________________
OF THE HINDUS.
231
the flames. This is supposed to commemorate the legend of Káma's having been consumed by the flames which flashed indignant from the eye of Siva, when the archer god presumed to direct his shaft against the stern deity, and inflame his breast with passion for Párvatí, the daughter of the monarch of the Himálaya Mountains. Kámadeva was reduced to a heap of ashes, although he was afterwards restored to existence by the intercession of the bride of Mahádeva. The bonfires in the Dekhan are usually made in front of the temples of Siva, or sometimes of Vishnu, at midnight, and when extinct the ashes are distributed amongst the assistants, who rub them over their persons. The scattering of the abíra, the singing and abuse, and the ordinary practices of the festival in Upper India, are also in use in the South.
The prominence given to Kámadeva at this season by the Tamil races, and their preserving some remnant of the purport of the primitive festival, are the more interesting, that little or no trace of the chief object of worship is preserved in Upper India. Kámadeva and Vasanta are quite out of date, and legends of a totally different tendency have been devised to explain the purpose of the bonfire and the effigy exposed to it. The heroine of these legends is a malignant witch, or a foul female goblin, or Rákshasi, named Horí, Holí, or Holiká, a word which, although it occurs in some of the Puráňas, is not of a very obvious Sanskrit etymology?.
It appears from the Bhavishyottara Purana, as given below,
