The Holi : a Vernal Festival of the Hindus. 7 1
he gets to the top he takes the piece o{ gur and sHps down, and gets off as rapidly as he can. This is done five or six times over, with the greatest good humour, and generally ends with an attack of the women en masse on all the men. It is a regular Saturnalia for the women, who lose all fear and respect even for a Settlement Officer ; and on one occasion when he was looking on, he only escaped by the most abject submission, and presentation of rupees." ^^
Among the Bhils of Western India at the Holi "another of their frolics is to plant a small tree branch firmly in the ground. Round this men and women gather, the women round the tree, the men outside. One man rushing in tries to uproot the tree, when all the women set on him and thrash him so soundly that he has to retire. Another man steps in, and he too is belaboured, and makes his escape. Thus the play goes on, till one man luckier or thicker skinned than the rest, bears off the tree, but seldom without a load of blows that cripples him for days." ^^ With this we may compare the custom among the Kafirs, at the Dizanedu festival in July, when women have the privilege of seizing men and ducking them in streams.^ In Madras, on the third day of the Holi, the Lambadis, gipsy-like carriers, sing, dance, and dress in gala attire. The men snatch away the food which has been prepared by the women, and run away amidst protests from the women, who sometimes chastize them.^^
It is significant, in this connection, that among the Bhils the Bhagoria, or day before the Holi, is the time when the young men and their friends abduct girls ; some time after due payment of the bride-price is made, and the unions are legalized. ^^
- C. A. Elliott, op. cit., pp. 126 et seq.
^^ Bombay Gazetteer {1880), vol. vi., p. 21.
^'Sir G. S. Robertson, The Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush (1896), p. 592.
^^E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909), vol. iv., p. 230.
- ^ Captain C. E. Luard, Ethttographic Survey, Central India (1909), p. 24.
