Fertility-rites seem to have survived also in the custom by which young people pelt each other with fruit during the night of the full moon of Tazaungmôn, which occurs usually in November. During the same night there is a general licence to pluck and eat one's neighbour's fruit, so long as it is done without his knowledge. It was suggested in my note on "Thieves' Night at Mandalay" in Part iii. of the Journal of the Burma Research Society for 1914 that the remarkable custom described therein, by which the people surreptitiously remove each other's furniture and pile it up in another street, may be merely an urban extension of the other.
Rain-making.—There can hardly be any doubt that the custom by which the young men and maidens throw water over each other at the new year, which is in April, a little before the rains are due, had its origin in a desire to produce rain, though the fact is now forgotten. In Central Celebes also the young people throw water at each other, but this is not done at the new year, but only when there is a drought.[1]
A similar origin (though this also is now forgotten) may be assigned to the annual festival at Shwezăyan on the Myitngè River, a tributary of the Irrawaddy. Here large fish come up in shoals and are fed by the crowd, some being so tame as to allow their heads to be plastered with gold-leaf. According to the Upper Burma Gazetteer (II. ii. 30), when rain is scarce in the Meiktila district a certain kind of fish is caught and placed in a bowl, offerings made to it, and gold-leaf stuck on its head. It is then let loose in water.
The usual method of producing rain, however, is now a tug of war, in which both sexes join. The object being to keep up the fun as long as possible, or till the rope breaks, the onlookers help the weaker side when it shows signs of giving way. In my note on this subject in Man
- ↑ The Magic Art, i. 277.
