The occupation of the Garpagari is to avert hailstorms, and he was
formerly remunerated by a customary contribution of rice from each
cultivator in the village. He received the usual presents at seed-time
and harvest, and two pice from each tenant on the Basant-Panchmi
festival. When the sky is of mixed red and black at night like smoke
and flame, the Garpagari knows that a hailstorm is coming. Then, taking
a sword in his hand, he goes and stands before Mahabir, and begs him
to disperse the clouds. When entreaties fail, he proceeds to threats,
saying that he will kill himself, and throws off his clothes. Sometimes
his wife and children go and stand with him before Mahabir's shrine
and he threatens to kill them. Formerly he would cut and slash himself,
so it is said, if Mahabir was obdurate, but now the utmost he does is
to draw some blood from a finger. He would also threaten to sacrifice
his son, and instances are known of his actually having done so.
Two ideas appear to be involved in these sacrifices of the
Garpagari. One is the familiar principle of atonement, the blood
being offered to appease the god as a substitute for the crops
which he seems about to destroy. But when the Garpagari threatened
to kill himself, and actually killed his son, it was not merely as
an atonement, because in that case the threats would have had no
meaning. His intention seems rather to have been to lay the guilt of
homicide upon the god by slaying somebody in front of his shrine,
in case nothing less would move him from his purpose of destroying
the crops. The idea is the same as that with which people committed
suicide in order that their ghosts might haunt those who had driven
them to the act. As late as about the year 1905 a Gond Bhumka
or village priest was hanged in Chhindwara for killing his two
children. He owed a debt of Rs. 25 and the creditor was pressing
him and he had nothing to pay. So he flew into a rage and exclaimed
that the gods would do nothing for him even though he was a Bhumka,
and he seized his two children and cut off their heads and laid them
before the god. In this it would appear that the Bhumka's intention
was partly to take revenge on his master for the neglect shown to him,
the god's special servant. The Garpagari diverts the hail by throwing
a handful of grain in the direction in which he wishes it to go. When
the storm begins he will pick up some hailstones, smear them with his
blood and throw them away, telling them to rain over rivers, hills,
forests and barren ground. When caterpillars or locusts attack the
crops he catches one or two and offers them at Mahabir's shrine,
afterwards throwing them up in the air. Or he buries one alive and
this is supposed to stay the plague. When rust appears in the crops,
one or two blades are in like manner offered to Mahabir, and it is
believed that the disease will be stayed. Or if the rice plants do
not come into ear a few of them are plucked and offered, and fresh
fertile blades then come up. He also has various incantations which
are believed to divert the storm or to cause the hailstones to melt
into water. In some localities, when the buffalo is slaughtered at
the Dasahra festival, the Garpagari takes seven different kinds of
spring-crop seeds and dips them in its blood. He buries them in a
spot beside his hearth, and it is believed that when a hailstorm
threatens the grains move about and give out a humming sound like
water boiling. Thus the Garpagari has warning of the storm. If the
Garpagari is absent and a storm comes his wife will go and stand naked
before Mahabir's shrine. The wives know the incantations, but they
must not learn them from their husbands, because in that case the
husband would be in the position of a guru or spiritual preceptor
to his wife and the conjugal relation could no longer continue. No
other caste will learn the incantations, for to make the hailstones
melt is regarded as equivalent to causing an abortion, and as a sin
for which heavy retribution would be incurred in a future life.
In Chhattisgarh the Baiga or village priest of the aboriginal tribes
averts hailstorms in the same manner as the Garpagari, and elsewhere
the Barais or betel-vine growers perform this function, which is
especially important to them because their vines are so liable to
be injured by hailstorms. In ancient Greece there existed a village
functionary, the Chalazo phulax, who kept off hailstorms in exactly the
same manner as the Garpagari. He would offer a victim, and if he had
none would draw blood from his own fingers to appease the storm. [19]
The same power has even been imputed to Christian priests as recorded
by Sir James Frazer: "In many villages of Provence the priest is
still required to possess the faculty of averting storms. It is not
every priest who enjoys this reputation; and in some villages when
a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn
whether the new incumbent has the power (pouder) as they call it. At
the first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by inviting
him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result answers to
their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect
of his flock. In some parishes where the reputation of the curate
in this respect stood higher than that of the rector, the relations
between the two have been so strained in consequence that the bishop
has had to translate the rector to another benefice." [20]
Of late years an unavoidable scepticism as to the Garpagari's
efficiency has led to a reduction of his earnings, and the cultivators
now frequently decline to give him anything, or only a sheaf of corn
at harvest. Some members of the caste have taken to weaving newar or
broad tape for beds, and others have become cultivators.