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OF THE HINDUS.
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have had originally no such specific application, but to have been intended to secure, generally, the healthiness of infants*, by the propitiation of a goddess termed, apparently at the original institution of this rite, Shashthí, but now more commonly Sítala. According to the legend, the ceremony was instituted by King Priyavrata, in gratitude to Shashthí for restoring his dead son, Suvrata, to life'. It should be celebrated on the sixth day of the light fortnight in every month, but this frequent repetition of it has fallen into disuse. Shashthi is said to be so named because she is a sixth part of the goddess Prakriti, but she evidently derives her name from the day of the fortnight of which she is a personification. She is the daughter of Brahmá, and wife of Kartikeya, the general of the hosts of heaven, and is to be meditated upon as a female dressed in red garments, riding on a peacock and holding a cock. Sítala, in its ordinary sense, means cold, and is here used as an epithet, in reference, perhaps, to the occasional coolness of the day at this time of the year, as distinguished from the sixth lunar days in other months. The word seems also to have suggested the principal observance on this occasion. Cooking on this day is interdicted, victuals must be dressed on the day preceding, and on this eaten cold. Images of Shashthí are rarely made, but sometimes a small doll represents the god
* [See A. K. Frobes, Râs Mâlâ. London: 1856, II, 326 ff.]
From the Brahma Vaivartta Purana. Prakriti Khanda, s. 40.
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