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RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
with real or with mock comfits, and in some places sprinkling with water or throwing powder over each other, obvious analogies exist'.
There is another practice which presents also a parallel, the extinguishing of the Carnival. This, in Italy, is refined into frolicsome attempts to blow out each other's lighted candles; but the notion appears to be the same as the burning of the Holí, the lighting and extinction of the bonfire, and scattering of the ashes.
There is another of the usages of the Holí which finds a parallel in modern times, althongh at a somewhat later period. It is mentioned by Colonel Pearce, that one subject of diversion during the Holí, is to send people on errands and expeditions that are to end in disappointment, and raise a laugh at the expense of the person sent. He adds that, Sura-addaula, the Nawáb of Bengal, of Black Hole celebrity, was very fond of making Holí Fools?. The identity of this practice with making April Fools as noticed by Colonel Pearce, is concurred in by Maurice, who remarks, “that the boundless hilarity and jocund sports, prevalent on the 1st day of April in England,
Amongst the Portuguese the practices are these: “on the Sunday and Monday preceding Lent, as on the first of April in England, people are privileged here (Lisbon) to play the fool. It is thought very jocose to pour water on any person who passes, or throw powder in his face, but to do both is the perfection of wit.”-Southey's Letters [p. 497].
? Asiatic Researches, Vol. II, p. 334.
