RAS YATRA, a Hindu festival, the annual commemoration of the dance of Krishna with the sixteen Gopi. Vast crowds, clad in their best attire, collect in some open place in the vicinity of the towns, and celebrate the event with music, singing, and dramatic representations of Krishna's sports. All the public singers and dancers lend their services on this occasion, and trust for a remuneration to the gratuities of the spectators. At Benares and Bindraban, this festival is held with much displa,y.
RAT, amongst naturalists, the genus Mils. The coffee-rat is an insular variety of the Mus hirsutus of W. Elliot, found in Southern India. They inhabit the forests, making their nests among the roots of the trees, and feeding, in the season, on the ripe seeds of the nilloo. They do much mischief by gnawing off the young branches of the coffee plant, apparently to get at the tender pith ; it is called Dadda-wedda by the Singhalese, is as large as a weasel, and of a greyish-black colour. Monkeys, squirrels, a,nd the rat commit great depreciations in fruit time ; they are partial to the sweet pulp, which they digest, but evacuate the beans whole. The Mus rufescens, Gray, syn. of Mus flavescens, Elliot, and Mus nemoralis, Blyth, are tree rats, which make their nests on the branches of trees in the forest, and by turns visit the fields aud dwellings of the natives, frequenting the ceilings in preference to the lower parts of houses. In Ceylon it is incessantly followed by the rat-snake, Coryphidon Blumenbachii, /I/err., whose domestication is encouraged by the servants, in consideration of its services in destroying vermim.
One day a snake had just seized on a rat of this description, and both were covered by a glass. The serpent appeared stunned by its own capture, and allowed the rat to escape from its jaws, which cowered at one side of the glass in the most pitiable state of trembling terror. On setting them at liberty, the rat bounded towaxds the nearest fence ; but quick as lightning it was followed by its pursuer, which seized it before it could gain the hedge, through which the snake glided with its victim in its jaws. In parts of the central province of Ceylon, at Ooreah and Bin tenne, the house rat is eaten as a common article of food. The Singhalese believe that it and the mouse are liable to hydrophobia. The Golunda meltada, Gray, the soft-furred field rat, makes its dwellings in cultivated fields, in pairs or small societies ; and great numbers perish annually when the rains fall. If the monsoon be deficient, this rat becomes a perfect plague. This occurred in 1826 in the Peninsula. After the famine of 1877-78, the Bombay Government gave one rupee for every hundred tails, and upwards of 11,000,000 were destroyed. In 1875 –76, rats infested the watersheds of the Salwin and Mang, and were journeying steadily south wards. In the spring of 1878, rats, mice, and other vermin made their appearance throughout parts of Bohemia in such vast numbers as to cause serious loss and damage. Rats are eaten by the Chinese.—Tennent's Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon, p. 423. See Mammalia ; Mus.