Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/68

56 April, 1913, or the 21st according- to the Samvat reckoning. But in the older Hindu calendar system Sisira, or the cool season, ended with the full moon of Phalguna, and thus marked the beginning of spring.

This at present, from, the eccentricity of the Hindu luni-solar calendar, does not, in Northern India, represent a well-defined agricultural season. The wheat and other crops of the cold-weather harvest are sown about October, at the close of the rainy season; wheat in the Panjāb is reaped from about the end of April to the beginning of June, while in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh the harvest is finished in March-April. The Holi thus takes place when the most important crops of the spring harvest are approaching maturity. It is a time of leisure from field work. The Hindu poets never tire of describing the spring as a period of rejoicing, and this time when the sun is moving northward in the heavens is the season for marriages.

We find little historical evidence regarding the Holi in Hindu classical literature, where it is obscured by the cult of Agni, the Vedic fire-god. The Sinhalese observe a festival at the beginning of spring, in commemoration, as they say, of the destruction of Mara, the fiend who tempted Buddha. This festival, known in Ceylon as Awaruda, is called by the Siamese Sonkran, the Sankrit saṅkrānti, the passage of the sun from one sign to another. The name and the legend connected with these feasts show that it is identical with the Holi of the Hindus.

The feast commences with the lighting of the fire on the full moon of Phālguna, and usually extends over three days. But in some places the preparations and observances last