Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/171

 young natives, about ten or twelve years old, are often attired to represent Ram and Seeta; and men with long tails figure as the army of monkeys, headed by their leader H[)u]noomān.

On dit, that the children who personate Ram and Seeta, the handsomest they can select, never live more than a year after the festival—for this I vouch not—it is said they are poisoned.

One ceremony was very remarkable: each native regiment took out its colours and made pooja to the standards, offering them sweetmeats, flowers, rice, and pān, as they do to a god! At Cawnpore I saw the men of the third cavalry riding round the image of the giant, with their colours flying, after having made pooja to them.

At the conclusion of the tamāshā, the figure of Rawan is blown up by the conqueror Ram. At the great Mela at Allahabad, I procured a large marble image of Ram, which came from Jeypore; it is highly gilt and ornamented: in his left hand is the bow of power, and the quiver full of arrows in his right: the trident mark adorns his forehead, and on his head is a crown. See the figure on the left of Ganesh in the frontispiece.

"Ram, the deified hero, was a famous warrior, and a youth of perfect beauty. He was the happy possessor of the divine bow Danush, which the giant Ravuna could not bend, and with which he contested for, and won, the hand of the goddess Seeta. It was ordained, that he only who could bend this bow, and with it shoot a fish, while revolving on a pole, through the left eye, not seeing the fish, but its reflection in a pan of oil, should espouse Seeta. The name of Ram is used beyond the pale of his own sectarists, in supplication and praise."

Rám, rám, is a usual salutation, like our good-morrow, between friends at meeting or parting. It is reverently reiterated at times in aid of abstraction, and in moments of enthusiasm or distress.

On the birthday of this god the Hindoo merchants in general begin their year's accounts; and on this day the gods caused a shower of flowers to fall from heaven.

"Ravuna, a giant who reigned at Ceylon, having seized H[)u]noomān, ordered his tail to be set on fire. The enraged