Читать книгу The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India (Vol. 1&2) - William Crooke - Страница 49

Table of Contents

Connected with the same principle it may be noted that in India, as in many other places, there are rites of the nature of the Bona Dea, in which only women take part, and from which males are excluded. In some of these rites nudity forms a part. Thus, in Italy, La Bella Marte is invoked when three girls, always stark naked, consult the cards to know whether a lover is true or which of them is likely to be married.168 A number of similar usages have been discussed by Mr. Hartland. We have already noticed the custom of sun impregnation. Among Hindus, a woman who is barren and desires a child stands naked facing the sun and desires his aid to remove her barrenness. In one of the folk-tales the witch stands naked while she performs her spells.169

The rain custom in India is precisely the same as has been already illustrated by examples from Europe. During the Gorakhpur Famine in 1873–74, there were many accounts received of women going about with a plough by night, stripping themselves naked and dragging the plough over the fields as an invocation of the rain god. The men kept carefully out of the way while this was being done, and it was supposed that if the women were seen by the men the rite would lose its effect. Mr. Frazer on this remarks that “it is not said they plunge the plough into a stream or sprinkle it with water. But the charm would hardly be complete without it.”170 It was on my authority that the custom which Messrs. Frazer and Hartland quote was originally recorded, and I do not remember at the time hearing of this part of the ritual. Later inquiries do not point to it as part of the rite in Upper India.

It may be well to adduce other instances of this nudity rite. In Sirsa, when a horse falls sick, the cure is to kill a fowl or a he-goat and let its warm blood flow into the mouth of the animal; but if this cannot be done quickly, it is sufficient for a man to take off all his clothes and strike the horse seven times on the forehead with his shoe.171 Here the nudity and the blows with the shoe are means to drive off the demon of disease. In Chhattarpur, when rain falls a woman and her husband’s sister take off all their clothes and drop seven cakes of cow-dung into a mud reservoir for storing grain. If a man and his maternal uncle perform the same ceremony, it is equally effective; but as a rule women do it, and the special days for the rite are Sunday and Wednesday. Here we have the custom in process of modification, males, one of whom is a relation in the female line, being substituted for the female officiants.

Another similar means of expelling the demon of disease is given by Mrs. Fanny Parkes in her curious book entitled “Wanderings of a Pilgrim in search of the Picturesque.”172 “The Hindu women in a most curious way propitiate the goddess who brings cholera into the bâzâr. They go out in the evening, about 7 p.m., sometimes two or three hundred at a time, each carrying a lota or brass vessel filled with sugar, water, cloves, etc. In the first place they make pûjâ; then, stripping off their sheets and binding their sole petticoat round their waists, as high above the knee as it can be pulled up, they perform a most frantic sort of dance, forming themselves into a circle, while in the centre of the circle about five or six women dance entirely naked, beating their hands together over their heads, and then applying them behind with a great smack that keeps time with the music, and with the song they scream out all the time, accompanied by native instruments played by men who stand at a distance, to the sound of which these women dance and sing, looking like frantic creatures. The men avoid the place where the ceremony takes place, but here and there one or two men may be seen looking on, whose presence does not seem to molest the nut-brown dancers in the least; they shriek and sing and dance and scream most marvellously.” Here we find the rule of privacy at these nudity rites slightly modified.

Another instance of the nudity rite in connection with cattle disease comes from Jâlandhar.173 “When an animal is sick the remedy is for some one to strip himself and to walk round the patient with some burning straw or cane fibre in his hands.”

Nudity also appears to be in some places a condition of the erection of a pinnacle on a Hindu temple. “The Temple of Arang in Râêpur district and that at Deobalada were built at the same time. When they were finished and the pinnacles (kalas) had to be put on, the mason and his sister agreed to put them on simultaneously at an auspicious moment. The day and hour being fixed by Brâhmans, the two, stripping themselves naked, according to custom on such occasions, climbed up to the top. As they got up to the top each could see the other, and each through shame jumped down into the tank close to their respective temples, where they still stand turned into stone, and are visible when the tank water falls low in seasons of drought.”174

Of the regular nudity rite in case of failure of rain, we have a recent instance from Chunâr in the Mirzapur district. “The rains this year held off for a long time, and last night (24th July, 1892) the following ceremony was performed secretly. Between the hours of 9 and 10 p.m. a barber’s wife went from door to door and invited all the women to join in ploughing. They all collected in a field from which all males were excluded. Three women from a cultivator’s family stripped off all their clothes; two were yoked to a plough like oxen, and a third held the handle. They then began to imitate the operation of ploughing. The woman who had the plough in her hand shouted, ‘O Mother Earth! bring parched grain, water and chaff. Our bellies are bursting to pieces from hunger and thirst.’ Then the landlord and village accountant approached them and laid down some grain, water and chaff in the field. The women then dressed and went home. By the grace of God the weather changed almost immediately, and we had a good shower.”175 Here we see the ceremony elaborately organized; the privacy taboo is enforced, and the ritual is in the nature of sympathetic magic, intended to propitiate Mother Earth.

The nudity rite for the expulsion of disease is also found in Madras. “The image of Mariyamma, cut out of Margosa wood, is carried from her temple to a stone called a Baddukal, in the centre of the village, on the afternoon of the first day of the feast. A rounded stone, about six inches above the ground and about eight inches across, is to be seen just inside the gate of every village. It is what is called the Baddukal or navel stone; it is worshipped in times of calamity, especially during periods of cattle disease; often women passing it with water pour a little on it, and every one on first going out of the village in the morning is supposed to give it some little tribute of attention. The following day all men and women of Sûdra castes substitute garments of leaves of the Margosa, little branches tied together, for their ordinary clothes, and thus attired go with music to the goddess.”176 Here the dress may imply some form of nudity rite, or may be a reminiscence of the time when, like the Juângs of Chota Nâgpur, they wore leaf aprons.

There can be little doubt that rites of this kind largely prevail in India, but, as might naturally be expected, they are very carefully concealed, and it is extremely difficult to obtain precise information about them.