Cotton Planting.
When the cotton has sprung up, the owner of the field goes there on Sunday forenoon with some butter, sweetmeats, and cakes. He burns a fire sacrifice, offers up some of the food, and eats the remainder in silence. Here we have another instance of the taboo against speaking, which so commonly appears in these rural ceremonies.[45]
When the cotton comes into flower, some parched rice is taken to the field on a Wednesday or Friday; some is thrown broadcast over the plants, and the rest given to children, the object assigned being that the bolls may swell, as the rice does when parched. Many instances of symbolical or sympathetic magic of the same kind might be collected from the usages of other races. Thus, for instance, in Sumatra, the rice is sown by women, who, in sowing, let their hair hang loose down their back, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks.[46]
When the cotton is ripe and ready for picking, the women pickers go to the north or east quarters of the field with parched rice and sweetmeats. These directions are, of course, selected with reference to the Himâlaya, the home of the gods, and the rising sun. They pick two or three large pods, and then sit down and pull out the cotton in as long a string as possible without breaking it. They hang these threads on the largest cotton plant they can find in the field, round which they sit, and fill their mouths as full as possible with the parched rice, which they blow out as far as they can in each direction; the idea being, of course, the same as in the ceremony when the plant flowers. A fire offering is made and the picking commences.[47]
The custom in Karnâl is very similar. When the pods open and the cotton is ready for picking, the women go round the field eating rice-milk, the first mouthful of which they spit on the field towards the west. The first cotton picked is exchanged for its weight in salt, which is prayed over and kept in the house till the picking is over, when it is distributed among the members of the household and friends.[48]