Only second to Bátháu is his good consort, Maináo, though, unlike her husband, she has no special emblem visible to the human eye. Her special function is that of “Guardian of the rice-fields”;[4] and among a purely agricultural community like that of the Kacháris, she of course is held in very high regard. She is, in short, to the Kachári peasant very much what Ceres was to the old heathen Roman cultivator. Eggs are the offering that finds most favour in her eyes, and these are presented to her in unstinted quantity. She is apparently especially worshipped at the period of harvesting the áśu and śáli crops; hence the twofold designation given above (Nos. 3 and 4, household gods), Ásu Maináo, and Śáli Maináo.

Of the other domestic deities above mentioned, it is not necessary to say much. Nos. 5 and 6 (Song Rájá and Song Brái) seem to be the especial objects of devotion to women, worshipped for the most part inside the house, whilst No. 7 (Burá Bágh Rájá) is apparently merely the name of the tiger, often spoken of with bated breath as the “monarch of the woods” (banar-rájá), especially by men travelling at night, when danger from the tiger may well be apprehended.

B. Village Deities.

There would seem to be little need to dwell much on the village deities; for no small proportion of them have evidently been adopted from the Hindu Pantheon, as will be obvious from the names given below. Some sixty-five such names are given in the valuable paper above mentioned of village deities recognised in Kamrup, though the writer only knows of some three or four of these gods as reverenced in this district (Darrang). Among these may perhaps be mentioned the following:—

It is needless to continue the list, for almost all the names are obviously borrowed from popular Hinduism; e.g., Kuber is almost certainly the Hindu god of wealth and of the lower regions (Pluto). Others are in all likelihood merely names of deified mortals of some pre-eminence above their fellow men; cf. Ram, Krishna, &c. A notable illustration of this principle of deification is probably that given as No. 10 in the above list, i.e., Sila Rai.[5] This is almost certainly the name of the well-known Commander-in-Chief of the most famous of the Koch Kings, Nar Narayan, in whose time the Koch kingdom reached the zenith of its power. As a soldier and commander this man (Sila Rai) seems to have been the foremost captain of his time in North-east India; and his striking personality would seem so to have impressed the minds and imaginations of his contemporaries as to lead to his apotheosis after death.

As might be expected among a purely agricultural community, the great annual pujas, which are three in number, are directly connected with the ingathering of the three chief rice crops of the year, i.e., the Áhu, Pharma, and Śáli crops. The dates for these annual pujas do not seem to be at all rigidly fixed, but are apparently settled by the village elders to meet the public convenience. There is no prescribed form of religious worship; indeed, the whole gathering is rather of the nature of a village merry-making than a religious service; and there is invariably a very large consumption of the national beverage (rice-beer) at all these gatherings.

There is said to be another puja known as morong-puja, of which the special object is to propitiate the cholera demon, to whom are made offerings of he-goats, pigeons, fowls and betel-nuts, &c. In addition to these, flowers, eggs, pounded rice-flour, &c., are sometimes placed on rafts and set afloat on a river; and occasionally animals (goats, &c.) are exposed in this way on rafts as an oblation to the river god (dǒi-ni madai).[6] It may be taken for granted that, whenever these rafts are found on streams in the Kachári country, cholera or other malignant disease is or has been doing its deadly work among the people. In addition to the pujas above mentioned, which are more or less of a general character, offerings of goats, chickens, and a mixture of pulse and rice known as gazi, are often placed at the foot of certain trees, usually old trees, and finally left there. As a rule, only the heads of the goats, chicken, &c., so offered will be found at the foot of such trees, the bodies of the slaughtered animals being consumed by the offerers. These oblations are made, not by the village community as a whole, but by the heads of individual families, some one member of which is in severe trouble from sickness or other like cause. The money value of such offerings is sometimes not inconsiderable.