land must remain unploughed, the seed will rot in the ground, they and their children and cattle will die of want, the deer and the wild hog will seek other haunts, and then of what avail will it be for the Rain-god to relent, how little any gift of water will avail, when there shall be left neither man, nor cattle, nor seed ; so let him, resting on the sky, pour waters down upon them through his sieve, till the deer are drowned out of the forest and take refuge in the houses, till the soil of the mountains is washed into the valleys, till the cooking-pots burst with the force of the swelling rice, till the beasts gather so plentifully in the green and favoured land, that men's axes shall be blunted with cutting up the game.[1] With perfect meteorological fitness, the Kol tribes of Bengal consider their great deity Marang Buru, Great Mountain, to be the Rain-god. Marang Buru, one of the most conspicuous hills of the plateau near Lodmah in Chota-Nagpur, is the diety himself or his dwelling. Before the rains come on, the women climb the hill, led by the wives of the pahans, with girls drumming, to carry offerings of milk and bel-leaves, which are put on the flat rock at the top. Then the wives of the pahans kneel with loosened hair and invoke the deity, beseeching him to give the crops seasonable rain. They shake their heads violently as they reiterate this prayer, till they work themselves into a frenzy, and the movement becomes involuntary. They go on thus wildly gesticulating, till a cloud is seen; then they rise, take the drums, and dance the kurrun on the rock, till Marang Buru's response to their prayer is heard in the distant rumbling of thunder, and they go home rejoicing. They must go fasting to the mount, and stay there till there is 'a sound of abundance of rain,' when they get them down to eat and drink. It is said that the rain always comes before evening, but the old women appear to choose their own moment for beginning the fast.[2] It was to Ukko the
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ANIMISM.
