(M6) The Badagas, an agricultural tribe of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, annually celebrate a festival of fire in various parts of their country. For example, at Nidugala the festival is held with much ceremony in the month of January. Omens are taken by boiling two pots of milk side by side on two hearths. If the milk overflows uniformly on all sides, the crops will be abundant for all the villages; but if it flows over on one side only, the harvest will be good for villages on that side only. The sacred fire is made by friction, a vertical stick of _Rhodomyrtus tomentosus_ being twirled by means of a cord in a socket let into a thick bough of _Debregeasia velutina_. With this holy flame a heap of wood of two sorts, the _Eugenia Jambolana_ and _Phyllanthus Emblica_, is kindled, and the hot embers are spread over a fire-pit about five yards long and three yards broad. When all is ready, the priest ties bells on his legs and approaches the fire-pit, carrying milk freshly drawn from a cow which has calved for the first time, and also bearing flowers of _Rhododendron arboreum_, _Leucas aspera_, or jasmine. After doing obeisance, he throws the flowers on the embers and then pours some of the milk over them. If the omens are propitious, that is, if the flowers remain for a few seconds unscorched and the milk does not hiss when it falls on the embers, the priest walks boldly over the embers and is followed by a crowd of celebrants, who before they submit to the ordeal count the hairs on their feet. If any of the hairs are found to be singed after the passage through the fire-pit, it is an ill omen. Sometimes the Badagas drive their cattle, which have recovered from sickness, over the hot embers in performance of a vow.(13) At Melur, another place of the Badagas in the Neilgherry Hills, three, five, or seven men are chosen to walk through the fire at the festival; and before they perform the ceremony they pour into an adjacent stream milk from cows which have calved for the first time during the year. A general feast follows the performance of the rite, and next day the land is ploughed and sown for the first time that season. At Jakkaneri, another place of the Badagas in the Neilgherry Hills, the passage through the fire at the festival “seems to have originally had some connection with agricultural prospects, as a young bull is made to go partly across the fire-pit before the other devotees, and the owners of young cows which have had their first calves during the year take precedence of others in the ceremony, and bring offerings of milk, which are sprinkled over the burning embers.”(14) According to another account the ceremony among the Badagas was performed every second year at a harvest festival, and the performers were a set of degenerate Brahmans called Haruvarus, who “used to walk on burning coals with bare feet, pretending that the god they worshipped could allay the heat and make fire like cold water to them.