________________
224
vernal festival is broken in upon and interrupted by observances of a different complexion-the effect of which may, perhaps, have been to heighten by the contrast the sense of exhilaration when the time for it recurred.
RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
It is also to be remarked, that although traces of the original purport of the festival are palpable enough, yet that Love and Spring have been almost universally deposed from the rites over which they once presided, and that they have been superseded by new and less agreeable mythological creations; new legends have also been invented to account for the origin and object of the celebration, having little or no obvious relation to the practices which are pursued. Thus, in Bengal, the divinity worshipped at the Dola Yátrá is the juvenile Krishna, whilst in Hindustan the personified Holí is a female hobgoblin, a devourer of little children.
As publicly commemorated in Bengal, the Dola Yátrá, or swinging festival, begins on the fourteenth day of the light half of Phalguna (about the middle of March). The head of the family fasts during that day. In the evening fire-worship is performed; after which the officiating Brahman sprinkles upon an image of Krishna, consecrated for the occasion, a little red powder, and distributes a quantity of the same among the persons present. This powder, termed Phalgu, or Abíra, is made chiefly of the dried and pounded root of the Curcuma Zerumbet, or of the wood of the Caesalpinia Sappan, which are of a red colour, or in
