Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/218

 192 '' Hook-Swinging^^ in India.

their execution having been, at least in part, intended as a rain charm. "°

So much then for hook-swinging as a periodical rite. We also find it resorted to, as I have shown above," in times and circumstances of personal or public crisis or calamity, in precisely those circumstances, that is to say, when the most potent sacrifices known would be offered. PvVen when carried out as an annual ceremony, its individual performers would appear often to regard it as of equal efficacy with sacrifice.'^^ Again, the frequency- with which a child is swung either alone or carried by another per- former,'^^ no less than the occasional accompaniment of animal sacrifices,^^ goes to support my view.®^ Where we find, as we sometimes do, that the suspension and rotation of a human victim is succeeded by that of a human being in effigy ^^ or of an animal or even a vegetable product,®^ we can only conclude that all traces of its former sacrificial origin have been so far lost that nothing but the form, bare and meaningless, remains.

Whether, then, as a periodical or only occasional rite, I submit that tested by its own evidence hook-swinging has about it that which, supported by certain points of resembl- ance to a particular form of sacrifice and by the fact that we find it just where we might expect to find rudimentary remains of human sacrifice and not elsewhere, justify the assumption that in human sacrifice is the origin of this peculiar rite to be found. Each line of enquiry leads to the

'* I Sam., chap, xxiv., v. 6. J. G. Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, vol. i., pp. 22-3.

"^///ra, p. 164. '^ Supra, passim. '^ Supjn, pp. iGy-g. ^'^Sitprn, p. 164.

children for Meriah sacrifice, " considering the beatification of their souls certain, and their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable possible." J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, vol. i., p. 245, quoting Major Macpherson, op. cit.
 * ' It is perhaps worth noting that the Kandhs in distress often sold their

^'^ Supra, p. 169. ^^ Supra, p. 173.