wives to their father-in-law's house and leave the wives there, stating that there has been a divorce. The divorced wives are at liberty to marry again.

The members of the caste follow the Hindu law of inheri tance.

They have no particular religion of their own. They worship the Hindu gods, such as Mahabir, Hanumana, Bhagawati, Mahādeo and others. The offering for Bhagawati is a young she-goat, and those for others are Ladoo (sweetmeat). They worship generally in the month of Sawan.

No Brahmans are employed for religious or ceremonial purposes. They have no priests.

Dead bodies are burnt. When poor men cannot procure fuel, they bury the dead bodies. The heads are then placed toward the north. Sradh ceremony is performed on the 12th day from death. Hair-shaving takes place on the 10th day. The branding of an ox is performed, and the branded beast is let loose, as is done by the Hindus.

These people are mostly labourers. Some have got cultivation.

They do not habitually prostitute their married or unmarried

women.

They abstain from eating beef, buffaloes, monkeys, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, jackals, dogs, and leavings of other people's food.

They eat food cooked by Brahmans, Chhatris, Kayesths and the other higher Hindu castes. But they will not eat any food touched by Chāmārs, Dusadhs, Domes, Musalmāns and Christians.

(Sd.) S. P. MUKERJEE, District Census Officer.

APPENDIX C.

DISTRICT CENSUS OFFICER,

I made enquiries about the real caste of the Dhangars and their origin in this district.

The Factory Managers do not know how they were introduced here.

But the Dhangars themselves, especially the old people, remember that they were brought into this district from Gayā.

In Bijulpur P. S. Motihari, the younger people do not know more than that they are Dhangars and their forefathers came here from Magah (Magh Desh). But an old man and woman aged about 70 years stated that their parents lived in Jāhānābād sub-division of the Gaya district and they came here in their childhood. They give their following sub-castes (1) Bhajta, (2) Darwar (probably Dharwar), (3) Geyari, (4) Mohatwar, (5) Mushar, (6) Rajwar and (7) Uriswar. Nos. 3, 4 and 7 are not given in any of the Caste Index. But the Dhangars of Bijulpur claim to belong to Mahwar sub-caste. Nothing further could be ascertained from them.

The Dhangars, who live in village Phurahia near Purnahia Factory Police Station, Ghorasahan, claim to belong to Bhujan sub-caste. They call themselves Bhuyan Mohatwar. They have forgotten the names of their sub-castes. They have also come from Gaya district.

(Sd.) SYED IZHAR HUSSAIN,
Sub-Divisional Officer.

14-5-21.

A PROTECTIVE RITUAL OF THE

SOUTHERN BUDDHISTS.

BY DR. O. PERTOLD, PH.D.

(Read on 28th March 1923.)

The Sinhalese Pirit [Pâli: Parittam; Samskrit: Paritrāṇā] is one of those few rituals which occupied a very important place in the whole Buddhism, notwithstanding the fact that the original Buddhism did not allow any cults, Buddha himself having repeatedly rebuked the vanity of the brahmanical ritualism. We do not know where to seek the sources of this ritual, but we are sure enough, that it spread after the great schism in the Buddhist Church through all the Buddhist world, in the South as well in the North, and is now practised alike in Tibet and China as in Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Japan.

At present the Pirit ceremony is an integrant part of the Buddhist religion, especially in Ceylon, Burma and Siam. There are regions where Pirit ceremony is supposed to be more important than other more ancient customs, e.g., pātimokha. In this way the Pirit ceremony became an essential part of the modern Southern Buddhism, and especially a very important and significant power in the religious as well as secular life of the natives of Ceylon1, Burma and Siam as far as they

66

1 R. S. Hardy in his work Eastern Monarchism, p. 26, giving an extract from the Dina-chariyava says about the novices: One by one each day in regular order, the sámanéra novices shall kindle the fire, light a lamp, make all ready for the reading bana, call the priest who is appointed to recite it, wash his feet, sit down in an orderly manner, and listen to the bana and then repeat the pirit, or ritual of priestly exorcism. Having slept, he is to rise in the morning before day-break and after again repeating the four stanzas and the four karmasthanas, he must repeat the pirit taken from the Ratana-sutra, etc." When he speaks in the same book [p. 240] on the pirit at the festive occasions he says: "The gay attire and merry countenance of the various groups that were seen in every direction gave evidence, that however solemn the professed object for which they were assembled together, it was

profess Buddhism. The natives of these Buddhist countries acquired under the influence of this and other similar ceremo⚫ nies such strange religious views, as we shall be unable to find them in older Pāli and Samskrit literature. And that is perhaps the reason why Pirit, the ceremony as well as the texts, has been so little studied by Western scholars, who are generally searching for "pure" religions, as they seem to them to be recorded in old scriptures, and blinded by this endeavour they neglect entirely the real and actual religious systems of present. So happened, I think, that the problems connected with Buddhist Pirit are still not investigated thoroughly, and we have still no critical edition of the Paritta texts, either canonical or uncanonical.

The first man, as far as I could trace it, writing about Pirit, was Rev. D. J. Gogerly, who translated a great part of the Paritta texts in a series of articles in Ceylon Friend, a monthly magazine of literature and religion published by the Wesleyan Mission in Colombo, vol. II, 1839. Besides this translation he treated in a short essay the peculiarities and purpose of the text; the ceremony itself is scarcely mentioned by him in a single note. On account of the fact that the named magazine is in Europe perfectly unaccessible, the translation did not influence the European research on Buddhism. Until a remark in a letter from Grimblot to Brockhaus gave the first impulse to study of Paritta in Europe.1 The French Buddhist regarded by all as a time of relaxation and festivity. Indeed the grand cause of the popularity of this and similar gatherings is that they are the only occasion, marriage festivals excepted, upon which the young people can see and be seen, or upon which they can throw off the reserve and restraint it is their custom to observe in the ordinary routine of social intercourse."

1 Published in ZDMG, 1864, Vol. XVIII., p. 306. The passage reads ... Beaucoup d'exemples du Kaccâyana-Pakarana sont pris du Dhammapadam; un plus grand nombre sont tirés du Paritta, en singhalais Pirit, c'est une collection de Suttas extraits des cinq grandes collections, c'est le seul libre pali veritablement en usage parmi les Singhalais qui se lit et se relit sans cesse en cérémonie publique,

scholar Léon Feer encouraged by this remark started to inquire in the matter thoroughly and the result of these enquiries was a large essay on Paritta, published in Journal Asiatique in 1871 as an introduction to a selection of the Paritta texts, made by Grimblot. Of course also this treatise is of pure literary character, dealing with the Paritta text as a literary work and not as a religious phenomenon.

The only reliable description of the Pirit ceremony in a European language is given by R. Spence Hardy in his work Eastern Monachism (London, 1860), pp. 240-242. But also in other places of his work (e. g., pp. 26, 30, etc.), important accounts about paritta can be found as well as in his other book, A Manual of Buddhism, in its modern development, translated from Singhalese Mss. (London, 1860), especially pp. 2, 46, 235237, 278, etc. Later on paritta is mentioned in Childers' Dictionary of the Pali language (London, 1875), s. v. Paritta

Dans ce recueil qui est peu étendu se trouvent pourtant quelques-un des textes les plus difficiles qui existent en pali. M. Gogerly en a tra duit la première moitié. J'en ai commencé une copie que je crois correcte. La faire imprimer c'est sûrement un des meilleurs choix qui se puissent faire, de plus intéressants, des plus curieux et pour la languge et pour le sujet, dans le nombre des Suttas contenus dans les cinq Nikâyas, mais aussi pour ces raisons je voudraissy joindre les commentaires qu'il faut non seulment copier, collationner et corriger, c'est le moindre, mais chercher dans de volumineux recueils qu'il faut emprunter et faire venir de loin. La traduction de Gogerly se trouvera vraisemblablement dans la collection de divers essais de cet excellent homme et à jamais regrettable que le Dr. Rost se propose de joindre à son édition des Essais de Turnour. Mais comme je vous les disais, Gogerly n'a traduit que la premiére partie du Pirit, celle qui se lit le plus fréquemment. C'est aussi celle dont j'ai terminé la copie, mais dans tous les mss.dont je me suis servi ne se trouvent pas quelques pièces de vers évidemment plus on moin moderns, mais qui sûrement ne se trouvent dans le Tipitaka. Je crois ma copie correcte, mais dans certains parties du dernier Sutta, l'Atânatya, se trouvent des vers dont je ne comprends pas la mesure.”

1 Journal Asiatique, serie 6, tome XVIII, Paris 1871, pp. 225-335, Extraits du paritta, textes et commentaires en pali par M. Grimblot. avec introduction, traduction, note et notices, par M. Léon Feer.