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OF THE HINDUS.
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“the whole of Germany eats and drinks and gives itself up to jokes and sports, as if there was not another day to live, and people wear disguises and masks, or stain their faces and vestures with red and black paint, or run about naked like the Luperci, from whom, I think, this annual exhibition of insanity has descended to us."
The practices of the Carnival, as now observed in Italy, have been trimmed of their excesses, but even in them there remain vestiges which denote their community of origin with the Holí of the Hindus. The time properly embraces the whole period from the beginning of the year, but as in the festival of Phálguna, the last few days are those on which the principal demonstrations take place, and in the licence which is permitted both in speech and conduct, the wearing of masks and disguises, the reciprocal pelting
- feare and shame away; The tongue is set at libertie, and hath no kind of stay. All thinges are lawfull then and done, no pleasure passed by, That in their mindes they can devise, as if they then should die.
He also speaks of the nudity of some of the revellers, an indecency of which even the Holi players are never guilty:Some naked runne about the streetes, their faces hid alone With visars close, that so disguised they may of none be knowne, and of the insults to which decent people were subjected, - No matrone olde, nor sober man can freely by them come.
[Brand's Pop. Ant., I, 64 ff.] According to Spalding, the Carnival is supposed to begin from New Year's Day. Matthews says it lasts eight days, with intervals, before Lent.
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