Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/216

 190 ^^ Hook-Szviitgmg'' in India.

remained it would be dispelled on reading the words that were often chanted by the victim : —

" As the tears stream from thine eyes, So may the rain pour down in August ; As the mucus trickles from thy nostrils, So may it drizzle at intervals ; As thy blood gushes forth, So may the vegetation sprout ; As thy gore falls in drops, So may the grains of rice form."'"

Let me not be misunderstood. I am not arguing for the view that the hook-swinging of Bengal is or was only or even primarily a rain-producing ceremony. I go no further than to suggest that it is not an altogether unwarrantable assumption that its date of celebration, when and where such celebration is an annual one, was not improbably fixed under the influence of its supposed efficacy upon this par- ticular need, and in support of such assumption I point first to the fact that the Aleriah, with which I conceive hook- swinging to be closely related, was not uncommonly regarded as directly bearing upon the fall of rain, and, secondly, to the testimony of Sir W. W. Hunter to the effect that human sacrifices for rain were not unknown among the aboriginal people of that part of India,^^ and, thirdly, to Colonel Dalton's evidence that among the Bhagots it was an annual custom to

"Make an image of a man in wood, put clothes and ornaments on it, and present it before the altar of a Mahadeo. The person

hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as long as possible ; for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the supply of rain." Again, using Colonel Campbell, op. cit., p. 182, as an authority. Dr. Frazer, op. cit., pp. 248-9, writes: " In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields, and there hung it on a pole." See also Col. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal y p. 2S8.

^" H. H. Risley, The People of India, p. 62. ~^ Supra, p. 189.