'^ Hook- Swinging in India. 197
though we may succeed in interpreting certain features of it with some success. Is it, however, possible that these details belong to different periods, — that the whole rite, as we know it, with all the details put together from diflferent sources of knowledge, was the result of an accretion of various features upon an original simple basis of ceremonial ? " ^^
Of how many ceremonies may this, in whole or part, be said ? Mutatis )nutandis, it may apply with equal truth to that with which I have endeavoured, however unsuccessfully and incompetently, to deal ; and it may be that any attempt to explain hook-swinging on a single hypothesis must be a failure. I make no greater claim for mine than that, I trust without false emphasis or distortion of the facts, it explains at least as much as it leaves in doubt, and dissipates possibly more difficulties than it raises. If, on examination at the hands of those better capable than I am of dealing with it^ the evidence will not bear the interpreta- tion I have put upon it, my collection of the facts for the disposal of others more capable may perhaps be pleaded in extenuation of my own temerity in endeavouring to under- stand them.
J. H. Powell.
•' W. Warde Fowler, The Keligious Experience of the Roman People^ p. 47S.
