and the people too feast the priests and one another and play at their games of chance. The women bring water, and bathe first the idols, and then their grandparents and other aged relatives, by pouring water freely upon them.
They observe three days of their sixth month with very great veneration as the anniversaries of the birth, the attaining to divinity and the death of Buddha. These three days are a great time for "making merit," which they think they do by giving to the poor, by making offerings to the priests and to the idols and by listening to prayers and preaching. All classes, young and old, high and low, rich and poor, go to the temple-grounds and make little conical mounds of sand a foot or two high, surmounted with flowers and small flags of all colors.
At the beginning of seed-time, generally in May, the time being fixed by astrologers, they have their Raknah holiday, when the minister of agriculture is for the day regarded as king, because he, as the king's substitute, holds the plough, breaks up the ground and plants the first rice of the year. He is escorted by a public procession to some field, and there the priests, after superstitious ceremonies, decorate a pair of oxen with flowers and fasten them to a plough, which is also trimmed with flowers. The minister then holds the plough while the oxen drag it over the ground for about an hour. Four elderly
