Prohibition of Ploughing.
A clergyman in Devonshire informed Brand that the old farmers in his parish called the three first days of March “Blind Days,” which were anciently considered unlucky, and on them no farmer would sow his seed.12
In Northern India there are certain days on which ploughing is forbidden, such as the Nâgpanchamî or snake feast held on the fifth of the light half of Sâwan, and the fifteenth of the month Kârttik. Turning up the soil on such days disturbs Seshanâga, the great world serpent and Mother Earth. But Mother Earth is also supposed to sleep on six days in every month—the 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 21st, and 24th; or, as others say, the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 21st, and 24th. On such days it is inadvisable to plough if it can be possibly avoided. The fifteen days in the month of Kuâr which are devoted to the worship of the Pitri or sainted dead, are also an inauspicious time for agricultural work.
All these ceremonies at the commencement of the agricultural season remind us in many ways of the observance of the festivals of Plough Monday and similar customs in rural England.13