ica
the greatest festival is that of the New Year, which falls in the second
half of August. At a given moment all the fires are extinguished with
water and afterwards relit by the friction of two dry pieces of wood.
The ashes of the old fires are carried out and deposited at cross-roads.
All the people get up very early in the morning and bathe in the sea or
some other water, praying to be kept in good health and to live that
they may bathe again next year. Sham-fights form part of the amusements
of the day; sometimes they pass into grim reality. Indeed the day was
formerly one of general license; every man did that which was good in
his own eyes. No awkward questions were asked about any crimes committed
on this occasion, so some people improved the shining hour by knocking a
few poor devils on the head. Shooting still goes on during the whole
day, and at night the proceedings generally wind up with a great
dance.[336] The King of Benametapa, as the early Portuguese traders
called him, in East Africa used to send commissioners annually to every
town in his dominions; on the arrival of one of these officers the
inhabitants of each town had to put out all their fires and to receive a
new fire from him. Failure to comply with this custom was treated as
rebellion.[337] Some tribes of British Central Africa carefully
extinguish the fires on the hearths at the beginning of the hoeing
season and at harvest; the fires are afterwards rekindled by friction,
and the people indulge in dances of various kinds.[338]

[The new fire among the Todas of Southern India and among the Nagas of
North-Eastern India.]

The Todas of the Neilgheny Hills, in Southern India, annually kindle a
sacred new fire by the friction of wood in the month which begins with
the October moon. The ceremony is performed by two holy dairymen at the
foot of a high hill. When they have lighted the fire by rubbing two dry
sticks together, and it begins to burn well, they stand a little way off
and pray, saying, "May the young grass flower! May honey flourish! May
fruit ripen!" The purpose of the ceremony is to make the grass and honey
plentiful. In ancient times the Todas lived largely on wild fruits, and
then the rite of the new fire was very important. Now that they subsist
chiefly on the milk of their buffaloes, the ceremony has lost much of
its old significance.[339] When the Nagas of North-Eastern India have
felled the timber and cut down the scrub in those