er-party,
each riding on his favourite animal or _vahan_ (conveyance). But
the _vahan_ of Ganpati, the fat god with the head of an elephant,
was a rat, and the rat naturally could not go as fast as the other
animals, and as it was very far from being up to Ganpati's weight,
it tripped and fell, and Ganpati came off. The moon was looking on,
and laughed so much that Ganpati was enraged, and cursed it, saying,
'Thy face shall be black for laughing at me.' Accordingly the moon
turned quite black; but the other gods interfered, and said that the
curse was too hard, so Ganpati agreed that only a part of the moon's
face should be blackened in revenge for the insult. This happened
on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadon (September),
and on that day it is said that nobody should look at the moon, as
if he does, his reputation will probably be lowered by some false
charge or libel being promulgated against him. As already stated,
the Kunbi firmly believes in the influence exercised by spirits, and
a proverb has it, 'Brahmans die of indigestion, Sunars from bile, and
Kunbis from ghosts'; because the Brahman is always feasted as an act of
charity and given the best food, so that he over-eats himself, while
the Sunar gets bilious from sitting all day before a furnace. When
somebody falls ill his family get a Brahman's cast-off sacred thread,
and folding it to hold a little lamp, will wave this to and fro. If
it moves in a straight line they say that the patient is possessed
by a spirit, but if in a circle that his illness is due to natural
causes. In the former case they promise an offering to the spirit
to induce it to depart from the patient. The Brahmans, it is said,
try to prevent the Kunbis from getting hold of their sacred threads,
because they think that by waving the lamp in them, all the virtue
which they have obtained by their repetitions of the Gayatri or sacred
prayer is transferred to the sick Kunbi. They therefore tear up their
cast-off threads or sew them into clothes.

17. The Pola festival

The principal festival of the Kunbis is the Pola, falling at about
the middle of the rainy season, when they have a procession of
plough-bullocks. An old bullock goes first, and on his horns is
tied the _makhar_, a wooden frame with pegs to which torches are
affixed. They make a rope of mango-leaves stretched between two posts,
and the _makhar_ bullock is made to break this and stampede back to
the village,