Tantras. Further, it will have been noticed that several writers gratuitously remark that