Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/94

 82 The Holi : a Vernal Festival of the Hindus.

on stilts in the fields, or play with little grooved wheels of wood and brass, to which a long string is tied, the wheel being thrown into the air and dragged back again, the theory being that the crop will grow as high as the stilt- walker, or as long as the swing or wheel ascends into the air.^3 xhe same is the case with the upward movement of the swing in which a man is pulled up and down, which, as we have seen, is part of the observances at the Holi. The circular movement acts as a mode of dispersing the mana of the victim, as in the case of the fire itself These customs may be compared with that current in Southern France, where, at the midsummer fire-lighting, the man who was last married in the village, a type of fertility, has to climb up a ladder and bring down a garland of flowers fixed on the top of the tree, which is split and burned.^^ In the same wa)*, the procession, in its Indian form, seems to imply a sacred marriage or fertility charm. But in the Gond rite the name of the tree associates the custom with some obscure form of rain magic. We must also remember that these mock combats imply a contest between the powers of good and evil, in which the ultimate success of the influence of good is carefully arranged.

Finally, we have reason to suspect that the divination from the smoke of the fire is a broken-down form of magic intended to cause rain or fruitful seasons. In more primi- tive thought the direction of the smoke did not foretell the amount of rain : it caused the rain to fall.

It is hardly necessary to say that this attempt at the interpretation of the complex rites which are included in the Holi observances must be regarded as only tentative. Many of the facts which I have collected in this paper have been intentionally selected from the usages current in those Districts and among those tribes which have been least

^^ Betul Gazetteer (1907), vol. i., p. 91 ; Nagpttr Gazetteer {igoS), vol. i., P- 95-

^*J. G. Frazer, T/ie Golden Bough, Part vii., vol. i. (1913), p. 192.