Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/219

 ' Hook- Swinging in hidia. 193

same general conclusion, and the cumulative weight of the evidence is certainly strong, if not indeed irresistible.

It will be noticed that I have as yet made no attempt to account for the important fact that it is by means of hooks that the victim of the "hook-swinging" ceremony is suspended. The only hypothesis I am able to put forward seems hardly adequate support for such a curious and widespread practice. I therefore submit it tentatively and with diffidence. We know that in certain parts the MeriaJi sacrifice might on no account be bound or make any show of resistance, and that in order to prevent escape the bones of his arms and legs were sometimes broken.** Where the rotation of the victim was a feature of the sacrifice, as in the case where he was fastened to the proboscis of the wooden elephant,^ some form of binding, it must be assumed, took place. But it is certain that in other parts this was strictly disallowed, and it is at least conceivable that, if rotation and a regulation against binding anywhere obtained together, as essential to the ritual, the use of a hook or hooks for the fastening of the victim is not improb- able. If then it be the fact that hook-swinging is a commutation of human sacrifice, the use of hooks may possibly be traceable to an unrecorded form of the Meriah in which the victim not only had to be rotated, but at the same time was not permitted to be bound.^^


 * J- G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, vol. i., p. 247.


 * ^ Supra, p. 184.

•• Dr. W. L. Hildburgh has very kindly suggested that the suspension by means of iron (hooks) may be due to a desire to insulate or isolate the hook- swinging devotee from impure or demoniacal influences, and thereby ensure his efficacy as a pure victim. He points out that in early pictures of the ceremony, of which photograph No. 15 is more or less typical, he was touched only by iron. This valuable suggestion is supported by the fact that there are many beliefs common to Southern India and Ceylon, and in the latter the idea is prevalent that iron is strongly anti-demoniacal, while coco-nut fibre (from which rope would often be made) is an unclean substance and consequently not used for certain purposes in connection with magic (cf. " Note on Sinhalese Magic," The Journal of the Koyal Anthropological Institute, vol. xxxviii.,

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