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RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
its appropriate appellation, in the Tamil language, Pongal, which according to a native authority, Tiruvákádu Muthia, signifies literally boiled rice, and metaphorically, prosperity or rejoicing'. The word is therefore another denomination of the festival of the Makara Sankranti, or sun's entrance into Capricorn; or, in the words of the same writer, the first day of the Indian January, corresponding, agreeably to the mode of computation followed in the Dekhan, with the 1st of Tye or Taishya, the Paushya of Hindustan, which (as in the latter) falls about the 12th of January. The following particulars of the festival are from a paper published in the Asiatic Annual Register for 1807 by the intelligent native already named, Tiruvákádu Muthia.
“On the day on which the sun enters Capricorn, which is the beginning of the auspicious period of the Uttarayana, the Hindus offer libations of water, mixed with tila and kuśa, or sesamum seeds and sacred grass, to the manes of their ancestors. They then boil rice with milk and sugar; and when they see it bubble up, they cry aloud “Pongal, O pongal!' meaning, Let the world be prosperous and rejoice. The boiled rice, along with esculent fruits, is offered to the sun, invoking him for the general good, and the production of abundance. Early the next morning, the husband
Pongal, according to Rottler, Tam. Dict., means “a bubbling up"?; in Telugu [and Canarese] Pongali denotes a dish of rice mixed with boiled milk and sugar and other articles.- Campbell, Tel. Dict.
