James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)

Wild music now strikes up, and under the excitement caused by its stirring strains the procession passes thrice across the furnace. At their third passage the performers are followed by other peasants carrying the utensils of the temple; and the rustic mob, electrified by the frenzied spectacle, falls in behind. Strange as it may seem, burns are comparatively rare. Inured from infancy to walking barefoot, the peasants can step with impunity over the glowing charcoal, provided they plant their feet squarely and do not stumble; for usage has so hardened their soles that the skin is converted into a sort of leathery or horny substance which is almost callous to heat. But sometimes, when they slip and a hot coal touches the sides of their feet or ankles, they may be seen to pull a wry face and jump out of the furnace amid the laughter of the spectators. When this part of the ceremony is over, the procession defiles round the village, and the priests distribute to every family a leaf of yellow paper inscribed with a magic character, which is thereupon glued over the door of the house. The peasants carry off the charred embers from the furnace, pound them to ashes, and mix the ashes with the fodder of their cattle, believing that it fattens them. However, the Chinese Government disapproves of these performances, and next morning a number of the performers may generally be seen in the hands of the police, laid face downwards on the ground and receiving a sound castigation on a part of their person which is probably more sensitive than the soles of their feet. 6 6 G. Schlegel, Uranographie Chinoise (The Hague and Leyden, 1875), pp. 143 sq. ; id. , “La fête de fouler le feu célébrée en Chine et par les Chinois à Java,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie , ix. (1896) pp. 193-195. Compare J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China , vi. (Leyden, 1910) pp. 1292 sq. According to Professor Schlegel, the connexion between this festival and the old custom of solemnly extinguishing and relighting the fire in spring is unquestionable.

Passage of the image of the deity through the fire. Passage of inspired men through the fire in India.

In this last festival the essential feature of the ceremony appears to be the passage of the image of the deity across the fire; it may be compared to the passage of the straw effigy of Kupalo across the midsummer bonfire in Russia. 7 7 The Dying God , p. 262. As we shall see presently, such customs may perhaps be interpreted as magical rites designed to produce light and warmth by subjecting the deity himself to the heat and glow of the furnace; and where, as at Barsana, priests or sorcerers have been accustomed in the discharge of their functions to walk through or over fire, they have sometimes done so as the living representatives or embodiments of deities, spirits, or other supernatural beings. Some confirmation of this view is furnished by the beliefs and practices of the Dosadhs, a low Indian caste in Behar and Chota Nagpur. On the fifth, tenth, and full-moon days of three months in the year, the priest walks over a narrow trench filled with smouldering wood ashes, and is supposed thus to be inspired by the tribal god Rahu, who becomes incarnate in him for a time. Full of the spirit and also, it is surmised, of drink, the man of god then mounts a bamboo platform, where he sings hymns and distributes to the crowd leaves of tulsi , which cure incurable diseases, and flowers which cause barren women to become happy mothers. The service winds up with a feast lasting far into the night, at which the line that divides religious fervour from drunken revelry cannot always be drawn with absolute precision. 8 8 (Sir) H. H. Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1891-1892), i. 255 sq. Compare W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 19; id. , Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), ii. 355. According to Sir Herbert Risley, the trench filled with smouldering ashes is so narrow (only a span and a quarter wide) “that very little dexterity would enable a man to walk with his feet on either edge, so as not to touch the smouldering ashes at the bottom.” Similarly the Bhuiyas, a Dravidian tribe of Mirzapur, worship their tribal hero Bir by walking over a short trench filled with fire, and they say that the man who is possessed by the hero does not feel any pain in the soles of his feet. 9 9 W. Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh , ii. 82. Ceremonies of this sort used to be observed in most districts of the Madras Presidency, sometimes in discharge of vows made in time of sickness or distress, sometimes periodically in honour of a deity. Where the ceremony was observed periodically, it generally occurred in March or June, which are the months of the vernal equinox and the summer solstice respectively. A narrow trench, sometimes twenty yards long and half a foot deep, was filled with small sticks and twigs, mostly of tamarind, which were kindled and kept burning till they sank into a mass of glowing embers. Along this the devotees, often fifty or sixty in succession, walked, ran, or leaped barefoot. In 1854 the Madras Government instituted an enquiry into the custom, but found that it was not attended by danger or instances of injury sufficient to call for governmental interference. 10 10 M. J. Walhouse, “Passing through the Fire,” Indian Antiquary , vii. (1878) pp. 126 sq. Compare J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825), ii. 373; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 471-486; G. F. D'Penha, in Indian Antiquary , xxxi. (1902) p. 392; “Fire-walking in Ganjam,” Madras Government Museum Bulletin , vol. iv. No. 3 (Madras, 1903), pp. 214-216. At Akka timanhully, one of the many villages which help to make up the town of Bangalore in Southern India, one woman at least from every house is expected to walk through the fire at the village festival. Captain J. S. F. Mackenzie witnessed the ceremony in 1873. A trench, four feet long by two feet wide, was filled with live embers. The priest walked through it thrice, and the women afterwards passed through it in batches. Capt. Mackenzie remarks: “From the description one reads of walking through fire, I expected something sensational. Nothing could be more tame than the ceremony we saw performed; in which there never was nor ever could be the slightest danger to life. Some young girl, whose soles were tender, might next morning find that she had a blister, but this would be the extent of harm she could receive.” See Captain J. S. F. Mackenzie, “The Village Feast,” Indian Antiquary , iii. (1874) pp. 6-9. But to fall on the hot embers might result in injuries which would prove fatal, and such an accident is known to have occurred at a village in Bengal. See H. J. Stokes, “Walking through Fire,” Indian Antiquary , ii. (1873) pp. 190 sq. At Afkanbour, five days' march from Delhi, the Arab traveller Ibn Batutah saw a troop of fakirs dancing and even rolling on the glowing embers of a wood fire. See Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah (Paris, 1853-1858), ii. 6 sq. , iii. 439.

Hindoo fire-festival in honour of Darma Rajah and Draupadi. Worshippers walking through the fire.

The French traveller Sonnerat has described how, in the eighteenth century, the Hindoos celebrated a fire-festival of this sort in honour of the god Darma Rajah and his wife Drobedé (Draupadi). The festival lasted eighteen days, during which all who had vowed to take part in it were bound to fast, to practise continence, to sleep on the ground without a mat, and to walk on a furnace. On the eighteenth day the images of Darma Rajah and his spouse were carried in procession to the furnace, and the performers followed dancing, their heads crowned with flowers and their bodies smeared with saffron. The furnace consisted of a trench about forty feet long, filled with hot embers. When the images had been carried thrice round it, the worshippers walked over the embers, faster or slower, according to the degree of their religious fervour, some carrying their children in their arms, others brandishing spears, swords, and standards. This part of the ceremony being over, the bystanders hastened to rub their foreheads with ashes from the furnace, and to beg from the performers the flowers which they had worn in their hair; and such as obtained them preserved the flowers carefully. The rite was performed in honour of the goddess Drobedé (Draupadi), the heroine of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata . For she married five brothers all at once; every year she left one of her husbands to betake herself to another, but before doing so she had to purify herself by fire. There was no fixed date for the celebration of the rite, but it could only be held in one of the first three months of the year. 11 11 Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes orientales et à la Chine (Paris, 1782), i. 247 sq. In some villages the ceremony is performed annually; in others, which cannot afford the expense every year, it is observed either at longer intervals, perhaps once in three, seven, ten, or twelve years, or only in special emergencies, such as the outbreak of smallpox, cholera, or plague. Anybody but a pariah or other person of very low degree may take part in the ceremony in fulfilment of a vow. For example, if a man suffers from some chronic malady, he may vow to Draupadi that, should he be healed of his disease, he will walk over the fire at her festival. As a preparation for the solemnity he sleeps in the temple and observes a fast. The celebration of the rite in any village is believed to protect the cattle and the crops and to guard the inhabitants from dangers of all kinds. When it is over, many people carry home the holy ashes of the fire as a talisman which will drive away devils and demons. 12 12 Madras Government Museum, Bulletin , vol. iv. No. 1 (Madras, 1901), pp. 55-59; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 471-474. One of the places where the fire-festival in honour of Draupadi takes place annually is the Allandur Temple, at St. Thomas's Mount, near Madras. Compare “Fire-walking Ceremony at the Dharmaraja Festival,” The Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society , vol. ii. No. 1 (October, 1910), pp. 29-32.

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