Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/81

Rh nately powdered and drenched, till the floor on which we sat was covered some inches in depth with a kind of pink and orange-coloured mud. Such a scene I never witnessed in my life."

At some places, on this day, the rite of swinging the images of the gods is performed. In the olden days the hook-swinging of a human victim fastened to a pole was done, but this, except perhaps in some very remote parts of the country, has fallen into disuse since it was prohibited by the British Government. In the Chhindwāra District of the Central Provinces the Bhumka or medicine-man of the forest tribes used to be swung on the Meghnād post at the Holi feast, a hook being fastened in the flesh of his back; now he is secured to the cross-beam by a rope. In Hoshangābād the rite is known as "the swinging of the hero" (bīr phirnā). "This was originally hook-swinging (charak pūjā), but the hook is nearly abolished now. In some villages, for the name of the thing, a hook is passed through the swinger's back, but his body is supported by a rope passed round his waist. Sometimes a pumpkin is swung round seven times, three one way and four the other. The man who swung used generally to be a man who had vowed to do it in case some wish was performed; if no such person appeared, some one had to be hired for the purpose. If a woman makes a vow, she climbs up the pole, but does not swing, and never did. The tall upright pole, painted red, with pegs in it to climb up by, is called Meghnāth, but there does not seem to be a reference to the brother of Rawun, or, at any rate, none is now understood. Almost every village of any size has a Meghnāth."