Page:Footfalls of Indian History.djvu/30

Rh of the Aryan family, amongst Greek festivals of Love and Spring, for example, in Roman Saturnalia, Mediterranean Carnivals, and even so lately as in the old-fashioned Valentine's Day of English childhood.

That the birth of Chaitanya took place on this very day of Holi Puja, thus determining another of its associations, may seem to some of us an accident. But it was no accident that attempted to interpret the festival in terms of Krishna-worship. Some phase of Hinduism—to which, in the elaborateness of its civilisation, the thought of frank Eros-worship was as revolting and incomprehensible as now to ourselves—some such phase took into its consideration this festival, and decided to reinterpret each of its games and frolics in the light of the gambols of Krishna with the cowherds in the forest of Brindaban. The red powder of the spring-time thus became the blood of the demon Metrasur slain by the Lord. It was natural that the young peasants, under the excitement of danger just escaped, should "blood" one another, and should yearly thereafter burn the effigy of Metrasur in celebration of their deliverance. We can almost hear the voices of those who made the ingenious suggestion!

In the Holi-puja, then, as an instance, we can trace the efforts of some deliberately Hinduising power. This power, it is safe to suppose, is the same that has determined the sacred year as a whole. As a power it must have been ecclesiastical