Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/214

 1 88 '"Hook-Swinging'' in India.

contrast to the procedure in certain other places, where the victims freely and gladly offered themselves. Again, the Meriali was generally adorned with garlands, and the hook- swinging devotee was frequently, if not always, similarly decorated. Garlands certainly were a very important and noticeable feature of the ceremony I was present at, and that at a time and in a locality where flowers would have to be obtained from elsewhere, possibly by purchase.

I think it will now be agreed that there are sufficient points of resemblance between hook-swinging in one or other of its forms and certain well authenticated types of human sacrifice to support the assumption that the former is a survival of the latter, and it now remains to be seen whether, apart from such similarity, there is either in the rite itself or its attendant circumstances anything pointing to this view.

We find it as a ceremony occurring annually or at longer intervals,and clearly in- some cases performed as or descended from some form of fertility rite. How else can we explain the throwing of the oranges and lemons in the description of Duarte Barbosa,*"- or the flowers showered among the people in the instances witnessed by Hoole and myself.'*®^ The close connection of the Karwar ceremony with the fate of the crops has already been fully noticed.^* When per- formed as annual rite it would appear, as in the case of the Meriah, often to have been regarded as a rite of general and all-round efficacy,^^ and in some cases to have been connected, incidentally as it were, * with the approach of the rains upon which, in a country like India, so very much depends. In the pseudo hook-swinging ceremony,

^- Supra, p. 156. I am aware that such practices have been regarded {e.g., by Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 325), as originating "in the idea of giving food to the evil influences to induce them to be propitious and depart," and that the authority mentioned would probably consider the oranges and lemons to be thrown with this intention.

"^^ Supra, pp. 151, 160. '^^ Supra, p. 186. ^'^ Supra, passim.