It is needless to discuss the many beliefs implying that Mother Earth in India is regarded as the prime source of Mana. One rite, specially connected with fertility, deserves notice. All over the country, as part of the marriage ceremony, the women of the family go to the village clay-pit, and bring from thence the Matmangarā, or "lucky earth," which is generally used in building the fireplace on which the materials of the wedding feast are cooked.[1] In southern India this "lucky earth" is brought from an anthill, because ants which swarm in numbers are a type of fertility.[2] Other circumstances enhance the luck of such earth. In Poona seven kinds of "lucky earth" are brought—from a Kings’ palace gate, from a hill, from under the foot of an elephant or of a horse, from a place where four roads meet, from a cowshed, and from under the sacred vāla tree (andropogon muricatum).[3] At a Rājput wedding in Bījāpur, a relative of the bridegroom goes to the bank of a river or a tank and worships Mother-Earth by pouring water on her surface: he daubs the place with sandalwood paste, and throws rice and flowers on it: then he loosens a clod with a pickaxe and brings it to the marriage booth.[4] In the Telugu country, the earth, known as "Golden produce," is brought from a tank with much ceremony by five women—a lucky number—who are accompanied by a band of music, and they have a cloth held over them as a canopy, probably to protect them from the Evil Eye and from the attacks of malignant spirits; it is added to a pile of earth, decorated with coloured pigments, which is raised in the marriage shed, and beside it the bride and bridegroom sit; the pile is not removed, but left untouched until wind and rain destroy it.[5] At a
- ↑ W. Crooke, op. cit. i. 27.
- ↑ Thurston, op. cit. vi. 355. "The anthill, being sacred, is often used as a shrine of the village goddess" (Bishop Whitehead, op. cit. 79).
- ↑ Bombay Gazetteer, xviii. part 1, 141 note.
- ↑ Ibid, xxiii. 159.
- ↑ J. A. Padfield, The Hindu at Home, 144.
