Note 38 — Chapter II · THE HEROIC AND VILLAGE GODLINGS.

To the west of the Province the creation of Bhûmiya’s shrine is “the first formal act by which the proposed site of a village is consecrated, and when two villages have combined their homesteads for greater security against the marauders of former days, the people of the one which moved still worship at the Bhûmiya of the deserted site. Bhûmiya is worshipped after the harvests, at marriages, and on the birth of a male child; and Brâhmans are commonly fed in his name. Women often take their children to the shrine on Sundays, and the first milk of a cow or buffalo is always offered there.”38 Young bulls are sometimes released in his honour, and the term Bhûmiya sând has come to be equivalent to our “parish bull.”