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JOURNAL, E.A.S. (CEYLON). [Vol. VIII. 



would continue till sunrise. At 8 p.m., at 12, and at 4 a.m., plates of 

 rice and seven different sorts of curry are placed in small covered 

 maduwas, made for the purpose, as offerings to the devil. — Id., pp. 505-8. 



(d) 



Among the religious games the first in the an-edima, or " Pulling of 

 Horns," the idea of the merry- thought of European superstition deve- 

 loped on a gigantic scale. It is not a game in celebration of a victory, 

 nor in commemoration of any great national event, like the games of 

 classic Greece and Rome, but rather in propitiation of some offended 

 diety; and whether sickness has visited the people, murrain attacked 

 the cattle, insects and grubs settled on the young rice fields, or a prot- 

 racted drought threatened calamity to man and beast, the alarmed 

 Singhalese peasant know of no more efficacious remedy than an appeal 

 to Vishnu or Siva, Pattini-deviy6, Kataragam-deviyo, or Basnaira-deviyo ? 

 through the medium of an an-edima. The villuge elders, as soon as they 

 awake to a sense of the impending danger, wait in solemn deputation on 

 the Kapurala, or priest of the district kowita, or temple, carrying 

 presents with them for the seer, (very much after the manner of Saul 

 when he waited on Samuel to learn the name of the particular deity 

 that ought to be appeased,) and generally to concert measures for the 

 due and proper celebration of the games. The Kapurala promises to 

 obtain the desired information, but as this must be done at a lucky hour, 

 on an auspicious day, and after sundry ablutions and purifications, he 

 dismisses his visitors with a promise to communicate with them on a 

 subsequent day. He next proceeds to consult the oracle, and fixes a 

 day for the celebration of the game, taking care, however, that it should 

 be sufficiently removed to allow of the real crisis of the danger to be 

 passed. The day fixed upon is communicated to the elders, who invite 

 the villagers interested, by distribution of betel leaves ; and preparations 

 for the celebration commence in earnest. The villagers next divide into 

 two parties or teams, the upper and the lower. This distinction is 

 merely topographical, the villages lying towards the head of a valley or 

 stream being the upper and those further down being the lower.* Each 

 party next chooses its captain or champion, who brings with him the stout 

 branch of an elk horn with the frontlet stang on. This horn is held in 

 proportionate veneration according to the number of victories it may 

 have achieved, and there are some handed down from father to son — for 

 the championship is hereditary — that have come 



" O'er a' the ills o' life victorious " 

 for a hundred years. The place appropriated for the game is called the 

 an-pitiya, an open place in some central situation, and generally under 



* Not so ; the Utfupila and Yatipila are hereditary distinctions B., 



Hon. Sec. 



