marriage ceremony, the Rânî made her appearance in the Baiga's house. The Baiga himself was not present, but his wife, who was at home, was very indignant at this flightiness on the part of the Rânî, and the idea of her going about the country the morning after her marriage so shocked the Baigâin's sense of propriety, that she gave the Rânî a good setting down, and called upon her to explain herself, and as she could give no satisfactory account of her conduct, she was punished by being married every three years, instead of yearly as before." The mock marriage of Ghâzi Miyân, to which some reference has been already made, a very favourite rite among the Musalmâns and low Hindu castes of the NorthWestern Provinces, is very possibly the survival of some non-Aryan rite of this kind, performed to secure the annual revival of the year and the powers of vegetation. THE DRAVIDIAN SATURNALIA. Some of the Drâvidian tribes enjoy the Saturnalia in other forms. Thus, the Gond women have the curious festival known as Gurtûtnâ or "breaking of the sugar." "A stout pole about twelve or fifteen feet high is set up, and a lump of coarse sugar with a rupee in it placed on the top; round it the Gond women take their stand, each with a little green tamarind rod in her hands. The men collect outside, and each has a kind of shield made of two parallel sticks joined with a cross-piece held in the hand to protect themselves from the blows. They make a rush together, and one of them swarms up the pole, the women all the time plying their rods vigorously; and it is no child's play, as the men's backs attest next day. When the man gets to the top, he takes the piece of sugar, slips down, and gets off as rapidly as he can. This is done five or six times over with the greatest good-humour, and generally ends with an attack of the women en masse upon the men. It is the regular Saturnalia for the women, who lose all respect, even for a settlement officer; and on one occasion when he was looking on, he only escaped by the most abject submission and presentation of rupees."1 The Bhils of Gujarât plant a small tree or branch firmly. in the ground. The women stand near it, and the men outside. One man rushing in tries to uproot the tree, and the men and women fall upon him and beat him so soundly that he has to retire. He is succeeded by another, who is belaboured in the same way, and this goes on till one man succeeds in bearing off the tree, but seldom without a load of blows which cripples him for days.* All these mock combats have their parallels in English customs, such as the throwing of the hood at Haxey, the football match at Derby, the fighting on Lammas Day at Lothian, and hunting of the ram at Eton.' THE DESAULI OF THE HOS. The Hos of Chutia Nâgpur have a similar festival, the Desauli held in January, "when the granaries are full of grain, and the people are, to use their own expression, 'full of devilry!' They have a strange notion that at this period men and women are so overcharged with vicious propensities that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing for the time full vent to the passions. The festival, therefore, becomes a sort of Saturnalia, during which servants forget their duty to their masters, children their reverence for their parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of gentleness, modesty, and delicacy; they become raging Bacchantes. It opens with a sacrifice to Desauli of three fowls, a cock and two hens, one of which must be black, and offered with some flowers of the Palâsa tree (Butea frondosa), bread made from rice flour and sesamum seeds. The sacrifice and offering are made by the village priest, if there be one, or if not by any elder of the village who possesses the necessary legendary lore; and he Hoshangâbâd Settlement Report," 126 sq. Bombay Gazetteer," vi. 29. ' Dyer, "Popular Customs," 32, 75, 85, 353 sq. prays that during the year they are going to enter on they and their children may be preserved from all misfortune and sickness, and that they may have seasonable rain and good crops. Prayer is also made in some places for the souls of the departed. At this period an evil spirit is supposed to infest the locality, and to get rid of it, men, women, and children go in procession round and through every part of the village with sticks in their hands, as if beating for game, singing a wild chant and vociferating loudly, till they feel assured that the bad spirit must have fled, and they make noise enough to frighten a legion. These religious ceremonies over, the people give themselves up to feasting, drinking immoderately of rice-beer till they are in a state of wild ebriety most suitable for the purpose of letting off steam."1 With these survivals of perhaps the most primitive observances of the races of Northern India we may close this survey of their religion and folk-lore. To use Dr. Tylor's words in speaking of savage religions generally, "Far from its beliefs and practices being a rubbish heap of miscellaneous folly, they are consistent and logical in so high a degree as to begin, as soon as even roughly classified, to display the principles of their formation and development; and these principles prove to be essentially rational, though working in a mental condition of intense and inveterate ignorance."' Dalton, "Descriptive Ethnology," 196 sq. v) = various dates BIBLIOGRAPHY. "Academy," the, London, v.d. 66 Aîn-i-Akbari,” translation by Professor Blochmann and Colonel Jarrett, Calcutta, v.d. 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