Note 15 — Chapter VI · SOME RURAL FESTIVALS AND CEREMONIES.

In connection with this simple rural feast, a most elaborate ritual has been prescribed under Brâhmanical influence, but all that is usually done is that on the seventh day of the light half of Sâwan, grains of barley are sown in a pot of manure, and spring up so rapidly that by the end of the month the vessel is full of long, yellowish-green stalks. On the first day of the next month, Bhâdon, the women and girls take these out, throw the earth and manure into water, and distribute the plants to their male friends, who bind them in their turbans and about their dress.15