Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/72

 6o The Holi : a Vei'ual Festival of the Hzndtis.

it with Holy Water, wherein they fix the Tree, crowning it with Flags aloft, and about the Body up to the Green Boughs they bind Wisps of Straw, to which they put Fire, and look earnestly on the Flame, according to the Ascent of which the BracJuiiin pronounces his Auguries : then they ofifer Rice and Flowers, painting their bodies with the Ashes, departing with a Mace of Flowers carried before them, beating of Drums and a great Noise." ^* In the Chanda District of the Central Provinces, a coconut is hung from a pole in the middle of the Holi fire ; when it falls the people secure the burnt kernel, eat it, and smear themselves with the ashes from the fire. This coconut has been interpreted as a survival of human sacrifice, the nut bearing a curious resemblance to a human head ; but this seems doubtful.^^ The Pavras. a forest tribe of Khandesh, dig a pit, into which a wooden pole is thrust and lighted at night.^'^ In the Jabalpur District, in the centre of the fire a pole is fixed with a flag on the top. When it burns the direction in which it falls is regarded as an omen, — east and west being lucky ; south, the home of the dead, unlucky ; north, neutral. If the flag burns and floats up in the air, severe famine is indicated.^'^ . In other parts of the same Province, one month before the Holi feast, a stick of the castor-oil plant, which possesses mystical powers of removing tabu or curing witchcraft,^^ is fixed in the ground, and round it the materials for the fire are piled.^^ In the Balaghat District, a piece of the sacred cotton-tree {semal) must form part of the pile.-*^

i-* A New Account of the East Indies, ed. by W. Crooke, Hakluyt Society (1912), vol. ii., pp. 79-80.

1* Chanda Gazetteer (1909), vol. i., p. 91.

^^ Bombay Gazetteer {iSSo), vol. xii., p. 100.

'^'' Jubbulpore Gazetteer (1909), vol. i., p. 90.

^*W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk- Lo7-e of Northern India (1896), vol. ii., pp. 20, 275.

19 Yeotmal Gazetteer (1908), vol. i., p. 53.

^° Balaghat Gazetteer (1907), vol. i., p. 123.