Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/52

 42 The Dasahra :

broken at the grave to appease the spirit, which is dreaded because the child had not undergone the rites of purifica- tion. ^^ The Kandhs of the same province feed the souls of the dead annually with rice at the harvest and Dasahra festivals.^" Among the Kammas, when a woman dies during the lifetime of her husband, a Brahman lady, who must not be a widow, is invited to personate the deceased at the Dasahra. She is anointed and washed with turmeric and saffron, both demon-scaring substances, and is decorated with sandal paste and flowers. Clothes, sweets, fruit, and betel-leaf are offered to her, and the women of the family bow before her and receive her blessing, believing that it comes from their dead relation.^^

The Korachas of Mysore do not observe the Hindu mind-rite {srdddhd) for the dead. But during the Dasahra or on the Mahalaya new-moon day (30th September) they set up a jar in the house, place new clothes near it, if they can afford to do so, and do worship by burning incense and breaking a coco-nut in the name of the deceased ancestors.^^ The Rajput hero who recovered the town of Bundi from the Musalmans left the mark of his sword on a staircase slab of the palace, and this is annually worshipped by every member of the Hara tribe at the Dasahra. ^^ During the Dasahra at Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, " the city at this time is required to be purified, but the purification is effected by prayer rather than by water-cleansing." ^^

It is perhaps a symbol of these mourning and purgative rites that the images of the gods are made to sit unmoved during the first nine days of the feast. On the morning

-^Census Report, Central Provinces (1911), vol. i. p. 159.

'^^ Ethnographic Survey, Cettti-al Provijica; part vii. (191 1), p. 55.

^^ Ibid, part iv. (1907), p. 34.

"'^Ethnographic Survey, Mysore, No. vii. (1906), p. 15.

■'•^J. Tod, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 511.

^^H. A. Oldfield, Sketches from Nipal {\%^o), vol. ii. p. 343 sq.