Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 611

THE FEAST OF LAMPS
by men
of their
own
571
caste, the Jettis being generally very
clever in surgery.
At the end of November or the beginning of December
the Deepavali (feast of lamps) is celebrated.
It occupies
several days.
Every evening while it lasts the Hindus
place lighted lamps at the doors of their houses or hang
paper lanterns on long poles in the street. This feast
appears to be specially dedicated to fire. But as it is
held at a time when most of the cereal crops are ready for
harvesting, the cultivators in many places are then in the
habit of going together in procession to their fields, and
there offering up to their crops prayers and sacrifices of
rams or goats, in order, as it were, to give thanks to their
crops for having ripened and become fit for the food of
man. Every husbandman also, on three days in succes-
sion, proceeds to the dungheap which he has collected for
manuring his fields and prostrates himself before it, pre-
senting to it offerings of flowers, lighted tapers, boiled rice
and fruits, and begging it humbly to fertilize his lands and
to procure him abundant harvests.
This worship, it may
be remarked, very much resembles that which the Romans
used to pay to their god Sterculius.
The Nagara-panchami is another great feast. It is
celebrated in the beginning of February in honour of snakes,
and especially of the most venomous species, such as the
cobra, called naga or nagara by the Hindus.
This reptile,
which is very common and the most dangerous of all, is
honoured in a very special manner on this occasion. The
people pay visits to the holes where snakes of this sort are
generally known to remain concealed, and make offerings
to them of milk, plantains, &c.
I shall have something
more to say about this strange cult later on.
But the most solemn of all feasts, at any