to Vishnu in large villages
and towns. Khermata, the mother of the village, is the local form of
Devi or the earth-goddess. She has a small hut and an image of Devi,
either black or red. She is worshipped by a priest called Panda, who
may be of any caste except the impure castes. The earth is worshipped
in various ways. A man taking medicine for the first time in an
illness sprinkles a few drops on the earth in its honour. Similarly
for the first three or four times that a cow is milked after the
birth of a calf the stream is allowed to fall on the ground. A man
who is travelling offers a little food to the earth before eating
himself. Devi is sometimes considered to be one of seven sisters, but
of the others only two are known, Marhai Devi, the goddess of cholera,
and Sitala Devi, the goddess of smallpox. When an epidemic of cholera
breaks out the Panda performs the following ceremony to avert it. He
takes a kid and a small pig or chicken, and some cloth, cakes, glass
bangles, vermilion, an earthen lamp, and some country liquor, which is
sprinkled all along the way from where he starts to where he stops. He
proceeds in this manner to the boundary of the village at a place where
there are cross-roads, and leaves all the things there. Sometimes
the animals are sacrificed and eaten. While the Panda is doing this
every one collects the sweepings of his house in a winnowing-fan and
throws them outside the village boundary, at the same time ringing a
bell continuously. The Panda must perform his ceremony at night and,
if possible, on the day of the new moon. He is accompanied by a few
other low-caste persons called Gunias. A Gunia is one who can be
possessed by a spirit in the temple of Khermata. When possessed he
shakes his head up and down violently and foams at the mouth, and
sometimes strikes his head on the ground. Another favourite godling
is Hardaul, who was the brother of Jujhar Singh, Raja of Orchha,
and was suspected by Jujhar Singh of loving the latter's wife,
and poisoned in consequence by his orders. Hardaul has a platform
and sometimes a hut with an image of a man on horseback carrying a
spear in his hand. His shrine is outside the village, and two days
before a marriage the women of the family visit his shrine and cook
and eat their food there and invite him to the wedding. Clay horses
are offered to him, and he is supposed to be able to keep off rain
and storms during the ceremony. Hardaul is perhaps the deifi