Note 74 — Chapter VI · SOME RURAL FESTIVALS AND CEREMONIES.

Of the mock fight as a charm for rain we have spoken already, and at the Holî it may be merely a fertility charm. Of these mock fights we have numerous instances in the customs of Northern India. Thus, in Kumaun, in former days at the Bagwâh festival the males of several villages used to divide into two bodies and sling stones at each other across a stream. The results were so serious that it was suppressed after the British occupation of the country.74 The people in some places attribute the increase of cholera and other plagues to its discontinuance. In the plains, the custom survives in what is known as the Barra, when the men of two villages have a sort of Tug of War with a rope across the boundary of the village. Plenty is supposed to follow the side which is victorious.