1 8 The Legends of Krishna.
the observances of the Holi feast, which is nowhere cele- brated with more enthusiasm than in places where the worship of Krishna is most popular. Most people are now agreed that these rites of the sacred fire of spring are in the way of a charm to secure the kindly influence of sun- shine and the fertility of crops and cattle. If this be so, it supplies another indication that Krishna was originally a local god of agriculture and cattle^ with whose cultus such rites would naturally be connected. To this may be added some facts pointing in the same direction. The first is that in India, as in other places, omens are drawn of the prospects of the coming season from the way in which the smoke and blaze of the fire ascend.^ It was probably from some rural oracle like this that at the temple of the Ismenian Apollo divination was practised by observing the appearance of the sacrificial flame and the ashes of the burnt offerings. In fact, this habit of observing the smoke and fire was reduced to a regular science, known as Pyromanteia or Kapnomanteia.^
Another fact from which the same inference may be drawn is the prominence of mock combat and abuse, par- ticularly of women, during the Holi.^ Customs of this kind are found in many parts of the world. In Greece we have the women's race in honour of Dionysus ; the contest of the Spartan boys at the Plane-tree-grove ; the raillery directed at women ; the yearly contest of maidens with stones and clubs in honour of Athena; the rites of the Daedala ; the sham fight at the Eleusinia ; the Lithobolia or stone-throwing custom at Troezen ; the Taurokalapsia or Thessalian bull-fight, and so on.* In Rome the same
- Crooke, Agriciilhiral and Rural Glossa7-y, 125.
- Sophocles, CEd/. i?£j:, 21 ; Antig., iQO^seqq.; Herodotus, viii., 134; Eu- ripides, Pha-n., 1285 seqq. ; Frazer, Golden Bough, ii., 270 ; Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities (2nd ed.), i., 646.
^ Growse, loc. cit„ 92 ; Crooke, Popular Religion, ii., 316.
- Pausanias, iii., 13, 7; ix., 32, 2; Frazer, Golden Bough, i., 91 seqq.;
Frazer, Pausanias, ii., 492; iii., 267 seqq.; Herodotus, iv., 180.
