ney with punctuality and despatch. The name
'fire of heaven,' by which the midsummer fire is sometimes popularly
known, clearly indicates a consciousness of the connection between the
earthly and the heavenly flame." The obscene songs of the Holi appear
to be the relic of a former period of promiscuous sexual debauchery,
which, through the multiplied act of reproduction, was intended to
ensure that nature should also reproduce on a generous scale. The red
powder thrown over everybody at the Holi is said to represent the seed
of life. The gifts of Easter eggs seem to be the vestige of a rite
having the same object. At a wedding in the Lodhi caste the bride
is seated before the family god while an old woman brings a stone
rolling-pin wrapped up in a piece of cloth, which is supposed to be a
baby, and the old woman imitates a baby crying. She puts the roller
in the bride's lap, saying, "Take this and give it milk." The bride
is abashed and throws it aside. The old woman picks it up and shows
it to the assembled women, saying, "The bride has just had a baby,"
amid loud laughter. Then she gives the stone to the bridegroom, who
also throws it aside. This ceremony is meant to induce fertility,
and it is supposed that by making believe that the bride has had
a baby she will quickly have one. Similar rites are performed in
several other castes, and when a girl becomes adult her lap is filled
with fruits with the idea that this will cause it subsequently to be
filled with the fruit of her womb. The whole custom of giving dolls
to girls to play with, perhaps originated in the belief that by doing
so they would afterwards come to play with children.

The dances of the Kol tribe consist partly of symbolical enactments
of events which they desired to be successfully accomplished. Some
variations of the dance, Colonel Dalton states, represent the
different seasons and the necessary acts of cultivation that each
brings with it. In one the dancers, bending down, make a motion with
their hands, as though they were sowing the grain, keeping step with
their feet all the time. Then comes the reaping of the crop and
the binding of the sheaves, all done in perfect time and rhythm,
and making, with the continuous droning of the voices, a quaint
and picturesque performance. [139] The Karma dance of the Gonds
and Oraons is also connected with the crops, and probably was once
an enactment of the work of cultivation. [140] The Bhils danced at
the