“One of the most remarkable of the Kharwâr deities is called Durgâgiya Deotâ; this spirit rejoices in the name of Mûchak Rânî. She is a Chamârin by caste, and her home is on a hill called Buhorâj; her priests are Baigas. All the Kharwârs regard her with great veneration, and offer up pigs and fowls to her several times during the year. Once a year, in the month of Aghan, what is called the Kâruj Pûjâ takes place in her honour.
“The ceremony is performed in the village threshing-floor, when a kind of bread and kids are offered up. Once in three years the ceremony of marrying the Rânî is performed with great pomp. Early in the morning of the bridal day both men and women assemble with drums and horns, form themselves into procession and ascend the hill, singing a wild song in honour of the bride and bridegroom. One of the party is constituted the priest, who is to perform the wedding ceremony. This man ascends the hill in front of the procession, shouting and dancing till he works himself into a frenzy. The procession halts at the mouth of a cave, which does, or is supposed to, exist on the top of the hill. The priest then enters the cave and returns bearing with him the Rânî, who is represented as a small oblong-shaped and smooth stone, daubed over with red lead. After going through certain antics, a piece of Tasar silk cloth is placed on the Rânî’s head, and a new sheet is placed below her, the four corners being tied up in such a manner as to allow the Rânî, who is now supposed to be seated in her bridal couch, to be slung on a bamboo, and carried like a dooly or palanquin.
“The procession then descends the hill and halts under a Banyan tree till noon, when the marriage procession starts for the home of the bridegroom, who resides on the Kandi hill.
“On their arrival there, offerings, consisting of sweetened milk, two copper pice, and two bell-metal wristlets, are presented to the bride, who is taken out of her dooly and put into the cave in which the bridegroom, who, by the way, is of the Agariya caste, resides. This cave is supposed to be of immense depth, for the stone goes rolling down, striking the rocks as it falls, and the people all listen eagerly till the sound dies out, which they say it does not do for nearly half an hour.
“When all is silent, the people return rejoicing down the hill, and finish off the evening with a dance. The strangest part of the story is that the people believe that the caves on the two hills are connected, and that every third year the Rânî returns to her father’s house. They implicitly believe that the stone yearly produced is the same. The village Baigas could probably explain the mystery.
“In former times the marriage used to take place every year, but on one occasion, on the morning succeeding the marriage ceremony, the Rânî made her appearance in the Baiga’s house. The Baiga himself was not present, but his wife, who was at home, was very indignant at this flightiness on the part of the Rânî, and the idea of her going about the country the morning after her marriage so shocked the Baigâin’s sense of propriety, that she gave the Rânî a good setting down, and called upon her to explain herself, and as she could give no satisfactory account of her conduct, she was punished by being married every three years, instead of yearly as before.”
The mock marriage of Ghâzi Miyân, to which some reference has been already made, a very favourite rite among the Musalmâns and low Hindu castes of the North-Western Provinces, is very possibly the survival of some non-Aryan rite of this kind, performed to secure the annual revival of the year and the powers of vegetation.
The Drâvidian Saturnalia.
Some of the Drâvidian tribes enjoy the Saturnalia in other forms.