Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/63

 an Aiihwin Festival of the Hindus. 53

singing and dancing, followed on the next day by a second and less important hunt.'^ The Koyis of Madras, after the autumn crop of millet is reaped at the end of October, go out to hunt, and every man must bring back some game, be it only a bird or a mouse. ''^ The Malayalis of the same province have their annual hunt just after the Pongol or harvest-homeJ'^ In the month of October girls of the Munda tribe at Ranchi in Chota Nagpur go out armed with sticks, spears, and axes, and kill and carry off any fowls, kids, pigs, or lambs they can secure, the owners, in their turn, retaliating on them by similar raids. This is said to occur every twelfth year, and is the occasion for much drinking and merry-making among men and women.'* In Bihar on the last day of the Bengali year, people daub themselves with mud and shower it on all whom they happen to meet. In the afternoon they go out with clubs and hunt jackals, hares, and any other animal they may come across in the village.^*^ A similar custom of men dressed as women killing goats "at certain times of the year" is reported from the Central Provinces.^^ In Travancore this has become a State ritual, the Palli Vetta or " Royal hunt- ing," when the Maharaja goes in procession to the suburbs and shoots three times with a bow and arrow at two or three unripe coco-nuts placed at the foot of a tree during the Dasahra.^2 Other tribes have their hunt in the spring, about March-April. This is the rule with the Gadabas,

^®F. B. Bradley-Birt, The Story of an Indian Upland (1905), p. 271 sqq. j E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (1872), p. 216 sq. ; Censtts Report, Bengal, 191 1, vol. i. p. 475 sq. For the similar custom among the Hos, see F. B. Bradley-Birt, Chota Nagpore (1903), p. 107 sqq. For other examples of telepathy in these annual hunts, see Sir J. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. part i. vol. i. p. 122 sqq,

"E. Thurston, op. cit. vol. iv. p. 65. ''^ Ibid. vol. iv. pp. 417, 429.

"■^ North Indian Notes and Queries, vol. iii. (1893), p. 98.

^''G. A. Grierson, Bihar Feasant Life (1885), p. 400 sq.

^^ Punjab Notes and Qjieries, iv. (1857), p. 167.

»2S. Mateer, The Land of Charity {i?>Ti), pp. 167, 188.