The Jarg mela is held in March at a shrine to Sheetla, associated with smallpox, at Jarg village near Payal in Ludhiana district.
The distinctive offering is a clay horse. Families bring or buy small unfired clay horses and leave them at the shrine, in fulfilment of a vow, usually for a child's recovery from illness.
The horses are made by local potters for the fair and are sold nowhere else. It is a specific craft with a specific ritual purpose and one annual market.
Smallpox was eradicated in India in 1977 and the shrine and the vow continue.
Punjab is full of observances of this kind, each tied to one village, one season and one object, and almost none of them has been recorded.
Sheetla is the goddess associated with smallpox across northern India and the vow made at her shrines was for a child's recovery or protection. The horse is the mount offered to carry the goddess, or the affliction, away, depending on which villager is explaining it.
The potters who make the horses work for weeks before the fair and sell them at it. The horses are unfired or lightly fired, so they do not last, and what is bought at the mela is not meant to.
The mela draws from the villages around Jarg and from Ludhiana. It is not in the state tourism calendar and nothing has been published about it beyond newspaper coverage in the week it is held.