singing devotional songs (bhajans), popular film music, thus making it partly an entertainment coupled with the "religious ritual of invoking Pabuji as a living deity". The musical and sometimes chanted narration is in colloquial Rajasthani dialect. Bhopa is the main singer (narrator) who does it with an accompaniment of a musical instrument, called the ravanhattho (a desert zither or a spike fiddle with eighteen strings but without frets), which he crafts by himself. A dholak or drum is also part of the musical ensemble. During the entire narration, Bhopa’s wife called the Bhopi, is present with him and joins him in singing. She also carries a lantern to shed light on the Phad when Bhopa is indicating to some scenes on the Phad linked to his narration. The singer has a stick with which he points out each scene and narrates the story. He also sometimes dances to his songs and interjects his performance with jokes and banter with the audience. There are several such itinerant Bhopa groups performing in various parts of Rajasthan. One of the famous narrators of the epic named Mohan from Pabusar was an illiterate but he could recite the entire 4000 lines of the epic. The narration of the epic is done in the jagarans (night-wakes) time to invoke the prakas, meaning the presence of the folk deities, in the Rajasthani dialect. The set sequence for the narration, which in local language, called the phad vacno or performance is in the following order. Purification rites involving erecting of the Phad is preceded by sanctifying the site by cleaning the land below the Phad and lighting incense sticks. A small jyot (lamp) made of cowdung is lit in front of the Phad and then circled around the Phad of Phabuji. The procedure for stretching the Phad involves running a string through the red band stitched at the top and then tie the rope to wooden or bamboo posts at both ends. The bard narrating the epic, the Bhopa, is dressed in a costume called the baga. The Bhopa announces the start of the narration by blowing the Conch shell Devotees offer grains and money for consecrating the Phad The deities depicted on the Phad are then invoked. The narration of the epic story by the Bhopas is "prosimetric." The narration of verse sections is called gavs, which has a number of couplets known as karis. This