All the people assemble, and two men, known as the Mattiwâh and the Pattiwâh, "the earth man" and "the leaf…
- Date of account
- Second edition published 1896
- Source
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2)
- Reference
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2) · selected passage 37
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
All the people assemble, and two men, known as the Mattiwâh and the Pattiwâh, "the earth man" and "the leaf man," who represent the gods of the soil and of the trees, soon become filled with the spirit and are found to be possessed by the local deities
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyAll the people assemble, and two men, known as the Mattiwâh and the Pattiwâh, "the earth man" and "the leaf man," who represent the gods of the soil and of the trees, soon become filled with the spirit and are found to be possessed by the local deities. They dance and shout for some time in a state of religious frenzy, and their disconnected ejaculations are interpreted by the Ojha, who suddenly rushes upon them, grasps with his hands at the spirits which are supposed to be circling round them, and finally pours through their hands some grains of sesamum, which is received in a perforated piece of the wood of the Gûlar or sacred fig-tree. The whole is immediately plastered up with a mixture of clay and cow-dung, and the wood is carefully buried on the site selected for the Deohâr or local shrine.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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