Last Day

The last day (baura porbo) begins with a hundi puja at around 7:00 a.m. The sacrifice proceeds largely in the same way as in the ritual on the morning of the festival day. A white chick is killed at a separate sacrificial site for pat kanda, then a red-brown one for hundi. A significant difference is the fact that this time, both the outer wall and the shrine itself remain closed. The randari roasts (“cooks,” randbar) some rice and meat in a leaf and makes food offerings at the places previously mentioned. After the betisong, the village ritual specialists drink liquor inside the shrine’s outer wall, followed by the boro naik and the sano naik on the wall’s other side. The sacrificial animals are taken to the pujari’s house, where his wife prepares kordi rice and fish for the following ritual. The barik

again collects rice (potri chaul) from all households in the village, which he brings to the pujari’s house.

Around midday, the rituals in the fields begin. The pujari first prepares a miniature field in one of the dry fields (poda, langbo*). Over an area with a diameter of half a meter, the dry earth is broken up, and manure (goboro, i’tang*) is spread over it. An egg and a black chick (for the seeds) are sacrificed, and beti- song is performed with the previously cooked kordi rice. The pujari then scatters the seeds in the prepared field. The second part of the ritual moves to the rice paddies and the parcels fenced off there for the seedlings (palla gari), which have now reached a height of about thirty centimeters. Here as well, a miniature rice paddy (bera, liong*) is prepared. A circular area is smoothed out, and two stalks of chatreng grass are set into it.⁵³ The pujari plucks some of the seedlings from the palla field, breaks an egg, and presents betisong with kordi rice. Finally, he plants the first seedlings in the prepared field and then eats some of the kordi rice, together with the randan.

In the evening, several men from the Four Brothers gather in front of the pu- jari's house for the festival's last commensal act. All the chicks sacrificed on this day are prepared together in the house, and tsoru rice is cooked from the potri chaul collected by the barik and eaten by the men on the veranda.