The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.296

v2.c17.s1.296

⁷⁰ A curious analogue of this festival exists on the shores of the Hellespont and Mr. William Simpson, in his ‘Schliemannic Ilium’, describes it thus: ‘At the village of Kolifath, all the people collected in the church shortly after midnight, on the morning of Easter Sunday. Men, women and children were there with lighted candles and at first the ceremony began in the porch, where the priest was reading the service from a book placed on a temporary desk The men were firing guns and pistols and in an open space in front of the church an immense pile of brush-wood had been collected; this was set fire to, and it blazed away rapidly, a dark object appeared in the middle of the mass of flame. It proved to be a cross with a figure upon it, and this figure was Judas Iscariot’. (Frazer’s Magazine, xvi, 15). With the priest seated, this would be an exact description of the burning of the Holākā.