561 In the Dassera festival, as celebrated in Nepaul, we seem to have another instance of the annual expulsion of demons preceded by a time of licence. The festival occurs at the beginning of October and lasts ten days. “During its continuance there is a general holiday among all classes of the people. The city of Kathmandu at this time is required to be purified, but the purification is effected rather by prayer than by water-cleansing. All the courts of law are closed, and all prisoners in jail are removed from the precincts of the city.... The Kalendar is cleared, or there is a jail-delivery always at the Dassera of all prisoners.” This seems a trace of a period of licence. At this time “it is a general custom for masters to make an annual present, either of money, clothes, buffaloes, goats, etc., to such servants as have given satisfaction during the past year. It is in this respect, as well as in the feasting and drinking which goes on, something like our ‘boxing-time’ at Christmas.” On the seventh day at sunset there is a parade of all the troops in the capital, including the artillery. At a given signal the regiments commence firing, the artillery takes it up, and a general firing goes on for about twenty minutes, when it suddenly ceases. This probably represents the expulsion of the demons. “The grand cutting of the rice-crops is always postponed till the Dassera is over, and commences all over the valley the very day afterwards.” See the description of the festival in Oldfield’s _Sketches from Nipal_, ii. 342-351. On the Dassera in India, see Dubois, _Moeurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l’Inde_, ii. 329 _sqq._ Amongst the Wasuahili of East Africa New Year’s Day was formerly a day of general licence, “every man did as he pleased. Old quarrels were settled, men were found dead on the following day, and no inquiry was instituted about the matter.” Ch. New, _Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa_, p. 65. In Ashantee the annual festival of the new yams is a time of general licence. See the Note on “Offerings of first fruits” at the end of the volume. 562 See above, vol. i. p. 275 _sq._ 563 Above, pp. 186 _sq._, 192. 564 H. Usener, “Italische Mythen,” _Rheinisches Museum_, N. F. (1875) xxx. 194.