Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/628

318 "You will remember last year I sent you a picture of a 'Corn Baby,' and you wrote asking me to send you a clearer picture. I thought that the best picture I could send, if obtainable, would be an actual 'Corn Baby,' and now I have actually secured one which should arrive a few days after this letter. In the Central Provinces it is called Chitkuar. The word is made up of the word Chait, the harvest month [March-April], and Kuar or Kumār, 'a son or child.' It is prepared in the following way. When the field is all but reaped two or three ears of grain are plucked from the remaining standing grain. The grain is pressed out of the ears, and scattered among the standing corn. The standing corn remaining is then reaped, and the bunches for the Chitkuar made. A coconut is then broken, and a piece of it offered on a small fire with Ghi, or clarified butter. A little Chana or gram [Cicer arietinum] and wheat is brought from the house, a small portion of a bunch is thrown into the fire, and the remainder eaten by the worshippers. The Chitkuar is then taken to the threshing floor, and after the grain is all winnowed, they take the grain from the cars of the bunch forming the Chitkuar and boil it, and after worshipping the threshing floor, eat the boiled grain. This latter ceremony takes place at the time of the Amāvasya, or day of the new moon, in the month Jyeshth [May- June]. This Chitkuar was brought to me on 26th May. I then found that my friend, to my disappointment, was indisposed to give it to me, but he went with the 'Corn Baby' to his companions and consulted with them. They settled matters by taking a few ears of the bunch, and allowed me to have the remainder. It was fixed on a wooden stake, which I have sawn off to admit of its being sent by post. I understand that there is no religious significance about the stake."

Dr. Rendel Harris adds that the specimen he has received consists of only a bunch of stalks of wheat. It may be noted that the fire sacrifice above described is the Homa, which forms a part of all religious ceremonies. A full account of this ceremony will be found in Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, The Rites of the Twice-born, Oxford, 1920, p. 225 et seqq.