Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/78

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66 llie Holi : a Vernal Festival of the Hindus.

numerous. In the Nilgiri Hills, in Madras, fire-walking is done on the Monday following the new moon of February. The fire is lighted by an Udaya, or priest of Siva, who throws into it a coconut and some plantains, sprinkles a little holy water upon it, burns camphor and incense, and then leads the procession through the fire.^^ At Coonoor, in the same District, during the fire-walking rite, a young bull is forced to go across the fire-pit before the devotees, and the owners of heifers which have given their first calf during the year take precedence of other people in the ceremony, and bring milk which is sprinkled on the burning embers.^o Among the Devangas of Cochin a member of the caste becomes possessed, and is regarded as a Veli- chapad or oracle-giver of the deity. He points out the place where the fire-pit is to be dug. It is filled with six or seven cart-loads of fuel, which is burned until it becomes a mass of glowing embers. The images of th€ gods are worshipped, and the castemen and others who are under a vow purify themselves with their priest, by bathing in the nearest tank or river. " The priest first walks on the glow- ing charcoal, and is at once followed by the castemen, who are in a state of fervent piety. Formerly they used to walk over it three times, but they now do it only once."*^

In another form of the rite a cart-load or two of wood is burned, and the red-hot ashes are strewn on the ground. The temple priest does worship, standing in a diagram representing flowers and drawn on the ground. Then a

^^ Nilgiri Gazetteer (1908), vol. i., p. 325.

" Ibid., vol. i., p. 339. Compare the custom in Ireland, when a man wearing a horse's head rushed through the flames, as surrogate or representa- tive of all other cattle, J. A. MacCuUoch, op. at., p. 215. In Brandenburgh sickness of swine was cured by driving the animals through a fire, which was lighted by the friction of a rope, or by some similar device, F. B. Gummere, Germanic Ori^itts (l8g2), p. 401 : J. Grimm, Tetdoitic Llythology, Eng. trans, (1883), vol. ii., p. 605.

(1912), p. 369.
 * i L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes, vol. ii.