Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/90

 7 8 The Holi : a Vernal Festival of the Hindus.

they determined that Skanda or Karttikeya, god of war, should be created to destroy him. They induced Kama, god of love, to inflame Siva, who was then engaged in austerities, with desire to unite with his consort, Parvati. Siva fell a victim to the temptation, but in his wrath he poured a flame of fire from his third eye on Kama, who was burnt to ashes. Hence the fire is lighted annually on the day of his death.''^ The object of the story is clearly to associate the fire with the cultus of Siva.

Again, the pious Prahlada was a follower of Vishnu ; but his father, a wicked demon named Hiranykasipu, to punish his .son's apostacy, induced his sister, Holl or Holika, to torture Prahlada. This scheme came to naught. She herself was burnt to death by Vishnu, \vho entered for the purpose into a pillar of red-hot iron.'^ As before, the object of the tale is to associate the feast with the cultus of Vishnu.

We have seen that the festival marks not only the close of one of the seasons, but also the end of the year in its older form. It is thus a crisis, a No Man's time, a rite de passage, as M. van Gennep terms it. It is at such times, for instance, during the intercalary months, that festivals in the nature of the Saturnalia, accompanied by ribaldry and obscene rites, very commonly occur.^*^ Such observances are associated with one or other of the chief agricultural seasons, especially with seed-time and harvest, or, as in the present case, with the death of the old and the rebirth of the new year. On the principles of mimetic magic, orgiastic rites are supposed to recruit and re-invigorate the exhausted energies of the year that has passed, and to promote fresh and healthy activity in the coming season. This is represented by the burning of Kama, god of

■"^Balaji Sitaram Kothare, op. cit., pp. 97-8: H. H. Wilson, op. cit., vol. ii., pp. 230 et seq.

"* Vishnu Puraiia, trans. H. H. Wilson (1840), p. 126 et seq.: W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore oj Northerti India (1896), vol. ii., p. 313.

^"J. G. Frazer, The Scapegoat, p. 328 et seq.