158
"Hook-Swinging" in India.
middle in the notch, and a bolt passing through the cheeks and that tree, like a pump-brake. At the end of the tree were placed two cross pieces, one at the very end, and the other about four feet without it. Each of these cross pieces were about four feet long, and, at the other end had a rope fastened to it. And this was the vehicle for the actors to hang on for a mile or two.
The actors presenting themselves to the priests, being four in number, dressed as the priests were; only on their heads, crowns were made round their temples, of sugar-cane leaves, open at the top, like ducal crowns. The priests brought two tenter-hooks, such as the butchers in Britain hang their meat on, for each actor, and, after some ridiculous ceremony, hooked them on each side of the back-bone, a little above the kidnies. Those hooks had cords fast to them, so they went dancing round the stone, and the priests holding their strings fast, and, after two minutes dancing, they came tamely to the end of the tree, where the cross pieces were fastened, and one was tied up to each end of the cross pieces, and the mob was ready to hale down the other end, and fastened it to the end of the scaffold, … and hauled it over ploughed ground, above a mile, to another grove; and the girl with the pot of fire on her head, walking all the way before. When they came to the end of their journey they were let down, and going into the grove, where was placed another black stone pagod, the girl set her fire before it, and run stark mad for a minute or two, and then fell in a swoon, and in that she lay sweating and foaming at the mouth prodigiously. When she grew mad, the men fell flat on the ground before the image, and then arose after she fell in her trance. She continued immoveable about a quarter of an hour, and then awoke, and seemed to be very sick. The priests interrogated her about what she had seen and heard from the terrestrial gods, and she gave them a satisfactory answer, on which they all bowed to the image, and put their hand on a cow that was there ready, dedicated to the image; and so all departed satisfied."[1]The next account we meet with is that of Sonnerat, whose description of the ceremony as performed at the
- ↑ "Hamilton's Account of the East Indies," in Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, vol. viii., pp. 360–1.
