64 
E. T. Atkinson —Notes on the history 
[No. 1, 
borrowed from tire plains and followed almost entirely only by tbe educated 
and wealthier classes, the really popular festivals are those held at the two 
harvests, those in honour of the hlagas at the Jeth Dasahra and hlaga- 
panchami, the great S'aiva S'akti observances on the Chait and Asoj 
navardtris and the festivals in honour of Bhairava, Nagaraja, and the rural 
deities Groril, Ghantakarna, &c. The sacrifice of kids is a part of almost 
all the ceremonies on these occasions, young male buffaloes are also offer¬ 
ed, and in former times human sacrifices were not uncommon at the tem¬ 
ples of the dark form of the consort of S'iva, All these facts mark the 
non-Brahmanical origin of the existing form of worship. The Khasiyas 
of Kumaon possess many traits in common with the Dasyus of the Yedas, 
practically they have no Yedas, they perform no Yaidik ceremony and 
their sacrifices are not in accordance with any Yaidik ritual, their caste 
observances and rules as to eating and drinking are not on the same strict 
lines as those observed by the Hindus of the plains, and it was these dis¬ 
tinctions that placed them fifteen hundred"^ years ago outside the pale of 
the twice-born, and which even under more liberal influences now out- 
castes them. 
Domestic ritual .—We shall now consider the domestic ritual in use in 
Kumaon, premising that it is followed as a rule only by the educated and 
orthodox, and that its use has not yet permeated the masses, nor are its 
rules, except in a very abbreviated form, understood by many of them. 
The ritual for temple use has been compiled by a class for their own 
purposes and usually with the object of setting forth the *pi*eferential cult 
of some particular deity or of inculcating the tenets of some particular 
sect, and although the general outline of the ceremony is the same in all, 
the details vary considerably. The village-deities have no formal ritual 
committed to writing and in general use, so that the ceremony is a mea¬ 
gre imitation of that in use in the orthodox temples and varies with the 
celebrant. The authorized domestic ritual in use in Kumaon fairly re¬ 
presents the ceremonial observed by those who consider themselves one 
in faith with the orthodox Hindus of the plains. It will show no great 
divergence in ordinary ceremonies from the procedure observed in the 
plains, for which, however, I have not been able to procure an authority 
that could be relied upon. The workf consulted is the Basa-karmddi 
'* Muir’s Sanslc. Texts. II, 412, 482. 
t The copy used by me contains the preparatory ceremonies (pp. 1-28) ; those 
held on the birth of a son (pp. 29-61) ; those on his assuming the sacrificial thread 
(pp. 69-132), and those on marriage (pp. 150-205), besides other services for special 
occasions. This work has since been lithographed. I have not considered it necessary 
to give many of the mantras at full length for any one can verify them by asking any 
intelligent Brahman for them and giving the catchwords recorded here. It may be 
well to notice that the Sanskrit employed is sometimes barbarous in the extreme (== 
dog Latin), but I give it faithfully. 
