HINDU RELIGIOUS YEAR. The religious celebrations of the Hindu year appear to be countless, and thus the main difficulty in presenting them here is selecting a pattern that is sufficiently comprehensive to take into account their intricacy. The difficulty is met at two levels. First, diversification occurs not only across broad regional areas, but throughout subregions as well. Second, villagers of a particular locality will share only a part of the series of annual festive observances, most of which vary according to caste, family custom, and sectarian bias. Moreover, even for a festival acknowledged to be pan-Indian, local variations occur concerning the date and the particulars of ritual and mythological background.

Very often, in order to highlight sociological factors, anthropological studies give mere chronological listings of localized festivals. From that perspective, however, the meaning of rituals and of their dating is left open to...