Chapter 15

Meriah Sacrifice Post.Meriah Sacrifice Post.The Kondhs of Bara Mootah promised to relinquish the rite on condition,inter alia, that they should be at liberty to sacrifice buffaloes, monkeys, goats, etc., to their deities with all the solemnities observed on occasions of human sacrifice; and that they should be at liberty, upon all occasions, to denounce to their gods the Government, and some of its servants in particular, as the cause of their having relinquished the great rite.The last recorded Meriah sacrifice in the Ganjam Māliahs occurred in 1852, and there are still Kondhs alive, who were present at it. Twenty-five descendants of persons who were reserved for sacrifice, but were rescued by Government officers, returned themselves as Meriah at the census, 1901. The Kondhs have now substituted a buffalo for a human being. The animal is hewn to pieces while alive, and the villagers rush home to their villages, to bury the flesh in the soil, and so secure prosperous crops. The sacrifice is not unaccompanied by risk to the performers, as the buffalo, before dying, frequently kills one or more of its tormenters. This was the case near Baliguda in 1899, when a buffalo killed the sacrificer. In the previous year, the desire of a village to intercept the bearer of the flesh for aneighbouring village led to a fight, in which two men were killed.It was the practice, a few years ago, at every Dassara festival in Jeypore, Vizagapatam, to select a specially fine ram, wash it, shave its head, affix thereto red and white bottu and nāmam (sect marks) between the eyes and down the nose, and gird it with a new white cloth after the manner of a human being. The animal being then fastened in a sitting posture, certain pūja (worship) was performed by a Brāhman priest, and it was decapitated. The substitution of animals for human victims is indicated by various religious legends. Thus, a hind was substituted for Iphigenia, and a ram for Isaac.It was stated by the officers of the Meriah Agency that there was reason to believe that the Rāja of Jeypore, when he was installed on his father’s death in 1860–61, sacrificed a girl thirteen years of age at the shrine of the goddess Durga in the town of Jeypore.167It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district (1907), that “goats and buffaloes now-a-days take the place of human Meriah victims, but the belief in the superior efficacy of the latter dies hard, and every now and again revives. When the Rampa rebellion of 1879–80 spread in this district, several cases of human sacrifice occurred in the disturbed tracts. In 1880, two persons were convicted of attempting a Meriah sacrifice near Ambadāla in Bissamkatak. In 1883, a man (a beggar and a stranger) was found at daybreak murdered in one of the temples in Jeypore, in circumstances which pointed to his having been slain as a Meriah; and, as late as 1886, a formal enquiry showed that there were ample grounds for the suspicion that the kidnapping of victimsstill went on in Bastar.” As recently as 1902, a petition was presented to the District Magistrate of Ganjam, asking him to sanction the performance of a human sacrifice. The memory of the abandoned practice is kept green by one of the Kondh songs, for a translation of which we are indebted to Mr. J. E. Friend-Pereira.168“At the time of the great Kiabon (Campbell) Sahib’s coming, the country was in darkness; it was enveloped in mist.Having sent paiks to collect the people of the land, they, having surrounded them, caught the Meriah sacrificers.Having caught the Meriah sacrificers, they brought them, and again they went and seized the evil councillors.Having seen the chains and shackles, the people were afraid; murder and bloodshed were quelled.Then the land became beautiful, and a certain Mokodella (Macpherson) Sahib came.He destroyed the lairs of the tigers and bears in the hills and rocks, and taught wisdom to the people.After the lapse of a month, he built bungalows and schools; and he advised them to learn reading and law.They learnt wisdom and reading; they acquired silver and gold. Then all the people became wealthy.”Human sacrifice was not practiced in the Kurtilli Muttah of the Ganjam Māliahs. The reason of this is assigned to the fact that the first attempt was made with a crooked knife, and the sacrificers made such a bad business of it that they gave it up. Colonel Campbell gives another tradition, that, through humanity, one of the Kurtilli Pātros (head of a group of villages) threatened to leave the muttah if the practice was carried out.Of a substituted sacrifice, which was carried out in the Ganjam Māliahs in 1894,169the following graphic account has been given. “Suddenly we came upon a number of Khonds carrying an immensely long bamboo, about fifty feet in length, surmounted by a gorgeous sort of balloon made of red and white cloth stretched on a bamboo frame. Attached to this were dried strips of pig’s flesh, and the whole of the extraordinary structure was surmounted by a huge plume of peacock’s feathers that waved gaily in the breeze. Along with this was carried another bamboo, not so long, slung all over with iron bells. We found that the men had been worshipping, and presenting these structures to a sylvan deity close by, and were now hastening to the small Khond village of Dhuttiegaum, the scene of the present Meriah sacrifice. Half a mile brought us to this hamlet, situated amongst a dense grove of trees, in the midst of which was tied to a curiously fluted and carved wooden post the sacrificial buffalo, a placid animal, with its body glistening with the oil of many anointings. The huge bamboo pole, with its crown of red and white cloth and peacock’s feathers, and incongruous shreds of dried pig’s flesh, was now erected in the centre of the village. The comparative quiet in the village did not last long, for on a sudden the air was rent with a succession of shrieks. With the sound of the beating of Māliah drums, and the blowing of buffalo horns, a party of Khonds came madly dancing and rushing down a steep hillside from some neighbouring village. They dashed up to the buffalo, and began frantically dancing with the villagers already assembled round and round the animal. Each man carried a green bough of some tree, a sharp knife, and a tanghi. Theywere all adorned in holiday attire, their hair combed and knotted on the forehead, and profusely decorated with waving feathers. All of them were more or less intoxicated. Various other villagers now began to arrive, thick and fast, in the same manner, with wavings of green boughs, flourishing of knives, and hideous yells. Each party was led by the headman or Moliko of the village. The dancing now became more general, and faster and more furious, as more and more joined the human ‘merry go round,’ circling about the unfortunate buffalo. The women, who had followed their lords and masters at a discreet distance, stood sedately by in a group, and took no part whatever in the revels. They were for the most part fine buxom girls, well groomed and oiled, and stood demurely watching everything with their sharp black eyes. The hitherto quiet buffalo, who for nearly two days had been without food and water, now began to get excited, and, straining at its tether, plunged and butted at the dancers, catching one man neatly on the nose so that the blood flowed copiously. However, the Khonds were too excited to care, and circled round and round the poor maddened brute, singing and blowing horns into its ears, beating drums, and every now and then offering it cakes brought with them from their villages, and then laying them on the top of the post as offerings. As they thus madly careered about, we had ample time to note their extraordinary costumes. One man had somehow got hold of an old blue Police overcoat, which he had put on inside out, and round his waist he had gathered what seemed to be a number of striped tent carpets, forming a stiff ballet skirt or kilt. He was one of the most athletic in spinning round the buffalo, flourishing a kitchen chopper. Another man’s costume consisted of almost nothing at all. Hehad, however, profusely daubed his body with white and black spots, and on his head he had centred all his decorative genius. The head in question was swathed in yards of cloth, terminating at the back in a perfect cascade of cock’s feathers. He excitedly waved over this erection an ancient and very rusty umbrella, with many ventilations, with streamers of white cloth attached to the top. Others had tied on to their heads with bands of cloth the horns of buffaloes, or brass horns made in imitation of those of the spotted deer. Their long, black and curly hair hung in masses from beneath this strange erection, giving them a most startling appearance. The dancing round the buffalo lasted quite two hours, as they were waiting for the arrival of the Pātro, before concluding the final ceremonies, and the great man was fashionably late. To incite their jaded energies to further terpsichorean efforts, from time to time the dancers drank copious draughts of a kind of beer, used specially on these occasions, and made from kukuri, a species of grain. At last, the long expected Pātro arrived with the usual uproar of many deafening sounds, both artificial and natural, and with the waving of green boughs. On this occasion he walked last, while the whole of his retinue preceded him dancing, headed by an ancient and withered hag, carrying on her shoulders a Māliah drum of cow-hide stretched tightly over a hoop of iron, and vigorously beaten from behind her by a Khond with stiff thongs of dried leather. The great man himself walked sedately, followed by his ‘charger,’ a broken-kneed tat (pony), extraordinarily caparisoned, and led by a youth of tender years, whose sole garment consisted of a faded red drummer’s coat of antiquated cut. As soon as the Pātro had seated himself comfortably on a log near the dancers, a change came over the scene.The hitherto shouting and madly revolving throng stopped their gyrations round the stupefied beast, too much exhausted and frightened to offer any resistance, and, falling on its neck and body, began to smother it with caresses and endearments, and, to a low plaintive air, crooned and wailed over it, the following dirge, of which I append a rude translation. Tradition says that they used to sing it, with slight variations, over their human victims before the sacrifice:—Blame us not, O buffalo!Thus for sacrificing thee,For our fathers have ordainedThis ancient mystery.We have bought thee with a price,Have paid for thee all thy worth.What blame can rest upon us,Who save our land from dearth?Famine stares us in the face,Parched are our fields, and dry,Death looks in at ev’ry door,For food our young ones cry.Thadi Pennoo veils her face,Propitiate me, she cries,Give to me of flesh and blood,A willing sacrifice.That where’er its blood is shed,On land, or field, or hill,There the gen’rous grain may spring,So ye may eat your fill.Then be glad, O buffalo!Willing sacrifice to be,Soon in Thadi’s meadows green,Thou shalt brouse eternally.After the Khonds had been chanting this sacrificial hymn for some time, the buffalo was untied from the carvedpost, and led, with singing, dancing and shouting, and with the noise of many musical instruments, to a sacred grove a few hundred yards off, and there tied to a stake. As soon as it had been firmly tied, the Khonds threw off all their superfluous clothing to the large crowd of womankind waiting near, and stood round the animal, each man with his hand uplifted, and holding a sharp knife ready to strike at a moment’s notice, as soon as the priest or Janni had given the word of command. The Janni, who did not differ outwardly from the others, now gave the buffalo a slight tap on the head with a small axe. An indescribable scene followed. The Khonds in a body fell on the animal, and, in an amazingly short time, literally tore the living victim to shreds with their knives, leaving nothing but the head, bones, and stomach. Death must, mercifully, have been almost instantaneous. Every particle of flesh and skin had been stripped off during the few minutes they fought and struggled over the buffalo, eagerly grasping for every atom of flesh. As soon as a man had secured a piece of flesh, he rushed away with the gory mass, as fast as he could, to his fields, to bury it therein according to ancient custom, before the sun had set. As some of them had to do good distances to effect this, it was imperative that they should run very fast. A curious scene now took place, for which we could obtain no explanation. As the men ran, all the women flung after them clods of earth, some of them taking very good effect. The sacred grove was cleared of people, save a few that guarded the remnants left of the buffalo, which were taken, and burnt with ceremony at the foot of the stake.”I pass on to the subject of infanticide among the Kondhs. It is stated, in the Manual of the Vizagapatam district, that female infanticide used to be very common all over the Jeypore country, and the Rājah is said tohave made money out of it in one large tāluk (division). The custom was to consult the Dāsari (priest) when a child was born as to its fate. If it was to be killed, the parents had to pay the Amīn of the tāluk a fee for the privilege of killing it; and the Amīn used to pay the Rājah three hundred rupees a year for renting the privilege of giving the license and pocketing the fees. The practice of female infanticide was formerly very prevalent among the Kondhs of Ganjam, and, in 1841, Lieutenant Macpherson was deputed to carry into effect the measures which had been proposed by Lord Elphinstone for the suppression of the Meriah sacrifices and infanticide. The custom was ascribed to various beliefs, viz., (1) that it was an injunction by god, as one woman made the whole world suffer; (2) that it conduces to male offspring; (3) that woman, being a mischief-maker, is better out of the world than in it; (4) that the difficulty, owing to poverty, in providing marriage portions was an objection to rearing females. From Macpherson’s well known report170the following extracts are taken. “The portion of the Khond country, in which the practice of female infanticide is known to prevail, is roughly estimated at 2,400 square miles, its population at 60,000, and the number of infants destroyed annually at 1,200 to 1,500. The tribes (who practice infanticide) belong to the division of the Khond people which does not offer human sacrifices. The usage of infanticide has existed amongst them from time immemorial. It owes its origin and its maintenance partly to religious opinions, partly to ideas from which certain very important features of Khond manners arise. The Khonds believe that the supreme deity, the sun god, created all thingsgood; that the earth goddess introduced evil into the world; and that these two powers have since conflicted. The non-sacrificing tribes make the supreme deity the great object of their adoration, neglecting the earth goddess. The sacrificing tribes, on the other hand, believe the propitiation of the latter power to be the most necessary worship. Now the tribes which practice female infanticide hold that the sun god, in contemplating the deplorable effects produced by the creation of feminine nature, charged men to bring up only as many females as they could restrain from producing evil to society. This is the first idea upon which the usage is founded. Again, the Khonds believe that souls almost invariably return to animate human forms in the families in which they have been first born and received. But the reception of the soul of an infant into a family is completed only on the performance of the ceremony of naming upon the seventh day after its birth. The death of a female infant, therefore, before that ceremonial of reception, is believed to exclude its soul from the circle of family spirits, diminishing by one the chance of future female births in the family. And, as the first aspiration of every Khond is to have male children, this belief is a powerful incentive to infanticide.” Macpherson, during his campaign, came across many villages of about a hundred houses, in which there was not a single female child. In like manner, in 1855, Captain Frye found many Baro Bori Khond villages without a single female child in them.In savage societies, it has been said, sexual unions were generally effected by the violent capture of the woman. By degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form. Whereof an excellent example is afforded by the Kondhs,concerning whom the author of the Ganjam Manual writes as follows. “The parents arrange the marriages of their children. The bride is looked upon as a commercial speculation, and is paid for in gontis. A gonti is one of anything, such as a buffalo, a pig, or a brass pot; for instance, a hundred gontis might consist of ten bullocks, ten buffaloes, ten sacks of corn, ten sets of brass, twenty sheep, ten pigs, and thirty fowls. The usual price, however, paid by the bridegroom’s father for the bride, is twenty or thirty gontis. A Khond finds his wife from among the women of any mutāh (village) than his own. On the day fixed for the bride being taken home to her husband’s house, the pieces of broom in her ears are removed, and are replaced by brass rings. The bride is covered over with a red blanket, and carried astride on her uncle’s back towards the husband’s village, accompanied by the young women of her own village. Music is played, and in the rear are carried brass playthings, such as horses, etc., for the bridegroom, and cloths and brass pins as presents for the bridegroom from the bride’s father. On the road, at the village boundary, the procession is met by the bridegroom and the young men of his village, with their heads and bodies wrapped up in blankets and cloths. Each is armed with a bundle of long thin bamboo sticks. The young women of the bride’s village at once attack the bridegroom’s party with sticks, stones, and clods of earth, which the young men ward off with the bamboo sticks. A running fight is in this manner kept up until the village is reached, when the stone-throwing invariably ceases, and the bridegroom’s uncle, snatching up the bride, carries her off to her husband’s house. This fighting is by no means child’s play, and the men are sometimes seriously injured. The whole party is then entertained by the bridegroomas lavishly as his means will permit. On the day after the bride’s arrival, a buffalo and a pig are slaughtered and eaten, and, upon the bride’s attendants returning home on the evening of the second day, a male and female buffalo, or some less valuable present, is given to them. On the third day, all the Khonds of the village have a grand dance or tamāsha (festivity), and on the fourth day there is another grand assembly at the house of the bridegroom. The bride and bridegroom are then made to sit down on a cot, and the bridegroom’s brother, pointing upwards to the roof of the house, says: “As long as this girl stays with us, may her children be as men and tigers; but, if she goes astray, may her children be as snakes and monkeys, and die and be destroyed!” In his report upon the Kondhs (1842), Macpherson tells us that “they hold a feast at the bride’s house. Far into the night the principals in the scene are raised by an uncle of each upon his shoulders, and borne through the dance. The burdens are suddenly exchanged, and the uncle of the youth disappears with the bride. The assembly divides itself into two parties. The friends of the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the bridegroom to cover her flight, and men, women, and children mingle in mock conflict. I saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth. He was surrounded by twenty or thirty young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attacks made upon him by a party of young women. The man was just married, and the burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends were, according to custom, seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom, until he reached the confines of his own village. Then the tables wereturned, and the bride was fairly won; and off her young friends scampered, screaming and laughing, but not relaxing their speed till they reached their own village.” Among the Kondhs of Gumsūr, the friends and relations of the bride and bridegroom collect at an appointed spot. The people of the female convoy call out to the others to come and take the bride, and then a mock fight with stones and thorny brambles is begun by the female convoy against the parties composing the other one. In the midst of the tumult the assaulted party takes possession of the bride, and all the furniture brought with her, and carry all off together.171According to another account, the bride, as soon as she enters the bridegroom’s house, has two enormous bracelets, or rather handcuffs of brass, each weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, attached to each wrist. The unfortunate girl has to sit with her two wrists resting on her shoulders, so as to support these enormous weights. This is to prevent her from running away to her old home. On the third day the bangles are removed, as it is supposed that by then the girl has become reconciled to her fate. These marriage bangles are made on the hills, and are curiously carved in fluted and zigzag lines, and kept as heirlooms in the family, to be used at the next marriage in the house. According to a still more recent account of marriage among the Kondhs172an old woman suddenly rushes forward, seizes the bride, flings her on her back, and carries her off. A man comes to the front, catches the groom, and places him astride on his shoulder. The human horses neigh and prance about like the live quadruped, and finally rush away to the outskirts of the village. This is a signal forthe bride’s girl friends to chase the couple, and pelt them with clods of earth, stones, mud, cowdung, and rice. When the mock assault is at an end, the older people come up, and all accompany the bridal pair to the groom’s village. A correspondent informs me that he once saw a Kondh bride going to her new home, riding on her uncle’s shoulders, and wrapped in a red blanket. She was followed by a bevy of girls and relations, and preceded by drums and horns. He was told that the uncle had to carry her the whole way, and that, if he had to put her down, a fine of a buffalo was inflicted, the animal being killed and eaten. It is recorded that a European magistrate once mistook a Kondh marriage for a riot, but, on enquiry, discovered his mistake.Reference has been made above to certain brass playthings, which are carried in the bridal procession. The figures include peacocks, chamæleons, cobras, crabs, horses, deer, tigers, cocks, elephants, human beings, musicians, etc. They are cast by thecire perdueprocess. The core of the figure is roughly shaped in clay, according to the usual practice, but, instead of laying on the wax in an even thickness, thin wax threads are first made, and arranged over the core so as to form a network, or placed in parallel lines or diagonally, according as the form of the figure or fancy of the workman dictates. The head, arms, and feet are modelled in the ordinary way. The wax threads are made by means of a bamboo tube, into the end of which a moveable brass plate is fitted. The wax, being made sufficiently soft by heat, is pressed through the perforation at the end of the tube, and comes out in the form of long threads, which must be used by the workmen before they become hard and brittle. The chief place where these figures are made is Belugunta, near Russellkonda inGanjam. It is noted by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson173that the Kondhs of Gumsūr, to represent their deities Jara Pennu, the Linga Dēvata, or Petri Dēvata, keep in their houses brass figures of elephants, peacocks, dolls, fishes, etc. If affliction happens to any one belonging to the household, or if the country skin eruption breaks out on any of them, they put rice into milk, and, mixing turmeric with it, sprinkle the mixture on the figures, and, killing fowls and sheep, cause worship to be made by the Jāni, and, making bāji, eat.At a marriage among the Kondhs of Baliguda, after the heads of the bride and bridegroom have been brought together, an arrow is discharged from a bow by the younger brother of the bridegroom into the grass roof of the hut. At the betrothal ceremony of some Kondhs, a buffalo and pig are killed, and some of the viscera eaten. Various parts are distributed according to an abiding rule, viz., the head to the bridegroom’s maternal uncle, the flesh of the sides to his sisters, and of the back among other relations and friends. Some Kondh boys of ten or twelve years of age are said to be married to girls of fifteen or sixteen. At Shubernagiri, in the Ganjam Māliahs, are two trysting trees, consisting of a jāk (Artocarpus integrifolia) and mango growing close together. The custom was for a Kondh, who was unable to pay the marriage fees to the Pātro (headman), to meet his love here by night and plight his troth, and then for the two to retire into the jungle for three days and nights before returning to the village. Afterwards, they were considered to be man and wife.It is noted by Mr. Friend-Pereira174that, at the ceremonial for settling the preliminaries of a Kondhmarriage, a knotted string is put into the hands of the sēridāhpa gātāru (searchers for the bride), and a similar string is kept by the girl’s people. The reckoning of the date of the betrothal ceremony is kept by undoing a knot in the string every morning.Some years ago, a young Kondh was betrothed to the daughter of another Kondh, and, after a few years, managed to pay up the necessary number of gifts. He then applied to the girl’s father to name the day for the marriage. Before the wedding took place, however, a Pāno went to the girl’s father, and said that she was his daughter (she had been born before her parents were married), and that he was the man to whom the gifts should have been paid. The case was referred to a council meeting, which decided in favour of the Pāno.Of birth ceremonies, the following account is given by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar. The woman is attended in her confinement by an elderly Kondh midwife, who shampooes her abdomen with castor-oil. The umbilical cord is cut by the mother of the infant. For this purpose, the right thigh of the baby is flexed towards its abdomen, and a piece of cooled charcoal placed on its right knee. The cord is placed on the charcoal, and divided with the sharp edge of an arrow. The placenta is buried close to the house near a wall. After the cord has been severed, the mother daubs the region of the infant’s navel with her saliva, over which she smears castor-oil. She then warms her hands at a fire, and applies them to the infant’s body. [It is stated, in the Ganjam Manual, that the infant is held before a hot fire, and half roasted.] The warming is repeated several times daily for four or five days. When the umbilical cord has sloughed off, a spider is burnt to ashes over a fire, placed in a cocoanut shell, mixed with castor-oil, and applied by means of afowl’s feather to the navel. The infant’s head is shaved, except over the anterior fontanelle, the hair from which is removed after about a month. Its body is smeared all over daily with castor-oil andturmericpaste until it is a month old. The mother then goes with her baby and husband to her brother’s house, where the infant is presented with a fowl, which is taken home, and eaten by her husband. The appropriation of the fowl varies according to the locality. In some places, the infant’s father, and other relations, except the mother, may eat it, and, in others, both its parents, and relations living in the house, may do so. In still other places, the father, paternal grandfather and grandmother, and paternal uncle, may partake of it.The naming ceremony among the Kondhs of Gumsūr is thus described by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson. “Six months after birth, on a fixed day, they make gāduthuva (the ceremony of naming the child). On that day, killing a dog, and procuring liquor, they make bāji. They wash the feet of the child. The Jāni being come, he ties a cord from the haft to the point of a sickle, and they divine by means of it. Having assembled the petrilu (literally ancestors, but here denoting household images or gods), they put rice on the sickle. As the names (of the ancestors or family?) are repeated in order, each time the rice is put on, that name is chosen on the mention of which the sickle moves, and is given to the child. They then drink liquor, and eat bāji. They give rice and flesh to the Jāni.”Of death ceremonies, the following account is given in the manual of the Ganjam district. “Immediately after death, a cloth is wrapped round the corpse, but no cloths or valuables are removed. A portion of paddy (unhusked rice), and all the cooking utensils of the deceased aregiven to the village Sitra. [The Sitras manufacture the brass rings and bangles worn by the Kondhs.] The body is then burnt. On the following day, a little rice is cooked, put on a dish, and laid on the spot where the corpse was burnt. An incantation is then pronounced, requesting the spirit of the deceased person to eat the rice and enjoy itself, and not to change itself into a devil or tiger, and come bothering the survivors in the village. Three days after death, the madda ceremony is performed. An effigy of the deceased is prepared of straw, which is stuck up in front of or on the roof of the house, and the relations and friends assemble, lament, and eat at the expense of the people of the deceased’s house. Each person brings a present of some kind or other, and, on his departure on the next day, receives something of slightly higher value. The death of a man in a village requires a purification, which is made by the sacrifice of a buffalo on the seventh day after death. If a man is killed by a tiger, the purification is made by the sacrifice of a pig, the head of which, cut off with a tangi (axe) by a Pāno, is passed between the legs of the men in the village, who stand in a line astraddle. It is a bad omen for him if the head touches any man’s legs. If the Pātro attends a funeral, he gets a fee of a goat for firing his gun, to drive away the dead man’s ghost.” According to Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar, if a person is killed by a tiger, the head of the decapitated pig is placed in a stream, and, as it floats down, it has to pass between the legs of the villagers. If it touches the legs of any of them, it forebodes that he will be killed by a tiger.In a note on the death ceremonies in Gumsūr, Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson writes as follows. “On life ceasing, they tie a sheep to the foot of the corpse. They carry the clothes, brass eating-dish, brass drinking-vessel,ornaments, grain in store, and the said sheep to the burning-ground. Having burned the body, and gone around about the pile, they leave all those things there, and, beating drums, return home. The garments the Pānos take away. They procure liquor, and drink it. They then go to their respective houses, and eat. On the next day, they kill a she-buffalo, and get together a great quantity of liquor. The whole of the tribe (near and distant relations) being assembled, they make bāji, and eat. They beat drums. If the deceased were of any consequence, dancers come and dance to the sound of the drums, to whom some animal is given, which they take, and go away. Subsequently, on the twelfth day, they carry a hog to the spot where the body was burned, and, after perambulating the site of the pyre, return to their home, where they kill a hog in the place set apart for their household gods, and, procuring liquor, make baji, the members of the tribe eating together. Should a tiger carry off any one, they throw out of doors all the (preserved) flesh belonging to him, and all the people of the village, not excepting children, quit their homes. The Jāni, being come with two rods of the tummeca tree (Acacia arabica), he plants these in the earth, and then, bringing one rod of the condatamara tree (Smilax macrophylla), he places it transversely across the other two. The Jāni, performing some incantation, sprinkles water on them. Beginning with the children, as these and the people pass through the passage so formed, the Jāni sprinkles water on them all. Afterwards, the whole of them go to their houses, without looking behind them.”In connection with customs observed in the event of death, Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar writes that “if a woman’s husband dies, she removes the beads from her neck, themetal finger rings, ankle and wrist ornaments, and the ornament worn in the lobe of one ear, that worn in the lobe of the other ear being retained. These are thrown on the chest of the corpse, before it is cremated. The widow does not remove the ornaments worn in the helices of the ears, and in the alæ and septum of the nose. When a Khond dies, his body is cremated. The people in the house of the deceased are not allowed to cook their food on that or the next day, but are fed by their relations and friends in the village. On the day after death, rice and a fowl are cooked separately, put in big leaf cups, and placed on the spot where the corpse was burnt. The spirit of the deceased is invited to eat the meal, and asked not to do them any harm. On the third day, the relations bathe, and smear their heads with clay. An effigy of the deceased is made, and stuck up on the roof of the house. The practice of making an image of the deceased obtains among the Goomsūr Khonds, but, in some other places, is considered inauspicious. On the seventh day, a purificatory ceremony is gone through, and a buffalo killed, with which, and the indispensable liquor, the guests are entertained. At a village two miles from Baliguda, a boy, about sixteen years old, died. His gold ear-rings and silver bracelets were not removed, but burnt. His cloths were thrown on the pyre. Rāgi and other grains, paddy, etc., were placed near the funeral pyre, but not in the fire. The food-stuffs, and a buffalo, were divided among the Haddis, who are the servants of the headman (Pātro) of the muttah. They also took the remains of the jewels, recovered from the ashes after cremation.”It is recorded by Mr. F. Fawcett175that “once after death, a propitiatory sacrifice is made of animals of thedeceased to the Pidāri Pitta (ancestor) for the sake of the deceased’s spirit, which, after this festive introduction to the shades, must take its chance. A curious ceremony, which I do not remember seeing noted anywhere, is performed the day after death. Some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the burning place. The fowl is split down the breast, and placed on the spot; it is afterwards eaten, and the soul is invoked to enter a new-Aborn child.”The following note on a Kondh funeral dance in the Ganjam Māliahs is from the pen of an eye-witness.176“The dead Pātro is, as usual, a hill Uriya, of ancient lineage, no less than that of the great totem of nola bompsa or the ancestral wood-pigeon that laid its eggs in the hollow of a bamboo, from which this family sprang. Various and most interesting are the totems of the Māliahs. In passing, I may mention another curious totem, that of the pea-fowl, two eggs of which a man brought home to his wife, who laid them in an earthen pot, and from them sprang a man-child, the progenitor of a famous family. But to return to the Pātro. Before sunset, mourned by his two wives, the younger and favourite one carrying a young child of light bamboo colour, he had been burnt, without much ceremony, in an open grassy spot, his ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven, and the spot marked by wooden posts driven deep into the soil. Not now would be celebrated the funeral obsequies, but a month hence on the accession of his eldest son, the future Pātro, a fair lad of eighteen years. As the day for the obsequies drew near, an unusual bustle filled the air. Potters from the low country arrived, and hundreds upon hundreds ofearthen pots of all sizes and shapes were turned, and piled in great heaps near the village. Huge buffaloes, unconscious of their approaching fate, lay tethered near, or wallowing in bovine luxury in a swamp hard by. Messengers had been sent far and near to all the Pātros, Molikos, and Bissoyis. Even the Kuttiya Khonds were not left out. The auspicious morning at length dawned, when a distinguished company began to arrive, each chief with his followers, and in many cases his wives and little children, all dressed in their best, and bent on enjoying everything to the utmost. I noticed fine stalwart men from Udiagiri on the edge of the ghauts, together with Khonds from more civilised Baliguda, and Khonds from cold and breezy Daringabadi, cheerful in spite of the numbers of their relatives that had found a horrid tomb inside a man-eating tiger that since 1886 (together with another ally lately started) had carried off more than four hundred of their kith and kin. Distinguished amongst even that wild horde for savagery were the Khonds from the Kuttiya country, who live on tops of hills, and whose women are seldom, if ever, seen. These are remarkable for their enormous quantities of frizzly hair tied in huge chignons over the right brow, and decorated with feathers of every hue—the jay, the parrot, the peacock and the white quills of the paddy-bird predominating. Their short, sturdy limbs are hung in every direction with necklaces and curious blue beads and cut agates, said to be dug out of ancient burial places and cromlechs in Central India. Certain it is that almost no inducement will prevail on a Khond to voluntarily part with these precious heirlooms. As each fresh detachment arrived, their first occupation was to go to a neighbouring tank (pond), and, after a wash and decoration of head and hair with either the orthodoxfeathers, or, prettier still, with wreaths of wild flowers, to repair to the late chief’s house, and, presenting themselves at the door, condole, with much vigour of lungs, with the now less disconsolate widows on their recent loss. This ceremony over, they tendered their allegiance to the young son of the dead Pātro, permitted by Government to take his place, and each man received from him an earthen cooking-pot, and each circle of villages a buffalo. The Khond is a beef eater, but a curious custom prevails in some parts, that a married woman must abstain from the flesh of a cow. These preliminary ceremonies over, the crowd adjourned, with great noise of shouting, blowing of buffalo horns, and beating of drums, to the open grassy spot marked by posts, where the late Pātro had been burned, and where a recently killed buffalo, weltering in its gore, now lay. Among the throng of men, women and children, most of the former more than slightly elevated by drinking copious draughts of a kind of beer made from the kuhari grain, were three Khonds carrying long poles surmounted by huge bunches of peacock feathers that blazed in the sunlight like emeralds and sapphires. The funeral dance now commenced. The dance itself is simple in the extreme, for, when the right spot was reached, old men and young began gyrating round and round in a large circle, a perfect human merry-go-round. The old grey-beards, plodding slowly round the ring, and stamping on the soil with their aged feet, presented a great contrast to the younger and wilder men, who capered and pranced about, sometimes outside the circle, waving their tanghis in the air, and every now and then leaping up to the slain buffalo, and dipping their axes into its blood, and then back again, dancing more wildly than ever, round and round from west to east, till theeye ached to behold the perpetual motion of this animated wheel. In the centre revolved the three men with the huge bunches of peacock feathers afore-mentioned. When any dropped out of the circle to rest there were many eager and willing to take their places, and so, with relays of fresh dancers, this human circle revolved on for three whole days, only ceasing at nightfall, when by large fires the various tribes cooked in the earthen pots provided the buffaloes presented by the new Pātro. In olden days, an animal was given to each village, but on this occasion only to a circle of villages, occasioning thereby certain grumblings among the wiseacres for the good old days of the past, when not only buffaloes in plenty, but Meriah human victims as well were lavishly provided and sacrificed. ‘Ichabod,’ said they in Khond, ‘the glory of the Māliahs hath departed.’ On the afternoon of the third day, the Pātros, Molikas, Bissoyis, and others of the great men began to depart with their retainers for their distant homes in the jungles, having had a thoroughly good time. The women, who had been very shy at first, fled at my approach, now, after three days’ familiarity with a white face, began to show symptoms of friendliness, so that they allowed me to go quite near to them to examine their pretty necklaces of coloured grasses, silver coins, and curious beads, and to count the numbers of small sticks (generally about twelve or fifteen) of broom that were arranged in the shape of a crescent round the outer edges of the pierced ears of each unmarried village belle, and to observe at close quarters the strange tattooed patterns in blue of zigzag and curve that to my eyes disfigured their otherwise comely faces. As to beauty of figure, I think very few can compare with a young and well-grown Khond maiden, with her straight back and handsomeproportions. It was, therefore, without much difficulty that I persuaded some of them to dance before me. Six buxom girls stepped out, all of them the respectable daughters of well-to-do Khonds, prepared to dance the famous peacock dance. Round their supple but massive waists was twisted the strip of national Khond cloth of blue, red and white, and for bodices what could be more becoming than their glossy brown skins of nature’s millinery, gracefully wreathed with garlands of coloured grasses and strings of gay beads. The polished jet black hair, neatly tied in a knot at the back, and decorated with pretty lacquered and silver combs, or with forest flowers, added yet more to their picturesque appearance. Each girl now took a long strip of white cloth, and, winding it round her waist, allowed one end to trail at the back in the fashion of a Liberty sash. This was supposed to represent the tail of the peacock. Three of the girls then faced the three others, and, with their left hands resting on their hips, and their elbows sticking out (to represent the wings), and the right arms extended in front with the fingers outstretched to simulate the neck and beak, began to dance to the ear-piercing shrieks of cracked trumpet, and to the deep beatings of a Māliah drum marking excellent time. On and on they danced, advancing and retiring, and now and then crossing over (not unlike the first figure of the quadrille), while their tinkling feet, ‘like little mice, stole in and out,’ the heels alternately clashing against each other, in exact time to the music, and the lips gracefully waving from side to side as they advanced or retired. There was perfect grace of movements combined with extreme modesty, the large expressive eyes veiled by the long lashes never once being raised, and the whole demeanour utterly obliviousto the crowd of enthusiastic admirers that surrounded them on all sides. But for the wild scene around, the noise and shrieking of instruments, and the fantastic dresses of the Khonds (many of whom had buffalo horns tied on to their painted faces, or had decorated their heads with immense wigs of long black hair), one might easily have supposed these shrinking damsels to have been the pick of a Mission School specially selected for propriety to dance the South Indian kummi before, say, an itinerant Bishop of ascetic tendencies and æsthetic temperament. When their heaving, panting bodies showed that exhausted nature claimed them for her own, the man with the trumpet or the drum would rush up, and blow or beat it almost under their drooping heads, urging them with shouts and gesticulations to further energy, till at length the shades of night crept over the hills, and, with one accord, the dancing and the deafening music ceased, while the six girls stole quietly back and were soon lost in the crowd.”Of superstitions among the Kondhs, the following are recorded by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar:—

Meriah Sacrifice Post.Meriah Sacrifice Post.The Kondhs of Bara Mootah promised to relinquish the rite on condition,inter alia, that they should be at liberty to sacrifice buffaloes, monkeys, goats, etc., to their deities with all the solemnities observed on occasions of human sacrifice; and that they should be at liberty, upon all occasions, to denounce to their gods the Government, and some of its servants in particular, as the cause of their having relinquished the great rite.The last recorded Meriah sacrifice in the Ganjam Māliahs occurred in 1852, and there are still Kondhs alive, who were present at it. Twenty-five descendants of persons who were reserved for sacrifice, but were rescued by Government officers, returned themselves as Meriah at the census, 1901. The Kondhs have now substituted a buffalo for a human being. The animal is hewn to pieces while alive, and the villagers rush home to their villages, to bury the flesh in the soil, and so secure prosperous crops. The sacrifice is not unaccompanied by risk to the performers, as the buffalo, before dying, frequently kills one or more of its tormenters. This was the case near Baliguda in 1899, when a buffalo killed the sacrificer. In the previous year, the desire of a village to intercept the bearer of the flesh for aneighbouring village led to a fight, in which two men were killed.It was the practice, a few years ago, at every Dassara festival in Jeypore, Vizagapatam, to select a specially fine ram, wash it, shave its head, affix thereto red and white bottu and nāmam (sect marks) between the eyes and down the nose, and gird it with a new white cloth after the manner of a human being. The animal being then fastened in a sitting posture, certain pūja (worship) was performed by a Brāhman priest, and it was decapitated. The substitution of animals for human victims is indicated by various religious legends. Thus, a hind was substituted for Iphigenia, and a ram for Isaac.It was stated by the officers of the Meriah Agency that there was reason to believe that the Rāja of Jeypore, when he was installed on his father’s death in 1860–61, sacrificed a girl thirteen years of age at the shrine of the goddess Durga in the town of Jeypore.167It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district (1907), that “goats and buffaloes now-a-days take the place of human Meriah victims, but the belief in the superior efficacy of the latter dies hard, and every now and again revives. When the Rampa rebellion of 1879–80 spread in this district, several cases of human sacrifice occurred in the disturbed tracts. In 1880, two persons were convicted of attempting a Meriah sacrifice near Ambadāla in Bissamkatak. In 1883, a man (a beggar and a stranger) was found at daybreak murdered in one of the temples in Jeypore, in circumstances which pointed to his having been slain as a Meriah; and, as late as 1886, a formal enquiry showed that there were ample grounds for the suspicion that the kidnapping of victimsstill went on in Bastar.” As recently as 1902, a petition was presented to the District Magistrate of Ganjam, asking him to sanction the performance of a human sacrifice. The memory of the abandoned practice is kept green by one of the Kondh songs, for a translation of which we are indebted to Mr. J. E. Friend-Pereira.168“At the time of the great Kiabon (Campbell) Sahib’s coming, the country was in darkness; it was enveloped in mist.Having sent paiks to collect the people of the land, they, having surrounded them, caught the Meriah sacrificers.Having caught the Meriah sacrificers, they brought them, and again they went and seized the evil councillors.Having seen the chains and shackles, the people were afraid; murder and bloodshed were quelled.Then the land became beautiful, and a certain Mokodella (Macpherson) Sahib came.He destroyed the lairs of the tigers and bears in the hills and rocks, and taught wisdom to the people.After the lapse of a month, he built bungalows and schools; and he advised them to learn reading and law.They learnt wisdom and reading; they acquired silver and gold. Then all the people became wealthy.”Human sacrifice was not practiced in the Kurtilli Muttah of the Ganjam Māliahs. The reason of this is assigned to the fact that the first attempt was made with a crooked knife, and the sacrificers made such a bad business of it that they gave it up. Colonel Campbell gives another tradition, that, through humanity, one of the Kurtilli Pātros (head of a group of villages) threatened to leave the muttah if the practice was carried out.Of a substituted sacrifice, which was carried out in the Ganjam Māliahs in 1894,169the following graphic account has been given. “Suddenly we came upon a number of Khonds carrying an immensely long bamboo, about fifty feet in length, surmounted by a gorgeous sort of balloon made of red and white cloth stretched on a bamboo frame. Attached to this were dried strips of pig’s flesh, and the whole of the extraordinary structure was surmounted by a huge plume of peacock’s feathers that waved gaily in the breeze. Along with this was carried another bamboo, not so long, slung all over with iron bells. We found that the men had been worshipping, and presenting these structures to a sylvan deity close by, and were now hastening to the small Khond village of Dhuttiegaum, the scene of the present Meriah sacrifice. Half a mile brought us to this hamlet, situated amongst a dense grove of trees, in the midst of which was tied to a curiously fluted and carved wooden post the sacrificial buffalo, a placid animal, with its body glistening with the oil of many anointings. The huge bamboo pole, with its crown of red and white cloth and peacock’s feathers, and incongruous shreds of dried pig’s flesh, was now erected in the centre of the village. The comparative quiet in the village did not last long, for on a sudden the air was rent with a succession of shrieks. With the sound of the beating of Māliah drums, and the blowing of buffalo horns, a party of Khonds came madly dancing and rushing down a steep hillside from some neighbouring village. They dashed up to the buffalo, and began frantically dancing with the villagers already assembled round and round the animal. Each man carried a green bough of some tree, a sharp knife, and a tanghi. Theywere all adorned in holiday attire, their hair combed and knotted on the forehead, and profusely decorated with waving feathers. All of them were more or less intoxicated. Various other villagers now began to arrive, thick and fast, in the same manner, with wavings of green boughs, flourishing of knives, and hideous yells. Each party was led by the headman or Moliko of the village. The dancing now became more general, and faster and more furious, as more and more joined the human ‘merry go round,’ circling about the unfortunate buffalo. The women, who had followed their lords and masters at a discreet distance, stood sedately by in a group, and took no part whatever in the revels. They were for the most part fine buxom girls, well groomed and oiled, and stood demurely watching everything with their sharp black eyes. The hitherto quiet buffalo, who for nearly two days had been without food and water, now began to get excited, and, straining at its tether, plunged and butted at the dancers, catching one man neatly on the nose so that the blood flowed copiously. However, the Khonds were too excited to care, and circled round and round the poor maddened brute, singing and blowing horns into its ears, beating drums, and every now and then offering it cakes brought with them from their villages, and then laying them on the top of the post as offerings. As they thus madly careered about, we had ample time to note their extraordinary costumes. One man had somehow got hold of an old blue Police overcoat, which he had put on inside out, and round his waist he had gathered what seemed to be a number of striped tent carpets, forming a stiff ballet skirt or kilt. He was one of the most athletic in spinning round the buffalo, flourishing a kitchen chopper. Another man’s costume consisted of almost nothing at all. Hehad, however, profusely daubed his body with white and black spots, and on his head he had centred all his decorative genius. The head in question was swathed in yards of cloth, terminating at the back in a perfect cascade of cock’s feathers. He excitedly waved over this erection an ancient and very rusty umbrella, with many ventilations, with streamers of white cloth attached to the top. Others had tied on to their heads with bands of cloth the horns of buffaloes, or brass horns made in imitation of those of the spotted deer. Their long, black and curly hair hung in masses from beneath this strange erection, giving them a most startling appearance. The dancing round the buffalo lasted quite two hours, as they were waiting for the arrival of the Pātro, before concluding the final ceremonies, and the great man was fashionably late. To incite their jaded energies to further terpsichorean efforts, from time to time the dancers drank copious draughts of a kind of beer, used specially on these occasions, and made from kukuri, a species of grain. At last, the long expected Pātro arrived with the usual uproar of many deafening sounds, both artificial and natural, and with the waving of green boughs. On this occasion he walked last, while the whole of his retinue preceded him dancing, headed by an ancient and withered hag, carrying on her shoulders a Māliah drum of cow-hide stretched tightly over a hoop of iron, and vigorously beaten from behind her by a Khond with stiff thongs of dried leather. The great man himself walked sedately, followed by his ‘charger,’ a broken-kneed tat (pony), extraordinarily caparisoned, and led by a youth of tender years, whose sole garment consisted of a faded red drummer’s coat of antiquated cut. As soon as the Pātro had seated himself comfortably on a log near the dancers, a change came over the scene.The hitherto shouting and madly revolving throng stopped their gyrations round the stupefied beast, too much exhausted and frightened to offer any resistance, and, falling on its neck and body, began to smother it with caresses and endearments, and, to a low plaintive air, crooned and wailed over it, the following dirge, of which I append a rude translation. Tradition says that they used to sing it, with slight variations, over their human victims before the sacrifice:—Blame us not, O buffalo!Thus for sacrificing thee,For our fathers have ordainedThis ancient mystery.We have bought thee with a price,Have paid for thee all thy worth.What blame can rest upon us,Who save our land from dearth?Famine stares us in the face,Parched are our fields, and dry,Death looks in at ev’ry door,For food our young ones cry.Thadi Pennoo veils her face,Propitiate me, she cries,Give to me of flesh and blood,A willing sacrifice.That where’er its blood is shed,On land, or field, or hill,There the gen’rous grain may spring,So ye may eat your fill.Then be glad, O buffalo!Willing sacrifice to be,Soon in Thadi’s meadows green,Thou shalt brouse eternally.After the Khonds had been chanting this sacrificial hymn for some time, the buffalo was untied from the carvedpost, and led, with singing, dancing and shouting, and with the noise of many musical instruments, to a sacred grove a few hundred yards off, and there tied to a stake. As soon as it had been firmly tied, the Khonds threw off all their superfluous clothing to the large crowd of womankind waiting near, and stood round the animal, each man with his hand uplifted, and holding a sharp knife ready to strike at a moment’s notice, as soon as the priest or Janni had given the word of command. The Janni, who did not differ outwardly from the others, now gave the buffalo a slight tap on the head with a small axe. An indescribable scene followed. The Khonds in a body fell on the animal, and, in an amazingly short time, literally tore the living victim to shreds with their knives, leaving nothing but the head, bones, and stomach. Death must, mercifully, have been almost instantaneous. Every particle of flesh and skin had been stripped off during the few minutes they fought and struggled over the buffalo, eagerly grasping for every atom of flesh. As soon as a man had secured a piece of flesh, he rushed away with the gory mass, as fast as he could, to his fields, to bury it therein according to ancient custom, before the sun had set. As some of them had to do good distances to effect this, it was imperative that they should run very fast. A curious scene now took place, for which we could obtain no explanation. As the men ran, all the women flung after them clods of earth, some of them taking very good effect. The sacred grove was cleared of people, save a few that guarded the remnants left of the buffalo, which were taken, and burnt with ceremony at the foot of the stake.”I pass on to the subject of infanticide among the Kondhs. It is stated, in the Manual of the Vizagapatam district, that female infanticide used to be very common all over the Jeypore country, and the Rājah is said tohave made money out of it in one large tāluk (division). The custom was to consult the Dāsari (priest) when a child was born as to its fate. If it was to be killed, the parents had to pay the Amīn of the tāluk a fee for the privilege of killing it; and the Amīn used to pay the Rājah three hundred rupees a year for renting the privilege of giving the license and pocketing the fees. The practice of female infanticide was formerly very prevalent among the Kondhs of Ganjam, and, in 1841, Lieutenant Macpherson was deputed to carry into effect the measures which had been proposed by Lord Elphinstone for the suppression of the Meriah sacrifices and infanticide. The custom was ascribed to various beliefs, viz., (1) that it was an injunction by god, as one woman made the whole world suffer; (2) that it conduces to male offspring; (3) that woman, being a mischief-maker, is better out of the world than in it; (4) that the difficulty, owing to poverty, in providing marriage portions was an objection to rearing females. From Macpherson’s well known report170the following extracts are taken. “The portion of the Khond country, in which the practice of female infanticide is known to prevail, is roughly estimated at 2,400 square miles, its population at 60,000, and the number of infants destroyed annually at 1,200 to 1,500. The tribes (who practice infanticide) belong to the division of the Khond people which does not offer human sacrifices. The usage of infanticide has existed amongst them from time immemorial. It owes its origin and its maintenance partly to religious opinions, partly to ideas from which certain very important features of Khond manners arise. The Khonds believe that the supreme deity, the sun god, created all thingsgood; that the earth goddess introduced evil into the world; and that these two powers have since conflicted. The non-sacrificing tribes make the supreme deity the great object of their adoration, neglecting the earth goddess. The sacrificing tribes, on the other hand, believe the propitiation of the latter power to be the most necessary worship. Now the tribes which practice female infanticide hold that the sun god, in contemplating the deplorable effects produced by the creation of feminine nature, charged men to bring up only as many females as they could restrain from producing evil to society. This is the first idea upon which the usage is founded. Again, the Khonds believe that souls almost invariably return to animate human forms in the families in which they have been first born and received. But the reception of the soul of an infant into a family is completed only on the performance of the ceremony of naming upon the seventh day after its birth. The death of a female infant, therefore, before that ceremonial of reception, is believed to exclude its soul from the circle of family spirits, diminishing by one the chance of future female births in the family. And, as the first aspiration of every Khond is to have male children, this belief is a powerful incentive to infanticide.” Macpherson, during his campaign, came across many villages of about a hundred houses, in which there was not a single female child. In like manner, in 1855, Captain Frye found many Baro Bori Khond villages without a single female child in them.In savage societies, it has been said, sexual unions were generally effected by the violent capture of the woman. By degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form. Whereof an excellent example is afforded by the Kondhs,concerning whom the author of the Ganjam Manual writes as follows. “The parents arrange the marriages of their children. The bride is looked upon as a commercial speculation, and is paid for in gontis. A gonti is one of anything, such as a buffalo, a pig, or a brass pot; for instance, a hundred gontis might consist of ten bullocks, ten buffaloes, ten sacks of corn, ten sets of brass, twenty sheep, ten pigs, and thirty fowls. The usual price, however, paid by the bridegroom’s father for the bride, is twenty or thirty gontis. A Khond finds his wife from among the women of any mutāh (village) than his own. On the day fixed for the bride being taken home to her husband’s house, the pieces of broom in her ears are removed, and are replaced by brass rings. The bride is covered over with a red blanket, and carried astride on her uncle’s back towards the husband’s village, accompanied by the young women of her own village. Music is played, and in the rear are carried brass playthings, such as horses, etc., for the bridegroom, and cloths and brass pins as presents for the bridegroom from the bride’s father. On the road, at the village boundary, the procession is met by the bridegroom and the young men of his village, with their heads and bodies wrapped up in blankets and cloths. Each is armed with a bundle of long thin bamboo sticks. The young women of the bride’s village at once attack the bridegroom’s party with sticks, stones, and clods of earth, which the young men ward off with the bamboo sticks. A running fight is in this manner kept up until the village is reached, when the stone-throwing invariably ceases, and the bridegroom’s uncle, snatching up the bride, carries her off to her husband’s house. This fighting is by no means child’s play, and the men are sometimes seriously injured. The whole party is then entertained by the bridegroomas lavishly as his means will permit. On the day after the bride’s arrival, a buffalo and a pig are slaughtered and eaten, and, upon the bride’s attendants returning home on the evening of the second day, a male and female buffalo, or some less valuable present, is given to them. On the third day, all the Khonds of the village have a grand dance or tamāsha (festivity), and on the fourth day there is another grand assembly at the house of the bridegroom. The bride and bridegroom are then made to sit down on a cot, and the bridegroom’s brother, pointing upwards to the roof of the house, says: “As long as this girl stays with us, may her children be as men and tigers; but, if she goes astray, may her children be as snakes and monkeys, and die and be destroyed!” In his report upon the Kondhs (1842), Macpherson tells us that “they hold a feast at the bride’s house. Far into the night the principals in the scene are raised by an uncle of each upon his shoulders, and borne through the dance. The burdens are suddenly exchanged, and the uncle of the youth disappears with the bride. The assembly divides itself into two parties. The friends of the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the bridegroom to cover her flight, and men, women, and children mingle in mock conflict. I saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth. He was surrounded by twenty or thirty young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attacks made upon him by a party of young women. The man was just married, and the burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends were, according to custom, seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom, until he reached the confines of his own village. Then the tables wereturned, and the bride was fairly won; and off her young friends scampered, screaming and laughing, but not relaxing their speed till they reached their own village.” Among the Kondhs of Gumsūr, the friends and relations of the bride and bridegroom collect at an appointed spot. The people of the female convoy call out to the others to come and take the bride, and then a mock fight with stones and thorny brambles is begun by the female convoy against the parties composing the other one. In the midst of the tumult the assaulted party takes possession of the bride, and all the furniture brought with her, and carry all off together.171According to another account, the bride, as soon as she enters the bridegroom’s house, has two enormous bracelets, or rather handcuffs of brass, each weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, attached to each wrist. The unfortunate girl has to sit with her two wrists resting on her shoulders, so as to support these enormous weights. This is to prevent her from running away to her old home. On the third day the bangles are removed, as it is supposed that by then the girl has become reconciled to her fate. These marriage bangles are made on the hills, and are curiously carved in fluted and zigzag lines, and kept as heirlooms in the family, to be used at the next marriage in the house. According to a still more recent account of marriage among the Kondhs172an old woman suddenly rushes forward, seizes the bride, flings her on her back, and carries her off. A man comes to the front, catches the groom, and places him astride on his shoulder. The human horses neigh and prance about like the live quadruped, and finally rush away to the outskirts of the village. This is a signal forthe bride’s girl friends to chase the couple, and pelt them with clods of earth, stones, mud, cowdung, and rice. When the mock assault is at an end, the older people come up, and all accompany the bridal pair to the groom’s village. A correspondent informs me that he once saw a Kondh bride going to her new home, riding on her uncle’s shoulders, and wrapped in a red blanket. She was followed by a bevy of girls and relations, and preceded by drums and horns. He was told that the uncle had to carry her the whole way, and that, if he had to put her down, a fine of a buffalo was inflicted, the animal being killed and eaten. It is recorded that a European magistrate once mistook a Kondh marriage for a riot, but, on enquiry, discovered his mistake.Reference has been made above to certain brass playthings, which are carried in the bridal procession. The figures include peacocks, chamæleons, cobras, crabs, horses, deer, tigers, cocks, elephants, human beings, musicians, etc. They are cast by thecire perdueprocess. The core of the figure is roughly shaped in clay, according to the usual practice, but, instead of laying on the wax in an even thickness, thin wax threads are first made, and arranged over the core so as to form a network, or placed in parallel lines or diagonally, according as the form of the figure or fancy of the workman dictates. The head, arms, and feet are modelled in the ordinary way. The wax threads are made by means of a bamboo tube, into the end of which a moveable brass plate is fitted. The wax, being made sufficiently soft by heat, is pressed through the perforation at the end of the tube, and comes out in the form of long threads, which must be used by the workmen before they become hard and brittle. The chief place where these figures are made is Belugunta, near Russellkonda inGanjam. It is noted by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson173that the Kondhs of Gumsūr, to represent their deities Jara Pennu, the Linga Dēvata, or Petri Dēvata, keep in their houses brass figures of elephants, peacocks, dolls, fishes, etc. If affliction happens to any one belonging to the household, or if the country skin eruption breaks out on any of them, they put rice into milk, and, mixing turmeric with it, sprinkle the mixture on the figures, and, killing fowls and sheep, cause worship to be made by the Jāni, and, making bāji, eat.At a marriage among the Kondhs of Baliguda, after the heads of the bride and bridegroom have been brought together, an arrow is discharged from a bow by the younger brother of the bridegroom into the grass roof of the hut. At the betrothal ceremony of some Kondhs, a buffalo and pig are killed, and some of the viscera eaten. Various parts are distributed according to an abiding rule, viz., the head to the bridegroom’s maternal uncle, the flesh of the sides to his sisters, and of the back among other relations and friends. Some Kondh boys of ten or twelve years of age are said to be married to girls of fifteen or sixteen. At Shubernagiri, in the Ganjam Māliahs, are two trysting trees, consisting of a jāk (Artocarpus integrifolia) and mango growing close together. The custom was for a Kondh, who was unable to pay the marriage fees to the Pātro (headman), to meet his love here by night and plight his troth, and then for the two to retire into the jungle for three days and nights before returning to the village. Afterwards, they were considered to be man and wife.It is noted by Mr. Friend-Pereira174that, at the ceremonial for settling the preliminaries of a Kondhmarriage, a knotted string is put into the hands of the sēridāhpa gātāru (searchers for the bride), and a similar string is kept by the girl’s people. The reckoning of the date of the betrothal ceremony is kept by undoing a knot in the string every morning.Some years ago, a young Kondh was betrothed to the daughter of another Kondh, and, after a few years, managed to pay up the necessary number of gifts. He then applied to the girl’s father to name the day for the marriage. Before the wedding took place, however, a Pāno went to the girl’s father, and said that she was his daughter (she had been born before her parents were married), and that he was the man to whom the gifts should have been paid. The case was referred to a council meeting, which decided in favour of the Pāno.Of birth ceremonies, the following account is given by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar. The woman is attended in her confinement by an elderly Kondh midwife, who shampooes her abdomen with castor-oil. The umbilical cord is cut by the mother of the infant. For this purpose, the right thigh of the baby is flexed towards its abdomen, and a piece of cooled charcoal placed on its right knee. The cord is placed on the charcoal, and divided with the sharp edge of an arrow. The placenta is buried close to the house near a wall. After the cord has been severed, the mother daubs the region of the infant’s navel with her saliva, over which she smears castor-oil. She then warms her hands at a fire, and applies them to the infant’s body. [It is stated, in the Ganjam Manual, that the infant is held before a hot fire, and half roasted.] The warming is repeated several times daily for four or five days. When the umbilical cord has sloughed off, a spider is burnt to ashes over a fire, placed in a cocoanut shell, mixed with castor-oil, and applied by means of afowl’s feather to the navel. The infant’s head is shaved, except over the anterior fontanelle, the hair from which is removed after about a month. Its body is smeared all over daily with castor-oil andturmericpaste until it is a month old. The mother then goes with her baby and husband to her brother’s house, where the infant is presented with a fowl, which is taken home, and eaten by her husband. The appropriation of the fowl varies according to the locality. In some places, the infant’s father, and other relations, except the mother, may eat it, and, in others, both its parents, and relations living in the house, may do so. In still other places, the father, paternal grandfather and grandmother, and paternal uncle, may partake of it.The naming ceremony among the Kondhs of Gumsūr is thus described by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson. “Six months after birth, on a fixed day, they make gāduthuva (the ceremony of naming the child). On that day, killing a dog, and procuring liquor, they make bāji. They wash the feet of the child. The Jāni being come, he ties a cord from the haft to the point of a sickle, and they divine by means of it. Having assembled the petrilu (literally ancestors, but here denoting household images or gods), they put rice on the sickle. As the names (of the ancestors or family?) are repeated in order, each time the rice is put on, that name is chosen on the mention of which the sickle moves, and is given to the child. They then drink liquor, and eat bāji. They give rice and flesh to the Jāni.”Of death ceremonies, the following account is given in the manual of the Ganjam district. “Immediately after death, a cloth is wrapped round the corpse, but no cloths or valuables are removed. A portion of paddy (unhusked rice), and all the cooking utensils of the deceased aregiven to the village Sitra. [The Sitras manufacture the brass rings and bangles worn by the Kondhs.] The body is then burnt. On the following day, a little rice is cooked, put on a dish, and laid on the spot where the corpse was burnt. An incantation is then pronounced, requesting the spirit of the deceased person to eat the rice and enjoy itself, and not to change itself into a devil or tiger, and come bothering the survivors in the village. Three days after death, the madda ceremony is performed. An effigy of the deceased is prepared of straw, which is stuck up in front of or on the roof of the house, and the relations and friends assemble, lament, and eat at the expense of the people of the deceased’s house. Each person brings a present of some kind or other, and, on his departure on the next day, receives something of slightly higher value. The death of a man in a village requires a purification, which is made by the sacrifice of a buffalo on the seventh day after death. If a man is killed by a tiger, the purification is made by the sacrifice of a pig, the head of which, cut off with a tangi (axe) by a Pāno, is passed between the legs of the men in the village, who stand in a line astraddle. It is a bad omen for him if the head touches any man’s legs. If the Pātro attends a funeral, he gets a fee of a goat for firing his gun, to drive away the dead man’s ghost.” According to Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar, if a person is killed by a tiger, the head of the decapitated pig is placed in a stream, and, as it floats down, it has to pass between the legs of the villagers. If it touches the legs of any of them, it forebodes that he will be killed by a tiger.In a note on the death ceremonies in Gumsūr, Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson writes as follows. “On life ceasing, they tie a sheep to the foot of the corpse. They carry the clothes, brass eating-dish, brass drinking-vessel,ornaments, grain in store, and the said sheep to the burning-ground. Having burned the body, and gone around about the pile, they leave all those things there, and, beating drums, return home. The garments the Pānos take away. They procure liquor, and drink it. They then go to their respective houses, and eat. On the next day, they kill a she-buffalo, and get together a great quantity of liquor. The whole of the tribe (near and distant relations) being assembled, they make bāji, and eat. They beat drums. If the deceased were of any consequence, dancers come and dance to the sound of the drums, to whom some animal is given, which they take, and go away. Subsequently, on the twelfth day, they carry a hog to the spot where the body was burned, and, after perambulating the site of the pyre, return to their home, where they kill a hog in the place set apart for their household gods, and, procuring liquor, make baji, the members of the tribe eating together. Should a tiger carry off any one, they throw out of doors all the (preserved) flesh belonging to him, and all the people of the village, not excepting children, quit their homes. The Jāni, being come with two rods of the tummeca tree (Acacia arabica), he plants these in the earth, and then, bringing one rod of the condatamara tree (Smilax macrophylla), he places it transversely across the other two. The Jāni, performing some incantation, sprinkles water on them. Beginning with the children, as these and the people pass through the passage so formed, the Jāni sprinkles water on them all. Afterwards, the whole of them go to their houses, without looking behind them.”In connection with customs observed in the event of death, Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar writes that “if a woman’s husband dies, she removes the beads from her neck, themetal finger rings, ankle and wrist ornaments, and the ornament worn in the lobe of one ear, that worn in the lobe of the other ear being retained. These are thrown on the chest of the corpse, before it is cremated. The widow does not remove the ornaments worn in the helices of the ears, and in the alæ and septum of the nose. When a Khond dies, his body is cremated. The people in the house of the deceased are not allowed to cook their food on that or the next day, but are fed by their relations and friends in the village. On the day after death, rice and a fowl are cooked separately, put in big leaf cups, and placed on the spot where the corpse was burnt. The spirit of the deceased is invited to eat the meal, and asked not to do them any harm. On the third day, the relations bathe, and smear their heads with clay. An effigy of the deceased is made, and stuck up on the roof of the house. The practice of making an image of the deceased obtains among the Goomsūr Khonds, but, in some other places, is considered inauspicious. On the seventh day, a purificatory ceremony is gone through, and a buffalo killed, with which, and the indispensable liquor, the guests are entertained. At a village two miles from Baliguda, a boy, about sixteen years old, died. His gold ear-rings and silver bracelets were not removed, but burnt. His cloths were thrown on the pyre. Rāgi and other grains, paddy, etc., were placed near the funeral pyre, but not in the fire. The food-stuffs, and a buffalo, were divided among the Haddis, who are the servants of the headman (Pātro) of the muttah. They also took the remains of the jewels, recovered from the ashes after cremation.”It is recorded by Mr. F. Fawcett175that “once after death, a propitiatory sacrifice is made of animals of thedeceased to the Pidāri Pitta (ancestor) for the sake of the deceased’s spirit, which, after this festive introduction to the shades, must take its chance. A curious ceremony, which I do not remember seeing noted anywhere, is performed the day after death. Some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the burning place. The fowl is split down the breast, and placed on the spot; it is afterwards eaten, and the soul is invoked to enter a new-Aborn child.”The following note on a Kondh funeral dance in the Ganjam Māliahs is from the pen of an eye-witness.176“The dead Pātro is, as usual, a hill Uriya, of ancient lineage, no less than that of the great totem of nola bompsa or the ancestral wood-pigeon that laid its eggs in the hollow of a bamboo, from which this family sprang. Various and most interesting are the totems of the Māliahs. In passing, I may mention another curious totem, that of the pea-fowl, two eggs of which a man brought home to his wife, who laid them in an earthen pot, and from them sprang a man-child, the progenitor of a famous family. But to return to the Pātro. Before sunset, mourned by his two wives, the younger and favourite one carrying a young child of light bamboo colour, he had been burnt, without much ceremony, in an open grassy spot, his ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven, and the spot marked by wooden posts driven deep into the soil. Not now would be celebrated the funeral obsequies, but a month hence on the accession of his eldest son, the future Pātro, a fair lad of eighteen years. As the day for the obsequies drew near, an unusual bustle filled the air. Potters from the low country arrived, and hundreds upon hundreds ofearthen pots of all sizes and shapes were turned, and piled in great heaps near the village. Huge buffaloes, unconscious of their approaching fate, lay tethered near, or wallowing in bovine luxury in a swamp hard by. Messengers had been sent far and near to all the Pātros, Molikos, and Bissoyis. Even the Kuttiya Khonds were not left out. The auspicious morning at length dawned, when a distinguished company began to arrive, each chief with his followers, and in many cases his wives and little children, all dressed in their best, and bent on enjoying everything to the utmost. I noticed fine stalwart men from Udiagiri on the edge of the ghauts, together with Khonds from more civilised Baliguda, and Khonds from cold and breezy Daringabadi, cheerful in spite of the numbers of their relatives that had found a horrid tomb inside a man-eating tiger that since 1886 (together with another ally lately started) had carried off more than four hundred of their kith and kin. Distinguished amongst even that wild horde for savagery were the Khonds from the Kuttiya country, who live on tops of hills, and whose women are seldom, if ever, seen. These are remarkable for their enormous quantities of frizzly hair tied in huge chignons over the right brow, and decorated with feathers of every hue—the jay, the parrot, the peacock and the white quills of the paddy-bird predominating. Their short, sturdy limbs are hung in every direction with necklaces and curious blue beads and cut agates, said to be dug out of ancient burial places and cromlechs in Central India. Certain it is that almost no inducement will prevail on a Khond to voluntarily part with these precious heirlooms. As each fresh detachment arrived, their first occupation was to go to a neighbouring tank (pond), and, after a wash and decoration of head and hair with either the orthodoxfeathers, or, prettier still, with wreaths of wild flowers, to repair to the late chief’s house, and, presenting themselves at the door, condole, with much vigour of lungs, with the now less disconsolate widows on their recent loss. This ceremony over, they tendered their allegiance to the young son of the dead Pātro, permitted by Government to take his place, and each man received from him an earthen cooking-pot, and each circle of villages a buffalo. The Khond is a beef eater, but a curious custom prevails in some parts, that a married woman must abstain from the flesh of a cow. These preliminary ceremonies over, the crowd adjourned, with great noise of shouting, blowing of buffalo horns, and beating of drums, to the open grassy spot marked by posts, where the late Pātro had been burned, and where a recently killed buffalo, weltering in its gore, now lay. Among the throng of men, women and children, most of the former more than slightly elevated by drinking copious draughts of a kind of beer made from the kuhari grain, were three Khonds carrying long poles surmounted by huge bunches of peacock feathers that blazed in the sunlight like emeralds and sapphires. The funeral dance now commenced. The dance itself is simple in the extreme, for, when the right spot was reached, old men and young began gyrating round and round in a large circle, a perfect human merry-go-round. The old grey-beards, plodding slowly round the ring, and stamping on the soil with their aged feet, presented a great contrast to the younger and wilder men, who capered and pranced about, sometimes outside the circle, waving their tanghis in the air, and every now and then leaping up to the slain buffalo, and dipping their axes into its blood, and then back again, dancing more wildly than ever, round and round from west to east, till theeye ached to behold the perpetual motion of this animated wheel. In the centre revolved the three men with the huge bunches of peacock feathers afore-mentioned. When any dropped out of the circle to rest there were many eager and willing to take their places, and so, with relays of fresh dancers, this human circle revolved on for three whole days, only ceasing at nightfall, when by large fires the various tribes cooked in the earthen pots provided the buffaloes presented by the new Pātro. In olden days, an animal was given to each village, but on this occasion only to a circle of villages, occasioning thereby certain grumblings among the wiseacres for the good old days of the past, when not only buffaloes in plenty, but Meriah human victims as well were lavishly provided and sacrificed. ‘Ichabod,’ said they in Khond, ‘the glory of the Māliahs hath departed.’ On the afternoon of the third day, the Pātros, Molikas, Bissoyis, and others of the great men began to depart with their retainers for their distant homes in the jungles, having had a thoroughly good time. The women, who had been very shy at first, fled at my approach, now, after three days’ familiarity with a white face, began to show symptoms of friendliness, so that they allowed me to go quite near to them to examine their pretty necklaces of coloured grasses, silver coins, and curious beads, and to count the numbers of small sticks (generally about twelve or fifteen) of broom that were arranged in the shape of a crescent round the outer edges of the pierced ears of each unmarried village belle, and to observe at close quarters the strange tattooed patterns in blue of zigzag and curve that to my eyes disfigured their otherwise comely faces. As to beauty of figure, I think very few can compare with a young and well-grown Khond maiden, with her straight back and handsomeproportions. It was, therefore, without much difficulty that I persuaded some of them to dance before me. Six buxom girls stepped out, all of them the respectable daughters of well-to-do Khonds, prepared to dance the famous peacock dance. Round their supple but massive waists was twisted the strip of national Khond cloth of blue, red and white, and for bodices what could be more becoming than their glossy brown skins of nature’s millinery, gracefully wreathed with garlands of coloured grasses and strings of gay beads. The polished jet black hair, neatly tied in a knot at the back, and decorated with pretty lacquered and silver combs, or with forest flowers, added yet more to their picturesque appearance. Each girl now took a long strip of white cloth, and, winding it round her waist, allowed one end to trail at the back in the fashion of a Liberty sash. This was supposed to represent the tail of the peacock. Three of the girls then faced the three others, and, with their left hands resting on their hips, and their elbows sticking out (to represent the wings), and the right arms extended in front with the fingers outstretched to simulate the neck and beak, began to dance to the ear-piercing shrieks of cracked trumpet, and to the deep beatings of a Māliah drum marking excellent time. On and on they danced, advancing and retiring, and now and then crossing over (not unlike the first figure of the quadrille), while their tinkling feet, ‘like little mice, stole in and out,’ the heels alternately clashing against each other, in exact time to the music, and the lips gracefully waving from side to side as they advanced or retired. There was perfect grace of movements combined with extreme modesty, the large expressive eyes veiled by the long lashes never once being raised, and the whole demeanour utterly obliviousto the crowd of enthusiastic admirers that surrounded them on all sides. But for the wild scene around, the noise and shrieking of instruments, and the fantastic dresses of the Khonds (many of whom had buffalo horns tied on to their painted faces, or had decorated their heads with immense wigs of long black hair), one might easily have supposed these shrinking damsels to have been the pick of a Mission School specially selected for propriety to dance the South Indian kummi before, say, an itinerant Bishop of ascetic tendencies and æsthetic temperament. When their heaving, panting bodies showed that exhausted nature claimed them for her own, the man with the trumpet or the drum would rush up, and blow or beat it almost under their drooping heads, urging them with shouts and gesticulations to further energy, till at length the shades of night crept over the hills, and, with one accord, the dancing and the deafening music ceased, while the six girls stole quietly back and were soon lost in the crowd.”Of superstitions among the Kondhs, the following are recorded by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar:—

Meriah Sacrifice Post.Meriah Sacrifice Post.The Kondhs of Bara Mootah promised to relinquish the rite on condition,inter alia, that they should be at liberty to sacrifice buffaloes, monkeys, goats, etc., to their deities with all the solemnities observed on occasions of human sacrifice; and that they should be at liberty, upon all occasions, to denounce to their gods the Government, and some of its servants in particular, as the cause of their having relinquished the great rite.The last recorded Meriah sacrifice in the Ganjam Māliahs occurred in 1852, and there are still Kondhs alive, who were present at it. Twenty-five descendants of persons who were reserved for sacrifice, but were rescued by Government officers, returned themselves as Meriah at the census, 1901. The Kondhs have now substituted a buffalo for a human being. The animal is hewn to pieces while alive, and the villagers rush home to their villages, to bury the flesh in the soil, and so secure prosperous crops. The sacrifice is not unaccompanied by risk to the performers, as the buffalo, before dying, frequently kills one or more of its tormenters. This was the case near Baliguda in 1899, when a buffalo killed the sacrificer. In the previous year, the desire of a village to intercept the bearer of the flesh for aneighbouring village led to a fight, in which two men were killed.It was the practice, a few years ago, at every Dassara festival in Jeypore, Vizagapatam, to select a specially fine ram, wash it, shave its head, affix thereto red and white bottu and nāmam (sect marks) between the eyes and down the nose, and gird it with a new white cloth after the manner of a human being. The animal being then fastened in a sitting posture, certain pūja (worship) was performed by a Brāhman priest, and it was decapitated. The substitution of animals for human victims is indicated by various religious legends. Thus, a hind was substituted for Iphigenia, and a ram for Isaac.It was stated by the officers of the Meriah Agency that there was reason to believe that the Rāja of Jeypore, when he was installed on his father’s death in 1860–61, sacrificed a girl thirteen years of age at the shrine of the goddess Durga in the town of Jeypore.167It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district (1907), that “goats and buffaloes now-a-days take the place of human Meriah victims, but the belief in the superior efficacy of the latter dies hard, and every now and again revives. When the Rampa rebellion of 1879–80 spread in this district, several cases of human sacrifice occurred in the disturbed tracts. In 1880, two persons were convicted of attempting a Meriah sacrifice near Ambadāla in Bissamkatak. In 1883, a man (a beggar and a stranger) was found at daybreak murdered in one of the temples in Jeypore, in circumstances which pointed to his having been slain as a Meriah; and, as late as 1886, a formal enquiry showed that there were ample grounds for the suspicion that the kidnapping of victimsstill went on in Bastar.” As recently as 1902, a petition was presented to the District Magistrate of Ganjam, asking him to sanction the performance of a human sacrifice. The memory of the abandoned practice is kept green by one of the Kondh songs, for a translation of which we are indebted to Mr. J. E. Friend-Pereira.168“At the time of the great Kiabon (Campbell) Sahib’s coming, the country was in darkness; it was enveloped in mist.Having sent paiks to collect the people of the land, they, having surrounded them, caught the Meriah sacrificers.Having caught the Meriah sacrificers, they brought them, and again they went and seized the evil councillors.Having seen the chains and shackles, the people were afraid; murder and bloodshed were quelled.Then the land became beautiful, and a certain Mokodella (Macpherson) Sahib came.He destroyed the lairs of the tigers and bears in the hills and rocks, and taught wisdom to the people.After the lapse of a month, he built bungalows and schools; and he advised them to learn reading and law.They learnt wisdom and reading; they acquired silver and gold. Then all the people became wealthy.”Human sacrifice was not practiced in the Kurtilli Muttah of the Ganjam Māliahs. The reason of this is assigned to the fact that the first attempt was made with a crooked knife, and the sacrificers made such a bad business of it that they gave it up. Colonel Campbell gives another tradition, that, through humanity, one of the Kurtilli Pātros (head of a group of villages) threatened to leave the muttah if the practice was carried out.Of a substituted sacrifice, which was carried out in the Ganjam Māliahs in 1894,169the following graphic account has been given. “Suddenly we came upon a number of Khonds carrying an immensely long bamboo, about fifty feet in length, surmounted by a gorgeous sort of balloon made of red and white cloth stretched on a bamboo frame. Attached to this were dried strips of pig’s flesh, and the whole of the extraordinary structure was surmounted by a huge plume of peacock’s feathers that waved gaily in the breeze. Along with this was carried another bamboo, not so long, slung all over with iron bells. We found that the men had been worshipping, and presenting these structures to a sylvan deity close by, and were now hastening to the small Khond village of Dhuttiegaum, the scene of the present Meriah sacrifice. Half a mile brought us to this hamlet, situated amongst a dense grove of trees, in the midst of which was tied to a curiously fluted and carved wooden post the sacrificial buffalo, a placid animal, with its body glistening with the oil of many anointings. The huge bamboo pole, with its crown of red and white cloth and peacock’s feathers, and incongruous shreds of dried pig’s flesh, was now erected in the centre of the village. The comparative quiet in the village did not last long, for on a sudden the air was rent with a succession of shrieks. With the sound of the beating of Māliah drums, and the blowing of buffalo horns, a party of Khonds came madly dancing and rushing down a steep hillside from some neighbouring village. They dashed up to the buffalo, and began frantically dancing with the villagers already assembled round and round the animal. Each man carried a green bough of some tree, a sharp knife, and a tanghi. Theywere all adorned in holiday attire, their hair combed and knotted on the forehead, and profusely decorated with waving feathers. All of them were more or less intoxicated. Various other villagers now began to arrive, thick and fast, in the same manner, with wavings of green boughs, flourishing of knives, and hideous yells. Each party was led by the headman or Moliko of the village. The dancing now became more general, and faster and more furious, as more and more joined the human ‘merry go round,’ circling about the unfortunate buffalo. The women, who had followed their lords and masters at a discreet distance, stood sedately by in a group, and took no part whatever in the revels. They were for the most part fine buxom girls, well groomed and oiled, and stood demurely watching everything with their sharp black eyes. The hitherto quiet buffalo, who for nearly two days had been without food and water, now began to get excited, and, straining at its tether, plunged and butted at the dancers, catching one man neatly on the nose so that the blood flowed copiously. However, the Khonds were too excited to care, and circled round and round the poor maddened brute, singing and blowing horns into its ears, beating drums, and every now and then offering it cakes brought with them from their villages, and then laying them on the top of the post as offerings. As they thus madly careered about, we had ample time to note their extraordinary costumes. One man had somehow got hold of an old blue Police overcoat, which he had put on inside out, and round his waist he had gathered what seemed to be a number of striped tent carpets, forming a stiff ballet skirt or kilt. He was one of the most athletic in spinning round the buffalo, flourishing a kitchen chopper. Another man’s costume consisted of almost nothing at all. Hehad, however, profusely daubed his body with white and black spots, and on his head he had centred all his decorative genius. The head in question was swathed in yards of cloth, terminating at the back in a perfect cascade of cock’s feathers. He excitedly waved over this erection an ancient and very rusty umbrella, with many ventilations, with streamers of white cloth attached to the top. Others had tied on to their heads with bands of cloth the horns of buffaloes, or brass horns made in imitation of those of the spotted deer. Their long, black and curly hair hung in masses from beneath this strange erection, giving them a most startling appearance. The dancing round the buffalo lasted quite two hours, as they were waiting for the arrival of the Pātro, before concluding the final ceremonies, and the great man was fashionably late. To incite their jaded energies to further terpsichorean efforts, from time to time the dancers drank copious draughts of a kind of beer, used specially on these occasions, and made from kukuri, a species of grain. At last, the long expected Pātro arrived with the usual uproar of many deafening sounds, both artificial and natural, and with the waving of green boughs. On this occasion he walked last, while the whole of his retinue preceded him dancing, headed by an ancient and withered hag, carrying on her shoulders a Māliah drum of cow-hide stretched tightly over a hoop of iron, and vigorously beaten from behind her by a Khond with stiff thongs of dried leather. The great man himself walked sedately, followed by his ‘charger,’ a broken-kneed tat (pony), extraordinarily caparisoned, and led by a youth of tender years, whose sole garment consisted of a faded red drummer’s coat of antiquated cut. As soon as the Pātro had seated himself comfortably on a log near the dancers, a change came over the scene.The hitherto shouting and madly revolving throng stopped their gyrations round the stupefied beast, too much exhausted and frightened to offer any resistance, and, falling on its neck and body, began to smother it with caresses and endearments, and, to a low plaintive air, crooned and wailed over it, the following dirge, of which I append a rude translation. Tradition says that they used to sing it, with slight variations, over their human victims before the sacrifice:—Blame us not, O buffalo!Thus for sacrificing thee,For our fathers have ordainedThis ancient mystery.We have bought thee with a price,Have paid for thee all thy worth.What blame can rest upon us,Who save our land from dearth?Famine stares us in the face,Parched are our fields, and dry,Death looks in at ev’ry door,For food our young ones cry.Thadi Pennoo veils her face,Propitiate me, she cries,Give to me of flesh and blood,A willing sacrifice.That where’er its blood is shed,On land, or field, or hill,There the gen’rous grain may spring,So ye may eat your fill.Then be glad, O buffalo!Willing sacrifice to be,Soon in Thadi’s meadows green,Thou shalt brouse eternally.After the Khonds had been chanting this sacrificial hymn for some time, the buffalo was untied from the carvedpost, and led, with singing, dancing and shouting, and with the noise of many musical instruments, to a sacred grove a few hundred yards off, and there tied to a stake. As soon as it had been firmly tied, the Khonds threw off all their superfluous clothing to the large crowd of womankind waiting near, and stood round the animal, each man with his hand uplifted, and holding a sharp knife ready to strike at a moment’s notice, as soon as the priest or Janni had given the word of command. The Janni, who did not differ outwardly from the others, now gave the buffalo a slight tap on the head with a small axe. An indescribable scene followed. The Khonds in a body fell on the animal, and, in an amazingly short time, literally tore the living victim to shreds with their knives, leaving nothing but the head, bones, and stomach. Death must, mercifully, have been almost instantaneous. Every particle of flesh and skin had been stripped off during the few minutes they fought and struggled over the buffalo, eagerly grasping for every atom of flesh. As soon as a man had secured a piece of flesh, he rushed away with the gory mass, as fast as he could, to his fields, to bury it therein according to ancient custom, before the sun had set. As some of them had to do good distances to effect this, it was imperative that they should run very fast. A curious scene now took place, for which we could obtain no explanation. As the men ran, all the women flung after them clods of earth, some of them taking very good effect. The sacred grove was cleared of people, save a few that guarded the remnants left of the buffalo, which were taken, and burnt with ceremony at the foot of the stake.”I pass on to the subject of infanticide among the Kondhs. It is stated, in the Manual of the Vizagapatam district, that female infanticide used to be very common all over the Jeypore country, and the Rājah is said tohave made money out of it in one large tāluk (division). The custom was to consult the Dāsari (priest) when a child was born as to its fate. If it was to be killed, the parents had to pay the Amīn of the tāluk a fee for the privilege of killing it; and the Amīn used to pay the Rājah three hundred rupees a year for renting the privilege of giving the license and pocketing the fees. The practice of female infanticide was formerly very prevalent among the Kondhs of Ganjam, and, in 1841, Lieutenant Macpherson was deputed to carry into effect the measures which had been proposed by Lord Elphinstone for the suppression of the Meriah sacrifices and infanticide. The custom was ascribed to various beliefs, viz., (1) that it was an injunction by god, as one woman made the whole world suffer; (2) that it conduces to male offspring; (3) that woman, being a mischief-maker, is better out of the world than in it; (4) that the difficulty, owing to poverty, in providing marriage portions was an objection to rearing females. From Macpherson’s well known report170the following extracts are taken. “The portion of the Khond country, in which the practice of female infanticide is known to prevail, is roughly estimated at 2,400 square miles, its population at 60,000, and the number of infants destroyed annually at 1,200 to 1,500. The tribes (who practice infanticide) belong to the division of the Khond people which does not offer human sacrifices. The usage of infanticide has existed amongst them from time immemorial. It owes its origin and its maintenance partly to religious opinions, partly to ideas from which certain very important features of Khond manners arise. The Khonds believe that the supreme deity, the sun god, created all thingsgood; that the earth goddess introduced evil into the world; and that these two powers have since conflicted. The non-sacrificing tribes make the supreme deity the great object of their adoration, neglecting the earth goddess. The sacrificing tribes, on the other hand, believe the propitiation of the latter power to be the most necessary worship. Now the tribes which practice female infanticide hold that the sun god, in contemplating the deplorable effects produced by the creation of feminine nature, charged men to bring up only as many females as they could restrain from producing evil to society. This is the first idea upon which the usage is founded. Again, the Khonds believe that souls almost invariably return to animate human forms in the families in which they have been first born and received. But the reception of the soul of an infant into a family is completed only on the performance of the ceremony of naming upon the seventh day after its birth. The death of a female infant, therefore, before that ceremonial of reception, is believed to exclude its soul from the circle of family spirits, diminishing by one the chance of future female births in the family. And, as the first aspiration of every Khond is to have male children, this belief is a powerful incentive to infanticide.” Macpherson, during his campaign, came across many villages of about a hundred houses, in which there was not a single female child. In like manner, in 1855, Captain Frye found many Baro Bori Khond villages without a single female child in them.In savage societies, it has been said, sexual unions were generally effected by the violent capture of the woman. By degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form. Whereof an excellent example is afforded by the Kondhs,concerning whom the author of the Ganjam Manual writes as follows. “The parents arrange the marriages of their children. The bride is looked upon as a commercial speculation, and is paid for in gontis. A gonti is one of anything, such as a buffalo, a pig, or a brass pot; for instance, a hundred gontis might consist of ten bullocks, ten buffaloes, ten sacks of corn, ten sets of brass, twenty sheep, ten pigs, and thirty fowls. The usual price, however, paid by the bridegroom’s father for the bride, is twenty or thirty gontis. A Khond finds his wife from among the women of any mutāh (village) than his own. On the day fixed for the bride being taken home to her husband’s house, the pieces of broom in her ears are removed, and are replaced by brass rings. The bride is covered over with a red blanket, and carried astride on her uncle’s back towards the husband’s village, accompanied by the young women of her own village. Music is played, and in the rear are carried brass playthings, such as horses, etc., for the bridegroom, and cloths and brass pins as presents for the bridegroom from the bride’s father. On the road, at the village boundary, the procession is met by the bridegroom and the young men of his village, with their heads and bodies wrapped up in blankets and cloths. Each is armed with a bundle of long thin bamboo sticks. The young women of the bride’s village at once attack the bridegroom’s party with sticks, stones, and clods of earth, which the young men ward off with the bamboo sticks. A running fight is in this manner kept up until the village is reached, when the stone-throwing invariably ceases, and the bridegroom’s uncle, snatching up the bride, carries her off to her husband’s house. This fighting is by no means child’s play, and the men are sometimes seriously injured. The whole party is then entertained by the bridegroomas lavishly as his means will permit. On the day after the bride’s arrival, a buffalo and a pig are slaughtered and eaten, and, upon the bride’s attendants returning home on the evening of the second day, a male and female buffalo, or some less valuable present, is given to them. On the third day, all the Khonds of the village have a grand dance or tamāsha (festivity), and on the fourth day there is another grand assembly at the house of the bridegroom. The bride and bridegroom are then made to sit down on a cot, and the bridegroom’s brother, pointing upwards to the roof of the house, says: “As long as this girl stays with us, may her children be as men and tigers; but, if she goes astray, may her children be as snakes and monkeys, and die and be destroyed!” In his report upon the Kondhs (1842), Macpherson tells us that “they hold a feast at the bride’s house. Far into the night the principals in the scene are raised by an uncle of each upon his shoulders, and borne through the dance. The burdens are suddenly exchanged, and the uncle of the youth disappears with the bride. The assembly divides itself into two parties. The friends of the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the bridegroom to cover her flight, and men, women, and children mingle in mock conflict. I saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth. He was surrounded by twenty or thirty young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attacks made upon him by a party of young women. The man was just married, and the burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends were, according to custom, seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom, until he reached the confines of his own village. Then the tables wereturned, and the bride was fairly won; and off her young friends scampered, screaming and laughing, but not relaxing their speed till they reached their own village.” Among the Kondhs of Gumsūr, the friends and relations of the bride and bridegroom collect at an appointed spot. The people of the female convoy call out to the others to come and take the bride, and then a mock fight with stones and thorny brambles is begun by the female convoy against the parties composing the other one. In the midst of the tumult the assaulted party takes possession of the bride, and all the furniture brought with her, and carry all off together.171According to another account, the bride, as soon as she enters the bridegroom’s house, has two enormous bracelets, or rather handcuffs of brass, each weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, attached to each wrist. The unfortunate girl has to sit with her two wrists resting on her shoulders, so as to support these enormous weights. This is to prevent her from running away to her old home. On the third day the bangles are removed, as it is supposed that by then the girl has become reconciled to her fate. These marriage bangles are made on the hills, and are curiously carved in fluted and zigzag lines, and kept as heirlooms in the family, to be used at the next marriage in the house. According to a still more recent account of marriage among the Kondhs172an old woman suddenly rushes forward, seizes the bride, flings her on her back, and carries her off. A man comes to the front, catches the groom, and places him astride on his shoulder. The human horses neigh and prance about like the live quadruped, and finally rush away to the outskirts of the village. This is a signal forthe bride’s girl friends to chase the couple, and pelt them with clods of earth, stones, mud, cowdung, and rice. When the mock assault is at an end, the older people come up, and all accompany the bridal pair to the groom’s village. A correspondent informs me that he once saw a Kondh bride going to her new home, riding on her uncle’s shoulders, and wrapped in a red blanket. She was followed by a bevy of girls and relations, and preceded by drums and horns. He was told that the uncle had to carry her the whole way, and that, if he had to put her down, a fine of a buffalo was inflicted, the animal being killed and eaten. It is recorded that a European magistrate once mistook a Kondh marriage for a riot, but, on enquiry, discovered his mistake.Reference has been made above to certain brass playthings, which are carried in the bridal procession. The figures include peacocks, chamæleons, cobras, crabs, horses, deer, tigers, cocks, elephants, human beings, musicians, etc. They are cast by thecire perdueprocess. The core of the figure is roughly shaped in clay, according to the usual practice, but, instead of laying on the wax in an even thickness, thin wax threads are first made, and arranged over the core so as to form a network, or placed in parallel lines or diagonally, according as the form of the figure or fancy of the workman dictates. The head, arms, and feet are modelled in the ordinary way. The wax threads are made by means of a bamboo tube, into the end of which a moveable brass plate is fitted. The wax, being made sufficiently soft by heat, is pressed through the perforation at the end of the tube, and comes out in the form of long threads, which must be used by the workmen before they become hard and brittle. The chief place where these figures are made is Belugunta, near Russellkonda inGanjam. It is noted by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson173that the Kondhs of Gumsūr, to represent their deities Jara Pennu, the Linga Dēvata, or Petri Dēvata, keep in their houses brass figures of elephants, peacocks, dolls, fishes, etc. If affliction happens to any one belonging to the household, or if the country skin eruption breaks out on any of them, they put rice into milk, and, mixing turmeric with it, sprinkle the mixture on the figures, and, killing fowls and sheep, cause worship to be made by the Jāni, and, making bāji, eat.At a marriage among the Kondhs of Baliguda, after the heads of the bride and bridegroom have been brought together, an arrow is discharged from a bow by the younger brother of the bridegroom into the grass roof of the hut. At the betrothal ceremony of some Kondhs, a buffalo and pig are killed, and some of the viscera eaten. Various parts are distributed according to an abiding rule, viz., the head to the bridegroom’s maternal uncle, the flesh of the sides to his sisters, and of the back among other relations and friends. Some Kondh boys of ten or twelve years of age are said to be married to girls of fifteen or sixteen. At Shubernagiri, in the Ganjam Māliahs, are two trysting trees, consisting of a jāk (Artocarpus integrifolia) and mango growing close together. The custom was for a Kondh, who was unable to pay the marriage fees to the Pātro (headman), to meet his love here by night and plight his troth, and then for the two to retire into the jungle for three days and nights before returning to the village. Afterwards, they were considered to be man and wife.It is noted by Mr. Friend-Pereira174that, at the ceremonial for settling the preliminaries of a Kondhmarriage, a knotted string is put into the hands of the sēridāhpa gātāru (searchers for the bride), and a similar string is kept by the girl’s people. The reckoning of the date of the betrothal ceremony is kept by undoing a knot in the string every morning.Some years ago, a young Kondh was betrothed to the daughter of another Kondh, and, after a few years, managed to pay up the necessary number of gifts. He then applied to the girl’s father to name the day for the marriage. Before the wedding took place, however, a Pāno went to the girl’s father, and said that she was his daughter (she had been born before her parents were married), and that he was the man to whom the gifts should have been paid. The case was referred to a council meeting, which decided in favour of the Pāno.Of birth ceremonies, the following account is given by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar. The woman is attended in her confinement by an elderly Kondh midwife, who shampooes her abdomen with castor-oil. The umbilical cord is cut by the mother of the infant. For this purpose, the right thigh of the baby is flexed towards its abdomen, and a piece of cooled charcoal placed on its right knee. The cord is placed on the charcoal, and divided with the sharp edge of an arrow. The placenta is buried close to the house near a wall. After the cord has been severed, the mother daubs the region of the infant’s navel with her saliva, over which she smears castor-oil. She then warms her hands at a fire, and applies them to the infant’s body. [It is stated, in the Ganjam Manual, that the infant is held before a hot fire, and half roasted.] The warming is repeated several times daily for four or five days. When the umbilical cord has sloughed off, a spider is burnt to ashes over a fire, placed in a cocoanut shell, mixed with castor-oil, and applied by means of afowl’s feather to the navel. The infant’s head is shaved, except over the anterior fontanelle, the hair from which is removed after about a month. Its body is smeared all over daily with castor-oil andturmericpaste until it is a month old. The mother then goes with her baby and husband to her brother’s house, where the infant is presented with a fowl, which is taken home, and eaten by her husband. The appropriation of the fowl varies according to the locality. In some places, the infant’s father, and other relations, except the mother, may eat it, and, in others, both its parents, and relations living in the house, may do so. In still other places, the father, paternal grandfather and grandmother, and paternal uncle, may partake of it.The naming ceremony among the Kondhs of Gumsūr is thus described by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson. “Six months after birth, on a fixed day, they make gāduthuva (the ceremony of naming the child). On that day, killing a dog, and procuring liquor, they make bāji. They wash the feet of the child. The Jāni being come, he ties a cord from the haft to the point of a sickle, and they divine by means of it. Having assembled the petrilu (literally ancestors, but here denoting household images or gods), they put rice on the sickle. As the names (of the ancestors or family?) are repeated in order, each time the rice is put on, that name is chosen on the mention of which the sickle moves, and is given to the child. They then drink liquor, and eat bāji. They give rice and flesh to the Jāni.”Of death ceremonies, the following account is given in the manual of the Ganjam district. “Immediately after death, a cloth is wrapped round the corpse, but no cloths or valuables are removed. A portion of paddy (unhusked rice), and all the cooking utensils of the deceased aregiven to the village Sitra. [The Sitras manufacture the brass rings and bangles worn by the Kondhs.] The body is then burnt. On the following day, a little rice is cooked, put on a dish, and laid on the spot where the corpse was burnt. An incantation is then pronounced, requesting the spirit of the deceased person to eat the rice and enjoy itself, and not to change itself into a devil or tiger, and come bothering the survivors in the village. Three days after death, the madda ceremony is performed. An effigy of the deceased is prepared of straw, which is stuck up in front of or on the roof of the house, and the relations and friends assemble, lament, and eat at the expense of the people of the deceased’s house. Each person brings a present of some kind or other, and, on his departure on the next day, receives something of slightly higher value. The death of a man in a village requires a purification, which is made by the sacrifice of a buffalo on the seventh day after death. If a man is killed by a tiger, the purification is made by the sacrifice of a pig, the head of which, cut off with a tangi (axe) by a Pāno, is passed between the legs of the men in the village, who stand in a line astraddle. It is a bad omen for him if the head touches any man’s legs. If the Pātro attends a funeral, he gets a fee of a goat for firing his gun, to drive away the dead man’s ghost.” According to Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar, if a person is killed by a tiger, the head of the decapitated pig is placed in a stream, and, as it floats down, it has to pass between the legs of the villagers. If it touches the legs of any of them, it forebodes that he will be killed by a tiger.In a note on the death ceremonies in Gumsūr, Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson writes as follows. “On life ceasing, they tie a sheep to the foot of the corpse. They carry the clothes, brass eating-dish, brass drinking-vessel,ornaments, grain in store, and the said sheep to the burning-ground. Having burned the body, and gone around about the pile, they leave all those things there, and, beating drums, return home. The garments the Pānos take away. They procure liquor, and drink it. They then go to their respective houses, and eat. On the next day, they kill a she-buffalo, and get together a great quantity of liquor. The whole of the tribe (near and distant relations) being assembled, they make bāji, and eat. They beat drums. If the deceased were of any consequence, dancers come and dance to the sound of the drums, to whom some animal is given, which they take, and go away. Subsequently, on the twelfth day, they carry a hog to the spot where the body was burned, and, after perambulating the site of the pyre, return to their home, where they kill a hog in the place set apart for their household gods, and, procuring liquor, make baji, the members of the tribe eating together. Should a tiger carry off any one, they throw out of doors all the (preserved) flesh belonging to him, and all the people of the village, not excepting children, quit their homes. The Jāni, being come with two rods of the tummeca tree (Acacia arabica), he plants these in the earth, and then, bringing one rod of the condatamara tree (Smilax macrophylla), he places it transversely across the other two. The Jāni, performing some incantation, sprinkles water on them. Beginning with the children, as these and the people pass through the passage so formed, the Jāni sprinkles water on them all. Afterwards, the whole of them go to their houses, without looking behind them.”In connection with customs observed in the event of death, Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar writes that “if a woman’s husband dies, she removes the beads from her neck, themetal finger rings, ankle and wrist ornaments, and the ornament worn in the lobe of one ear, that worn in the lobe of the other ear being retained. These are thrown on the chest of the corpse, before it is cremated. The widow does not remove the ornaments worn in the helices of the ears, and in the alæ and septum of the nose. When a Khond dies, his body is cremated. The people in the house of the deceased are not allowed to cook their food on that or the next day, but are fed by their relations and friends in the village. On the day after death, rice and a fowl are cooked separately, put in big leaf cups, and placed on the spot where the corpse was burnt. The spirit of the deceased is invited to eat the meal, and asked not to do them any harm. On the third day, the relations bathe, and smear their heads with clay. An effigy of the deceased is made, and stuck up on the roof of the house. The practice of making an image of the deceased obtains among the Goomsūr Khonds, but, in some other places, is considered inauspicious. On the seventh day, a purificatory ceremony is gone through, and a buffalo killed, with which, and the indispensable liquor, the guests are entertained. At a village two miles from Baliguda, a boy, about sixteen years old, died. His gold ear-rings and silver bracelets were not removed, but burnt. His cloths were thrown on the pyre. Rāgi and other grains, paddy, etc., were placed near the funeral pyre, but not in the fire. The food-stuffs, and a buffalo, were divided among the Haddis, who are the servants of the headman (Pātro) of the muttah. They also took the remains of the jewels, recovered from the ashes after cremation.”It is recorded by Mr. F. Fawcett175that “once after death, a propitiatory sacrifice is made of animals of thedeceased to the Pidāri Pitta (ancestor) for the sake of the deceased’s spirit, which, after this festive introduction to the shades, must take its chance. A curious ceremony, which I do not remember seeing noted anywhere, is performed the day after death. Some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the burning place. The fowl is split down the breast, and placed on the spot; it is afterwards eaten, and the soul is invoked to enter a new-Aborn child.”The following note on a Kondh funeral dance in the Ganjam Māliahs is from the pen of an eye-witness.176“The dead Pātro is, as usual, a hill Uriya, of ancient lineage, no less than that of the great totem of nola bompsa or the ancestral wood-pigeon that laid its eggs in the hollow of a bamboo, from which this family sprang. Various and most interesting are the totems of the Māliahs. In passing, I may mention another curious totem, that of the pea-fowl, two eggs of which a man brought home to his wife, who laid them in an earthen pot, and from them sprang a man-child, the progenitor of a famous family. But to return to the Pātro. Before sunset, mourned by his two wives, the younger and favourite one carrying a young child of light bamboo colour, he had been burnt, without much ceremony, in an open grassy spot, his ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven, and the spot marked by wooden posts driven deep into the soil. Not now would be celebrated the funeral obsequies, but a month hence on the accession of his eldest son, the future Pātro, a fair lad of eighteen years. As the day for the obsequies drew near, an unusual bustle filled the air. Potters from the low country arrived, and hundreds upon hundreds ofearthen pots of all sizes and shapes were turned, and piled in great heaps near the village. Huge buffaloes, unconscious of their approaching fate, lay tethered near, or wallowing in bovine luxury in a swamp hard by. Messengers had been sent far and near to all the Pātros, Molikos, and Bissoyis. Even the Kuttiya Khonds were not left out. The auspicious morning at length dawned, when a distinguished company began to arrive, each chief with his followers, and in many cases his wives and little children, all dressed in their best, and bent on enjoying everything to the utmost. I noticed fine stalwart men from Udiagiri on the edge of the ghauts, together with Khonds from more civilised Baliguda, and Khonds from cold and breezy Daringabadi, cheerful in spite of the numbers of their relatives that had found a horrid tomb inside a man-eating tiger that since 1886 (together with another ally lately started) had carried off more than four hundred of their kith and kin. Distinguished amongst even that wild horde for savagery were the Khonds from the Kuttiya country, who live on tops of hills, and whose women are seldom, if ever, seen. These are remarkable for their enormous quantities of frizzly hair tied in huge chignons over the right brow, and decorated with feathers of every hue—the jay, the parrot, the peacock and the white quills of the paddy-bird predominating. Their short, sturdy limbs are hung in every direction with necklaces and curious blue beads and cut agates, said to be dug out of ancient burial places and cromlechs in Central India. Certain it is that almost no inducement will prevail on a Khond to voluntarily part with these precious heirlooms. As each fresh detachment arrived, their first occupation was to go to a neighbouring tank (pond), and, after a wash and decoration of head and hair with either the orthodoxfeathers, or, prettier still, with wreaths of wild flowers, to repair to the late chief’s house, and, presenting themselves at the door, condole, with much vigour of lungs, with the now less disconsolate widows on their recent loss. This ceremony over, they tendered their allegiance to the young son of the dead Pātro, permitted by Government to take his place, and each man received from him an earthen cooking-pot, and each circle of villages a buffalo. The Khond is a beef eater, but a curious custom prevails in some parts, that a married woman must abstain from the flesh of a cow. These preliminary ceremonies over, the crowd adjourned, with great noise of shouting, blowing of buffalo horns, and beating of drums, to the open grassy spot marked by posts, where the late Pātro had been burned, and where a recently killed buffalo, weltering in its gore, now lay. Among the throng of men, women and children, most of the former more than slightly elevated by drinking copious draughts of a kind of beer made from the kuhari grain, were three Khonds carrying long poles surmounted by huge bunches of peacock feathers that blazed in the sunlight like emeralds and sapphires. The funeral dance now commenced. The dance itself is simple in the extreme, for, when the right spot was reached, old men and young began gyrating round and round in a large circle, a perfect human merry-go-round. The old grey-beards, plodding slowly round the ring, and stamping on the soil with their aged feet, presented a great contrast to the younger and wilder men, who capered and pranced about, sometimes outside the circle, waving their tanghis in the air, and every now and then leaping up to the slain buffalo, and dipping their axes into its blood, and then back again, dancing more wildly than ever, round and round from west to east, till theeye ached to behold the perpetual motion of this animated wheel. In the centre revolved the three men with the huge bunches of peacock feathers afore-mentioned. When any dropped out of the circle to rest there were many eager and willing to take their places, and so, with relays of fresh dancers, this human circle revolved on for three whole days, only ceasing at nightfall, when by large fires the various tribes cooked in the earthen pots provided the buffaloes presented by the new Pātro. In olden days, an animal was given to each village, but on this occasion only to a circle of villages, occasioning thereby certain grumblings among the wiseacres for the good old days of the past, when not only buffaloes in plenty, but Meriah human victims as well were lavishly provided and sacrificed. ‘Ichabod,’ said they in Khond, ‘the glory of the Māliahs hath departed.’ On the afternoon of the third day, the Pātros, Molikas, Bissoyis, and others of the great men began to depart with their retainers for their distant homes in the jungles, having had a thoroughly good time. The women, who had been very shy at first, fled at my approach, now, after three days’ familiarity with a white face, began to show symptoms of friendliness, so that they allowed me to go quite near to them to examine their pretty necklaces of coloured grasses, silver coins, and curious beads, and to count the numbers of small sticks (generally about twelve or fifteen) of broom that were arranged in the shape of a crescent round the outer edges of the pierced ears of each unmarried village belle, and to observe at close quarters the strange tattooed patterns in blue of zigzag and curve that to my eyes disfigured their otherwise comely faces. As to beauty of figure, I think very few can compare with a young and well-grown Khond maiden, with her straight back and handsomeproportions. It was, therefore, without much difficulty that I persuaded some of them to dance before me. Six buxom girls stepped out, all of them the respectable daughters of well-to-do Khonds, prepared to dance the famous peacock dance. Round their supple but massive waists was twisted the strip of national Khond cloth of blue, red and white, and for bodices what could be more becoming than their glossy brown skins of nature’s millinery, gracefully wreathed with garlands of coloured grasses and strings of gay beads. The polished jet black hair, neatly tied in a knot at the back, and decorated with pretty lacquered and silver combs, or with forest flowers, added yet more to their picturesque appearance. Each girl now took a long strip of white cloth, and, winding it round her waist, allowed one end to trail at the back in the fashion of a Liberty sash. This was supposed to represent the tail of the peacock. Three of the girls then faced the three others, and, with their left hands resting on their hips, and their elbows sticking out (to represent the wings), and the right arms extended in front with the fingers outstretched to simulate the neck and beak, began to dance to the ear-piercing shrieks of cracked trumpet, and to the deep beatings of a Māliah drum marking excellent time. On and on they danced, advancing and retiring, and now and then crossing over (not unlike the first figure of the quadrille), while their tinkling feet, ‘like little mice, stole in and out,’ the heels alternately clashing against each other, in exact time to the music, and the lips gracefully waving from side to side as they advanced or retired. There was perfect grace of movements combined with extreme modesty, the large expressive eyes veiled by the long lashes never once being raised, and the whole demeanour utterly obliviousto the crowd of enthusiastic admirers that surrounded them on all sides. But for the wild scene around, the noise and shrieking of instruments, and the fantastic dresses of the Khonds (many of whom had buffalo horns tied on to their painted faces, or had decorated their heads with immense wigs of long black hair), one might easily have supposed these shrinking damsels to have been the pick of a Mission School specially selected for propriety to dance the South Indian kummi before, say, an itinerant Bishop of ascetic tendencies and æsthetic temperament. When their heaving, panting bodies showed that exhausted nature claimed them for her own, the man with the trumpet or the drum would rush up, and blow or beat it almost under their drooping heads, urging them with shouts and gesticulations to further energy, till at length the shades of night crept over the hills, and, with one accord, the dancing and the deafening music ceased, while the six girls stole quietly back and were soon lost in the crowd.”Of superstitions among the Kondhs, the following are recorded by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar:—

Meriah Sacrifice Post.Meriah Sacrifice Post.The Kondhs of Bara Mootah promised to relinquish the rite on condition,inter alia, that they should be at liberty to sacrifice buffaloes, monkeys, goats, etc., to their deities with all the solemnities observed on occasions of human sacrifice; and that they should be at liberty, upon all occasions, to denounce to their gods the Government, and some of its servants in particular, as the cause of their having relinquished the great rite.The last recorded Meriah sacrifice in the Ganjam Māliahs occurred in 1852, and there are still Kondhs alive, who were present at it. Twenty-five descendants of persons who were reserved for sacrifice, but were rescued by Government officers, returned themselves as Meriah at the census, 1901. The Kondhs have now substituted a buffalo for a human being. The animal is hewn to pieces while alive, and the villagers rush home to their villages, to bury the flesh in the soil, and so secure prosperous crops. The sacrifice is not unaccompanied by risk to the performers, as the buffalo, before dying, frequently kills one or more of its tormenters. This was the case near Baliguda in 1899, when a buffalo killed the sacrificer. In the previous year, the desire of a village to intercept the bearer of the flesh for aneighbouring village led to a fight, in which two men were killed.It was the practice, a few years ago, at every Dassara festival in Jeypore, Vizagapatam, to select a specially fine ram, wash it, shave its head, affix thereto red and white bottu and nāmam (sect marks) between the eyes and down the nose, and gird it with a new white cloth after the manner of a human being. The animal being then fastened in a sitting posture, certain pūja (worship) was performed by a Brāhman priest, and it was decapitated. The substitution of animals for human victims is indicated by various religious legends. Thus, a hind was substituted for Iphigenia, and a ram for Isaac.It was stated by the officers of the Meriah Agency that there was reason to believe that the Rāja of Jeypore, when he was installed on his father’s death in 1860–61, sacrificed a girl thirteen years of age at the shrine of the goddess Durga in the town of Jeypore.167It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district (1907), that “goats and buffaloes now-a-days take the place of human Meriah victims, but the belief in the superior efficacy of the latter dies hard, and every now and again revives. When the Rampa rebellion of 1879–80 spread in this district, several cases of human sacrifice occurred in the disturbed tracts. In 1880, two persons were convicted of attempting a Meriah sacrifice near Ambadāla in Bissamkatak. In 1883, a man (a beggar and a stranger) was found at daybreak murdered in one of the temples in Jeypore, in circumstances which pointed to his having been slain as a Meriah; and, as late as 1886, a formal enquiry showed that there were ample grounds for the suspicion that the kidnapping of victimsstill went on in Bastar.” As recently as 1902, a petition was presented to the District Magistrate of Ganjam, asking him to sanction the performance of a human sacrifice. The memory of the abandoned practice is kept green by one of the Kondh songs, for a translation of which we are indebted to Mr. J. E. Friend-Pereira.168“At the time of the great Kiabon (Campbell) Sahib’s coming, the country was in darkness; it was enveloped in mist.Having sent paiks to collect the people of the land, they, having surrounded them, caught the Meriah sacrificers.Having caught the Meriah sacrificers, they brought them, and again they went and seized the evil councillors.Having seen the chains and shackles, the people were afraid; murder and bloodshed were quelled.Then the land became beautiful, and a certain Mokodella (Macpherson) Sahib came.He destroyed the lairs of the tigers and bears in the hills and rocks, and taught wisdom to the people.After the lapse of a month, he built bungalows and schools; and he advised them to learn reading and law.They learnt wisdom and reading; they acquired silver and gold. Then all the people became wealthy.”Human sacrifice was not practiced in the Kurtilli Muttah of the Ganjam Māliahs. The reason of this is assigned to the fact that the first attempt was made with a crooked knife, and the sacrificers made such a bad business of it that they gave it up. Colonel Campbell gives another tradition, that, through humanity, one of the Kurtilli Pātros (head of a group of villages) threatened to leave the muttah if the practice was carried out.Of a substituted sacrifice, which was carried out in the Ganjam Māliahs in 1894,169the following graphic account has been given. “Suddenly we came upon a number of Khonds carrying an immensely long bamboo, about fifty feet in length, surmounted by a gorgeous sort of balloon made of red and white cloth stretched on a bamboo frame. Attached to this were dried strips of pig’s flesh, and the whole of the extraordinary structure was surmounted by a huge plume of peacock’s feathers that waved gaily in the breeze. Along with this was carried another bamboo, not so long, slung all over with iron bells. We found that the men had been worshipping, and presenting these structures to a sylvan deity close by, and were now hastening to the small Khond village of Dhuttiegaum, the scene of the present Meriah sacrifice. Half a mile brought us to this hamlet, situated amongst a dense grove of trees, in the midst of which was tied to a curiously fluted and carved wooden post the sacrificial buffalo, a placid animal, with its body glistening with the oil of many anointings. The huge bamboo pole, with its crown of red and white cloth and peacock’s feathers, and incongruous shreds of dried pig’s flesh, was now erected in the centre of the village. The comparative quiet in the village did not last long, for on a sudden the air was rent with a succession of shrieks. With the sound of the beating of Māliah drums, and the blowing of buffalo horns, a party of Khonds came madly dancing and rushing down a steep hillside from some neighbouring village. They dashed up to the buffalo, and began frantically dancing with the villagers already assembled round and round the animal. Each man carried a green bough of some tree, a sharp knife, and a tanghi. Theywere all adorned in holiday attire, their hair combed and knotted on the forehead, and profusely decorated with waving feathers. All of them were more or less intoxicated. Various other villagers now began to arrive, thick and fast, in the same manner, with wavings of green boughs, flourishing of knives, and hideous yells. Each party was led by the headman or Moliko of the village. The dancing now became more general, and faster and more furious, as more and more joined the human ‘merry go round,’ circling about the unfortunate buffalo. The women, who had followed their lords and masters at a discreet distance, stood sedately by in a group, and took no part whatever in the revels. They were for the most part fine buxom girls, well groomed and oiled, and stood demurely watching everything with their sharp black eyes. The hitherto quiet buffalo, who for nearly two days had been without food and water, now began to get excited, and, straining at its tether, plunged and butted at the dancers, catching one man neatly on the nose so that the blood flowed copiously. However, the Khonds were too excited to care, and circled round and round the poor maddened brute, singing and blowing horns into its ears, beating drums, and every now and then offering it cakes brought with them from their villages, and then laying them on the top of the post as offerings. As they thus madly careered about, we had ample time to note their extraordinary costumes. One man had somehow got hold of an old blue Police overcoat, which he had put on inside out, and round his waist he had gathered what seemed to be a number of striped tent carpets, forming a stiff ballet skirt or kilt. He was one of the most athletic in spinning round the buffalo, flourishing a kitchen chopper. Another man’s costume consisted of almost nothing at all. Hehad, however, profusely daubed his body with white and black spots, and on his head he had centred all his decorative genius. The head in question was swathed in yards of cloth, terminating at the back in a perfect cascade of cock’s feathers. He excitedly waved over this erection an ancient and very rusty umbrella, with many ventilations, with streamers of white cloth attached to the top. Others had tied on to their heads with bands of cloth the horns of buffaloes, or brass horns made in imitation of those of the spotted deer. Their long, black and curly hair hung in masses from beneath this strange erection, giving them a most startling appearance. The dancing round the buffalo lasted quite two hours, as they were waiting for the arrival of the Pātro, before concluding the final ceremonies, and the great man was fashionably late. To incite their jaded energies to further terpsichorean efforts, from time to time the dancers drank copious draughts of a kind of beer, used specially on these occasions, and made from kukuri, a species of grain. At last, the long expected Pātro arrived with the usual uproar of many deafening sounds, both artificial and natural, and with the waving of green boughs. On this occasion he walked last, while the whole of his retinue preceded him dancing, headed by an ancient and withered hag, carrying on her shoulders a Māliah drum of cow-hide stretched tightly over a hoop of iron, and vigorously beaten from behind her by a Khond with stiff thongs of dried leather. The great man himself walked sedately, followed by his ‘charger,’ a broken-kneed tat (pony), extraordinarily caparisoned, and led by a youth of tender years, whose sole garment consisted of a faded red drummer’s coat of antiquated cut. As soon as the Pātro had seated himself comfortably on a log near the dancers, a change came over the scene.The hitherto shouting and madly revolving throng stopped their gyrations round the stupefied beast, too much exhausted and frightened to offer any resistance, and, falling on its neck and body, began to smother it with caresses and endearments, and, to a low plaintive air, crooned and wailed over it, the following dirge, of which I append a rude translation. Tradition says that they used to sing it, with slight variations, over their human victims before the sacrifice:—Blame us not, O buffalo!Thus for sacrificing thee,For our fathers have ordainedThis ancient mystery.We have bought thee with a price,Have paid for thee all thy worth.What blame can rest upon us,Who save our land from dearth?Famine stares us in the face,Parched are our fields, and dry,Death looks in at ev’ry door,For food our young ones cry.Thadi Pennoo veils her face,Propitiate me, she cries,Give to me of flesh and blood,A willing sacrifice.That where’er its blood is shed,On land, or field, or hill,There the gen’rous grain may spring,So ye may eat your fill.Then be glad, O buffalo!Willing sacrifice to be,Soon in Thadi’s meadows green,Thou shalt brouse eternally.After the Khonds had been chanting this sacrificial hymn for some time, the buffalo was untied from the carvedpost, and led, with singing, dancing and shouting, and with the noise of many musical instruments, to a sacred grove a few hundred yards off, and there tied to a stake. As soon as it had been firmly tied, the Khonds threw off all their superfluous clothing to the large crowd of womankind waiting near, and stood round the animal, each man with his hand uplifted, and holding a sharp knife ready to strike at a moment’s notice, as soon as the priest or Janni had given the word of command. The Janni, who did not differ outwardly from the others, now gave the buffalo a slight tap on the head with a small axe. An indescribable scene followed. The Khonds in a body fell on the animal, and, in an amazingly short time, literally tore the living victim to shreds with their knives, leaving nothing but the head, bones, and stomach. Death must, mercifully, have been almost instantaneous. Every particle of flesh and skin had been stripped off during the few minutes they fought and struggled over the buffalo, eagerly grasping for every atom of flesh. As soon as a man had secured a piece of flesh, he rushed away with the gory mass, as fast as he could, to his fields, to bury it therein according to ancient custom, before the sun had set. As some of them had to do good distances to effect this, it was imperative that they should run very fast. A curious scene now took place, for which we could obtain no explanation. As the men ran, all the women flung after them clods of earth, some of them taking very good effect. The sacred grove was cleared of people, save a few that guarded the remnants left of the buffalo, which were taken, and burnt with ceremony at the foot of the stake.”I pass on to the subject of infanticide among the Kondhs. It is stated, in the Manual of the Vizagapatam district, that female infanticide used to be very common all over the Jeypore country, and the Rājah is said tohave made money out of it in one large tāluk (division). The custom was to consult the Dāsari (priest) when a child was born as to its fate. If it was to be killed, the parents had to pay the Amīn of the tāluk a fee for the privilege of killing it; and the Amīn used to pay the Rājah three hundred rupees a year for renting the privilege of giving the license and pocketing the fees. The practice of female infanticide was formerly very prevalent among the Kondhs of Ganjam, and, in 1841, Lieutenant Macpherson was deputed to carry into effect the measures which had been proposed by Lord Elphinstone for the suppression of the Meriah sacrifices and infanticide. The custom was ascribed to various beliefs, viz., (1) that it was an injunction by god, as one woman made the whole world suffer; (2) that it conduces to male offspring; (3) that woman, being a mischief-maker, is better out of the world than in it; (4) that the difficulty, owing to poverty, in providing marriage portions was an objection to rearing females. From Macpherson’s well known report170the following extracts are taken. “The portion of the Khond country, in which the practice of female infanticide is known to prevail, is roughly estimated at 2,400 square miles, its population at 60,000, and the number of infants destroyed annually at 1,200 to 1,500. The tribes (who practice infanticide) belong to the division of the Khond people which does not offer human sacrifices. The usage of infanticide has existed amongst them from time immemorial. It owes its origin and its maintenance partly to religious opinions, partly to ideas from which certain very important features of Khond manners arise. The Khonds believe that the supreme deity, the sun god, created all thingsgood; that the earth goddess introduced evil into the world; and that these two powers have since conflicted. The non-sacrificing tribes make the supreme deity the great object of their adoration, neglecting the earth goddess. The sacrificing tribes, on the other hand, believe the propitiation of the latter power to be the most necessary worship. Now the tribes which practice female infanticide hold that the sun god, in contemplating the deplorable effects produced by the creation of feminine nature, charged men to bring up only as many females as they could restrain from producing evil to society. This is the first idea upon which the usage is founded. Again, the Khonds believe that souls almost invariably return to animate human forms in the families in which they have been first born and received. But the reception of the soul of an infant into a family is completed only on the performance of the ceremony of naming upon the seventh day after its birth. The death of a female infant, therefore, before that ceremonial of reception, is believed to exclude its soul from the circle of family spirits, diminishing by one the chance of future female births in the family. And, as the first aspiration of every Khond is to have male children, this belief is a powerful incentive to infanticide.” Macpherson, during his campaign, came across many villages of about a hundred houses, in which there was not a single female child. In like manner, in 1855, Captain Frye found many Baro Bori Khond villages without a single female child in them.In savage societies, it has been said, sexual unions were generally effected by the violent capture of the woman. By degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form. Whereof an excellent example is afforded by the Kondhs,concerning whom the author of the Ganjam Manual writes as follows. “The parents arrange the marriages of their children. The bride is looked upon as a commercial speculation, and is paid for in gontis. A gonti is one of anything, such as a buffalo, a pig, or a brass pot; for instance, a hundred gontis might consist of ten bullocks, ten buffaloes, ten sacks of corn, ten sets of brass, twenty sheep, ten pigs, and thirty fowls. The usual price, however, paid by the bridegroom’s father for the bride, is twenty or thirty gontis. A Khond finds his wife from among the women of any mutāh (village) than his own. On the day fixed for the bride being taken home to her husband’s house, the pieces of broom in her ears are removed, and are replaced by brass rings. The bride is covered over with a red blanket, and carried astride on her uncle’s back towards the husband’s village, accompanied by the young women of her own village. Music is played, and in the rear are carried brass playthings, such as horses, etc., for the bridegroom, and cloths and brass pins as presents for the bridegroom from the bride’s father. On the road, at the village boundary, the procession is met by the bridegroom and the young men of his village, with their heads and bodies wrapped up in blankets and cloths. Each is armed with a bundle of long thin bamboo sticks. The young women of the bride’s village at once attack the bridegroom’s party with sticks, stones, and clods of earth, which the young men ward off with the bamboo sticks. A running fight is in this manner kept up until the village is reached, when the stone-throwing invariably ceases, and the bridegroom’s uncle, snatching up the bride, carries her off to her husband’s house. This fighting is by no means child’s play, and the men are sometimes seriously injured. The whole party is then entertained by the bridegroomas lavishly as his means will permit. On the day after the bride’s arrival, a buffalo and a pig are slaughtered and eaten, and, upon the bride’s attendants returning home on the evening of the second day, a male and female buffalo, or some less valuable present, is given to them. On the third day, all the Khonds of the village have a grand dance or tamāsha (festivity), and on the fourth day there is another grand assembly at the house of the bridegroom. The bride and bridegroom are then made to sit down on a cot, and the bridegroom’s brother, pointing upwards to the roof of the house, says: “As long as this girl stays with us, may her children be as men and tigers; but, if she goes astray, may her children be as snakes and monkeys, and die and be destroyed!” In his report upon the Kondhs (1842), Macpherson tells us that “they hold a feast at the bride’s house. Far into the night the principals in the scene are raised by an uncle of each upon his shoulders, and borne through the dance. The burdens are suddenly exchanged, and the uncle of the youth disappears with the bride. The assembly divides itself into two parties. The friends of the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the bridegroom to cover her flight, and men, women, and children mingle in mock conflict. I saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth. He was surrounded by twenty or thirty young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attacks made upon him by a party of young women. The man was just married, and the burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends were, according to custom, seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom, until he reached the confines of his own village. Then the tables wereturned, and the bride was fairly won; and off her young friends scampered, screaming and laughing, but not relaxing their speed till they reached their own village.” Among the Kondhs of Gumsūr, the friends and relations of the bride and bridegroom collect at an appointed spot. The people of the female convoy call out to the others to come and take the bride, and then a mock fight with stones and thorny brambles is begun by the female convoy against the parties composing the other one. In the midst of the tumult the assaulted party takes possession of the bride, and all the furniture brought with her, and carry all off together.171According to another account, the bride, as soon as she enters the bridegroom’s house, has two enormous bracelets, or rather handcuffs of brass, each weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, attached to each wrist. The unfortunate girl has to sit with her two wrists resting on her shoulders, so as to support these enormous weights. This is to prevent her from running away to her old home. On the third day the bangles are removed, as it is supposed that by then the girl has become reconciled to her fate. These marriage bangles are made on the hills, and are curiously carved in fluted and zigzag lines, and kept as heirlooms in the family, to be used at the next marriage in the house. According to a still more recent account of marriage among the Kondhs172an old woman suddenly rushes forward, seizes the bride, flings her on her back, and carries her off. A man comes to the front, catches the groom, and places him astride on his shoulder. The human horses neigh and prance about like the live quadruped, and finally rush away to the outskirts of the village. This is a signal forthe bride’s girl friends to chase the couple, and pelt them with clods of earth, stones, mud, cowdung, and rice. When the mock assault is at an end, the older people come up, and all accompany the bridal pair to the groom’s village. A correspondent informs me that he once saw a Kondh bride going to her new home, riding on her uncle’s shoulders, and wrapped in a red blanket. She was followed by a bevy of girls and relations, and preceded by drums and horns. He was told that the uncle had to carry her the whole way, and that, if he had to put her down, a fine of a buffalo was inflicted, the animal being killed and eaten. It is recorded that a European magistrate once mistook a Kondh marriage for a riot, but, on enquiry, discovered his mistake.Reference has been made above to certain brass playthings, which are carried in the bridal procession. The figures include peacocks, chamæleons, cobras, crabs, horses, deer, tigers, cocks, elephants, human beings, musicians, etc. They are cast by thecire perdueprocess. The core of the figure is roughly shaped in clay, according to the usual practice, but, instead of laying on the wax in an even thickness, thin wax threads are first made, and arranged over the core so as to form a network, or placed in parallel lines or diagonally, according as the form of the figure or fancy of the workman dictates. The head, arms, and feet are modelled in the ordinary way. The wax threads are made by means of a bamboo tube, into the end of which a moveable brass plate is fitted. The wax, being made sufficiently soft by heat, is pressed through the perforation at the end of the tube, and comes out in the form of long threads, which must be used by the workmen before they become hard and brittle. The chief place where these figures are made is Belugunta, near Russellkonda inGanjam. It is noted by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson173that the Kondhs of Gumsūr, to represent their deities Jara Pennu, the Linga Dēvata, or Petri Dēvata, keep in their houses brass figures of elephants, peacocks, dolls, fishes, etc. If affliction happens to any one belonging to the household, or if the country skin eruption breaks out on any of them, they put rice into milk, and, mixing turmeric with it, sprinkle the mixture on the figures, and, killing fowls and sheep, cause worship to be made by the Jāni, and, making bāji, eat.At a marriage among the Kondhs of Baliguda, after the heads of the bride and bridegroom have been brought together, an arrow is discharged from a bow by the younger brother of the bridegroom into the grass roof of the hut. At the betrothal ceremony of some Kondhs, a buffalo and pig are killed, and some of the viscera eaten. Various parts are distributed according to an abiding rule, viz., the head to the bridegroom’s maternal uncle, the flesh of the sides to his sisters, and of the back among other relations and friends. Some Kondh boys of ten or twelve years of age are said to be married to girls of fifteen or sixteen. At Shubernagiri, in the Ganjam Māliahs, are two trysting trees, consisting of a jāk (Artocarpus integrifolia) and mango growing close together. The custom was for a Kondh, who was unable to pay the marriage fees to the Pātro (headman), to meet his love here by night and plight his troth, and then for the two to retire into the jungle for three days and nights before returning to the village. Afterwards, they were considered to be man and wife.It is noted by Mr. Friend-Pereira174that, at the ceremonial for settling the preliminaries of a Kondhmarriage, a knotted string is put into the hands of the sēridāhpa gātāru (searchers for the bride), and a similar string is kept by the girl’s people. The reckoning of the date of the betrothal ceremony is kept by undoing a knot in the string every morning.Some years ago, a young Kondh was betrothed to the daughter of another Kondh, and, after a few years, managed to pay up the necessary number of gifts. He then applied to the girl’s father to name the day for the marriage. Before the wedding took place, however, a Pāno went to the girl’s father, and said that she was his daughter (she had been born before her parents were married), and that he was the man to whom the gifts should have been paid. The case was referred to a council meeting, which decided in favour of the Pāno.Of birth ceremonies, the following account is given by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar. The woman is attended in her confinement by an elderly Kondh midwife, who shampooes her abdomen with castor-oil. The umbilical cord is cut by the mother of the infant. For this purpose, the right thigh of the baby is flexed towards its abdomen, and a piece of cooled charcoal placed on its right knee. The cord is placed on the charcoal, and divided with the sharp edge of an arrow. The placenta is buried close to the house near a wall. After the cord has been severed, the mother daubs the region of the infant’s navel with her saliva, over which she smears castor-oil. She then warms her hands at a fire, and applies them to the infant’s body. [It is stated, in the Ganjam Manual, that the infant is held before a hot fire, and half roasted.] The warming is repeated several times daily for four or five days. When the umbilical cord has sloughed off, a spider is burnt to ashes over a fire, placed in a cocoanut shell, mixed with castor-oil, and applied by means of afowl’s feather to the navel. The infant’s head is shaved, except over the anterior fontanelle, the hair from which is removed after about a month. Its body is smeared all over daily with castor-oil andturmericpaste until it is a month old. The mother then goes with her baby and husband to her brother’s house, where the infant is presented with a fowl, which is taken home, and eaten by her husband. The appropriation of the fowl varies according to the locality. In some places, the infant’s father, and other relations, except the mother, may eat it, and, in others, both its parents, and relations living in the house, may do so. In still other places, the father, paternal grandfather and grandmother, and paternal uncle, may partake of it.The naming ceremony among the Kondhs of Gumsūr is thus described by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson. “Six months after birth, on a fixed day, they make gāduthuva (the ceremony of naming the child). On that day, killing a dog, and procuring liquor, they make bāji. They wash the feet of the child. The Jāni being come, he ties a cord from the haft to the point of a sickle, and they divine by means of it. Having assembled the petrilu (literally ancestors, but here denoting household images or gods), they put rice on the sickle. As the names (of the ancestors or family?) are repeated in order, each time the rice is put on, that name is chosen on the mention of which the sickle moves, and is given to the child. They then drink liquor, and eat bāji. They give rice and flesh to the Jāni.”Of death ceremonies, the following account is given in the manual of the Ganjam district. “Immediately after death, a cloth is wrapped round the corpse, but no cloths or valuables are removed. A portion of paddy (unhusked rice), and all the cooking utensils of the deceased aregiven to the village Sitra. [The Sitras manufacture the brass rings and bangles worn by the Kondhs.] The body is then burnt. On the following day, a little rice is cooked, put on a dish, and laid on the spot where the corpse was burnt. An incantation is then pronounced, requesting the spirit of the deceased person to eat the rice and enjoy itself, and not to change itself into a devil or tiger, and come bothering the survivors in the village. Three days after death, the madda ceremony is performed. An effigy of the deceased is prepared of straw, which is stuck up in front of or on the roof of the house, and the relations and friends assemble, lament, and eat at the expense of the people of the deceased’s house. Each person brings a present of some kind or other, and, on his departure on the next day, receives something of slightly higher value. The death of a man in a village requires a purification, which is made by the sacrifice of a buffalo on the seventh day after death. If a man is killed by a tiger, the purification is made by the sacrifice of a pig, the head of which, cut off with a tangi (axe) by a Pāno, is passed between the legs of the men in the village, who stand in a line astraddle. It is a bad omen for him if the head touches any man’s legs. If the Pātro attends a funeral, he gets a fee of a goat for firing his gun, to drive away the dead man’s ghost.” According to Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar, if a person is killed by a tiger, the head of the decapitated pig is placed in a stream, and, as it floats down, it has to pass between the legs of the villagers. If it touches the legs of any of them, it forebodes that he will be killed by a tiger.In a note on the death ceremonies in Gumsūr, Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson writes as follows. “On life ceasing, they tie a sheep to the foot of the corpse. They carry the clothes, brass eating-dish, brass drinking-vessel,ornaments, grain in store, and the said sheep to the burning-ground. Having burned the body, and gone around about the pile, they leave all those things there, and, beating drums, return home. The garments the Pānos take away. They procure liquor, and drink it. They then go to their respective houses, and eat. On the next day, they kill a she-buffalo, and get together a great quantity of liquor. The whole of the tribe (near and distant relations) being assembled, they make bāji, and eat. They beat drums. If the deceased were of any consequence, dancers come and dance to the sound of the drums, to whom some animal is given, which they take, and go away. Subsequently, on the twelfth day, they carry a hog to the spot where the body was burned, and, after perambulating the site of the pyre, return to their home, where they kill a hog in the place set apart for their household gods, and, procuring liquor, make baji, the members of the tribe eating together. Should a tiger carry off any one, they throw out of doors all the (preserved) flesh belonging to him, and all the people of the village, not excepting children, quit their homes. The Jāni, being come with two rods of the tummeca tree (Acacia arabica), he plants these in the earth, and then, bringing one rod of the condatamara tree (Smilax macrophylla), he places it transversely across the other two. The Jāni, performing some incantation, sprinkles water on them. Beginning with the children, as these and the people pass through the passage so formed, the Jāni sprinkles water on them all. Afterwards, the whole of them go to their houses, without looking behind them.”In connection with customs observed in the event of death, Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar writes that “if a woman’s husband dies, she removes the beads from her neck, themetal finger rings, ankle and wrist ornaments, and the ornament worn in the lobe of one ear, that worn in the lobe of the other ear being retained. These are thrown on the chest of the corpse, before it is cremated. The widow does not remove the ornaments worn in the helices of the ears, and in the alæ and septum of the nose. When a Khond dies, his body is cremated. The people in the house of the deceased are not allowed to cook their food on that or the next day, but are fed by their relations and friends in the village. On the day after death, rice and a fowl are cooked separately, put in big leaf cups, and placed on the spot where the corpse was burnt. The spirit of the deceased is invited to eat the meal, and asked not to do them any harm. On the third day, the relations bathe, and smear their heads with clay. An effigy of the deceased is made, and stuck up on the roof of the house. The practice of making an image of the deceased obtains among the Goomsūr Khonds, but, in some other places, is considered inauspicious. On the seventh day, a purificatory ceremony is gone through, and a buffalo killed, with which, and the indispensable liquor, the guests are entertained. At a village two miles from Baliguda, a boy, about sixteen years old, died. His gold ear-rings and silver bracelets were not removed, but burnt. His cloths were thrown on the pyre. Rāgi and other grains, paddy, etc., were placed near the funeral pyre, but not in the fire. The food-stuffs, and a buffalo, were divided among the Haddis, who are the servants of the headman (Pātro) of the muttah. They also took the remains of the jewels, recovered from the ashes after cremation.”It is recorded by Mr. F. Fawcett175that “once after death, a propitiatory sacrifice is made of animals of thedeceased to the Pidāri Pitta (ancestor) for the sake of the deceased’s spirit, which, after this festive introduction to the shades, must take its chance. A curious ceremony, which I do not remember seeing noted anywhere, is performed the day after death. Some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the burning place. The fowl is split down the breast, and placed on the spot; it is afterwards eaten, and the soul is invoked to enter a new-Aborn child.”The following note on a Kondh funeral dance in the Ganjam Māliahs is from the pen of an eye-witness.176“The dead Pātro is, as usual, a hill Uriya, of ancient lineage, no less than that of the great totem of nola bompsa or the ancestral wood-pigeon that laid its eggs in the hollow of a bamboo, from which this family sprang. Various and most interesting are the totems of the Māliahs. In passing, I may mention another curious totem, that of the pea-fowl, two eggs of which a man brought home to his wife, who laid them in an earthen pot, and from them sprang a man-child, the progenitor of a famous family. But to return to the Pātro. Before sunset, mourned by his two wives, the younger and favourite one carrying a young child of light bamboo colour, he had been burnt, without much ceremony, in an open grassy spot, his ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven, and the spot marked by wooden posts driven deep into the soil. Not now would be celebrated the funeral obsequies, but a month hence on the accession of his eldest son, the future Pātro, a fair lad of eighteen years. As the day for the obsequies drew near, an unusual bustle filled the air. Potters from the low country arrived, and hundreds upon hundreds ofearthen pots of all sizes and shapes were turned, and piled in great heaps near the village. Huge buffaloes, unconscious of their approaching fate, lay tethered near, or wallowing in bovine luxury in a swamp hard by. Messengers had been sent far and near to all the Pātros, Molikos, and Bissoyis. Even the Kuttiya Khonds were not left out. The auspicious morning at length dawned, when a distinguished company began to arrive, each chief with his followers, and in many cases his wives and little children, all dressed in their best, and bent on enjoying everything to the utmost. I noticed fine stalwart men from Udiagiri on the edge of the ghauts, together with Khonds from more civilised Baliguda, and Khonds from cold and breezy Daringabadi, cheerful in spite of the numbers of their relatives that had found a horrid tomb inside a man-eating tiger that since 1886 (together with another ally lately started) had carried off more than four hundred of their kith and kin. Distinguished amongst even that wild horde for savagery were the Khonds from the Kuttiya country, who live on tops of hills, and whose women are seldom, if ever, seen. These are remarkable for their enormous quantities of frizzly hair tied in huge chignons over the right brow, and decorated with feathers of every hue—the jay, the parrot, the peacock and the white quills of the paddy-bird predominating. Their short, sturdy limbs are hung in every direction with necklaces and curious blue beads and cut agates, said to be dug out of ancient burial places and cromlechs in Central India. Certain it is that almost no inducement will prevail on a Khond to voluntarily part with these precious heirlooms. As each fresh detachment arrived, their first occupation was to go to a neighbouring tank (pond), and, after a wash and decoration of head and hair with either the orthodoxfeathers, or, prettier still, with wreaths of wild flowers, to repair to the late chief’s house, and, presenting themselves at the door, condole, with much vigour of lungs, with the now less disconsolate widows on their recent loss. This ceremony over, they tendered their allegiance to the young son of the dead Pātro, permitted by Government to take his place, and each man received from him an earthen cooking-pot, and each circle of villages a buffalo. The Khond is a beef eater, but a curious custom prevails in some parts, that a married woman must abstain from the flesh of a cow. These preliminary ceremonies over, the crowd adjourned, with great noise of shouting, blowing of buffalo horns, and beating of drums, to the open grassy spot marked by posts, where the late Pātro had been burned, and where a recently killed buffalo, weltering in its gore, now lay. Among the throng of men, women and children, most of the former more than slightly elevated by drinking copious draughts of a kind of beer made from the kuhari grain, were three Khonds carrying long poles surmounted by huge bunches of peacock feathers that blazed in the sunlight like emeralds and sapphires. The funeral dance now commenced. The dance itself is simple in the extreme, for, when the right spot was reached, old men and young began gyrating round and round in a large circle, a perfect human merry-go-round. The old grey-beards, plodding slowly round the ring, and stamping on the soil with their aged feet, presented a great contrast to the younger and wilder men, who capered and pranced about, sometimes outside the circle, waving their tanghis in the air, and every now and then leaping up to the slain buffalo, and dipping their axes into its blood, and then back again, dancing more wildly than ever, round and round from west to east, till theeye ached to behold the perpetual motion of this animated wheel. In the centre revolved the three men with the huge bunches of peacock feathers afore-mentioned. When any dropped out of the circle to rest there were many eager and willing to take their places, and so, with relays of fresh dancers, this human circle revolved on for three whole days, only ceasing at nightfall, when by large fires the various tribes cooked in the earthen pots provided the buffaloes presented by the new Pātro. In olden days, an animal was given to each village, but on this occasion only to a circle of villages, occasioning thereby certain grumblings among the wiseacres for the good old days of the past, when not only buffaloes in plenty, but Meriah human victims as well were lavishly provided and sacrificed. ‘Ichabod,’ said they in Khond, ‘the glory of the Māliahs hath departed.’ On the afternoon of the third day, the Pātros, Molikas, Bissoyis, and others of the great men began to depart with their retainers for their distant homes in the jungles, having had a thoroughly good time. The women, who had been very shy at first, fled at my approach, now, after three days’ familiarity with a white face, began to show symptoms of friendliness, so that they allowed me to go quite near to them to examine their pretty necklaces of coloured grasses, silver coins, and curious beads, and to count the numbers of small sticks (generally about twelve or fifteen) of broom that were arranged in the shape of a crescent round the outer edges of the pierced ears of each unmarried village belle, and to observe at close quarters the strange tattooed patterns in blue of zigzag and curve that to my eyes disfigured their otherwise comely faces. As to beauty of figure, I think very few can compare with a young and well-grown Khond maiden, with her straight back and handsomeproportions. It was, therefore, without much difficulty that I persuaded some of them to dance before me. Six buxom girls stepped out, all of them the respectable daughters of well-to-do Khonds, prepared to dance the famous peacock dance. Round their supple but massive waists was twisted the strip of national Khond cloth of blue, red and white, and for bodices what could be more becoming than their glossy brown skins of nature’s millinery, gracefully wreathed with garlands of coloured grasses and strings of gay beads. The polished jet black hair, neatly tied in a knot at the back, and decorated with pretty lacquered and silver combs, or with forest flowers, added yet more to their picturesque appearance. Each girl now took a long strip of white cloth, and, winding it round her waist, allowed one end to trail at the back in the fashion of a Liberty sash. This was supposed to represent the tail of the peacock. Three of the girls then faced the three others, and, with their left hands resting on their hips, and their elbows sticking out (to represent the wings), and the right arms extended in front with the fingers outstretched to simulate the neck and beak, began to dance to the ear-piercing shrieks of cracked trumpet, and to the deep beatings of a Māliah drum marking excellent time. On and on they danced, advancing and retiring, and now and then crossing over (not unlike the first figure of the quadrille), while their tinkling feet, ‘like little mice, stole in and out,’ the heels alternately clashing against each other, in exact time to the music, and the lips gracefully waving from side to side as they advanced or retired. There was perfect grace of movements combined with extreme modesty, the large expressive eyes veiled by the long lashes never once being raised, and the whole demeanour utterly obliviousto the crowd of enthusiastic admirers that surrounded them on all sides. But for the wild scene around, the noise and shrieking of instruments, and the fantastic dresses of the Khonds (many of whom had buffalo horns tied on to their painted faces, or had decorated their heads with immense wigs of long black hair), one might easily have supposed these shrinking damsels to have been the pick of a Mission School specially selected for propriety to dance the South Indian kummi before, say, an itinerant Bishop of ascetic tendencies and æsthetic temperament. When their heaving, panting bodies showed that exhausted nature claimed them for her own, the man with the trumpet or the drum would rush up, and blow or beat it almost under their drooping heads, urging them with shouts and gesticulations to further energy, till at length the shades of night crept over the hills, and, with one accord, the dancing and the deafening music ceased, while the six girls stole quietly back and were soon lost in the crowd.”Of superstitions among the Kondhs, the following are recorded by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar:—

Meriah Sacrifice Post.Meriah Sacrifice Post.

Meriah Sacrifice Post.

The Kondhs of Bara Mootah promised to relinquish the rite on condition,inter alia, that they should be at liberty to sacrifice buffaloes, monkeys, goats, etc., to their deities with all the solemnities observed on occasions of human sacrifice; and that they should be at liberty, upon all occasions, to denounce to their gods the Government, and some of its servants in particular, as the cause of their having relinquished the great rite.

The last recorded Meriah sacrifice in the Ganjam Māliahs occurred in 1852, and there are still Kondhs alive, who were present at it. Twenty-five descendants of persons who were reserved for sacrifice, but were rescued by Government officers, returned themselves as Meriah at the census, 1901. The Kondhs have now substituted a buffalo for a human being. The animal is hewn to pieces while alive, and the villagers rush home to their villages, to bury the flesh in the soil, and so secure prosperous crops. The sacrifice is not unaccompanied by risk to the performers, as the buffalo, before dying, frequently kills one or more of its tormenters. This was the case near Baliguda in 1899, when a buffalo killed the sacrificer. In the previous year, the desire of a village to intercept the bearer of the flesh for aneighbouring village led to a fight, in which two men were killed.

It was the practice, a few years ago, at every Dassara festival in Jeypore, Vizagapatam, to select a specially fine ram, wash it, shave its head, affix thereto red and white bottu and nāmam (sect marks) between the eyes and down the nose, and gird it with a new white cloth after the manner of a human being. The animal being then fastened in a sitting posture, certain pūja (worship) was performed by a Brāhman priest, and it was decapitated. The substitution of animals for human victims is indicated by various religious legends. Thus, a hind was substituted for Iphigenia, and a ram for Isaac.

It was stated by the officers of the Meriah Agency that there was reason to believe that the Rāja of Jeypore, when he was installed on his father’s death in 1860–61, sacrificed a girl thirteen years of age at the shrine of the goddess Durga in the town of Jeypore.167It is noted, in the Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district (1907), that “goats and buffaloes now-a-days take the place of human Meriah victims, but the belief in the superior efficacy of the latter dies hard, and every now and again revives. When the Rampa rebellion of 1879–80 spread in this district, several cases of human sacrifice occurred in the disturbed tracts. In 1880, two persons were convicted of attempting a Meriah sacrifice near Ambadāla in Bissamkatak. In 1883, a man (a beggar and a stranger) was found at daybreak murdered in one of the temples in Jeypore, in circumstances which pointed to his having been slain as a Meriah; and, as late as 1886, a formal enquiry showed that there were ample grounds for the suspicion that the kidnapping of victimsstill went on in Bastar.” As recently as 1902, a petition was presented to the District Magistrate of Ganjam, asking him to sanction the performance of a human sacrifice. The memory of the abandoned practice is kept green by one of the Kondh songs, for a translation of which we are indebted to Mr. J. E. Friend-Pereira.168

“At the time of the great Kiabon (Campbell) Sahib’s coming, the country was in darkness; it was enveloped in mist.Having sent paiks to collect the people of the land, they, having surrounded them, caught the Meriah sacrificers.Having caught the Meriah sacrificers, they brought them, and again they went and seized the evil councillors.Having seen the chains and shackles, the people were afraid; murder and bloodshed were quelled.Then the land became beautiful, and a certain Mokodella (Macpherson) Sahib came.He destroyed the lairs of the tigers and bears in the hills and rocks, and taught wisdom to the people.After the lapse of a month, he built bungalows and schools; and he advised them to learn reading and law.They learnt wisdom and reading; they acquired silver and gold. Then all the people became wealthy.”

“At the time of the great Kiabon (Campbell) Sahib’s coming, the country was in darkness; it was enveloped in mist.

Having sent paiks to collect the people of the land, they, having surrounded them, caught the Meriah sacrificers.

Having caught the Meriah sacrificers, they brought them, and again they went and seized the evil councillors.

Having seen the chains and shackles, the people were afraid; murder and bloodshed were quelled.

Then the land became beautiful, and a certain Mokodella (Macpherson) Sahib came.

He destroyed the lairs of the tigers and bears in the hills and rocks, and taught wisdom to the people.

After the lapse of a month, he built bungalows and schools; and he advised them to learn reading and law.

They learnt wisdom and reading; they acquired silver and gold. Then all the people became wealthy.”

Human sacrifice was not practiced in the Kurtilli Muttah of the Ganjam Māliahs. The reason of this is assigned to the fact that the first attempt was made with a crooked knife, and the sacrificers made such a bad business of it that they gave it up. Colonel Campbell gives another tradition, that, through humanity, one of the Kurtilli Pātros (head of a group of villages) threatened to leave the muttah if the practice was carried out.

Of a substituted sacrifice, which was carried out in the Ganjam Māliahs in 1894,169the following graphic account has been given. “Suddenly we came upon a number of Khonds carrying an immensely long bamboo, about fifty feet in length, surmounted by a gorgeous sort of balloon made of red and white cloth stretched on a bamboo frame. Attached to this were dried strips of pig’s flesh, and the whole of the extraordinary structure was surmounted by a huge plume of peacock’s feathers that waved gaily in the breeze. Along with this was carried another bamboo, not so long, slung all over with iron bells. We found that the men had been worshipping, and presenting these structures to a sylvan deity close by, and were now hastening to the small Khond village of Dhuttiegaum, the scene of the present Meriah sacrifice. Half a mile brought us to this hamlet, situated amongst a dense grove of trees, in the midst of which was tied to a curiously fluted and carved wooden post the sacrificial buffalo, a placid animal, with its body glistening with the oil of many anointings. The huge bamboo pole, with its crown of red and white cloth and peacock’s feathers, and incongruous shreds of dried pig’s flesh, was now erected in the centre of the village. The comparative quiet in the village did not last long, for on a sudden the air was rent with a succession of shrieks. With the sound of the beating of Māliah drums, and the blowing of buffalo horns, a party of Khonds came madly dancing and rushing down a steep hillside from some neighbouring village. They dashed up to the buffalo, and began frantically dancing with the villagers already assembled round and round the animal. Each man carried a green bough of some tree, a sharp knife, and a tanghi. Theywere all adorned in holiday attire, their hair combed and knotted on the forehead, and profusely decorated with waving feathers. All of them were more or less intoxicated. Various other villagers now began to arrive, thick and fast, in the same manner, with wavings of green boughs, flourishing of knives, and hideous yells. Each party was led by the headman or Moliko of the village. The dancing now became more general, and faster and more furious, as more and more joined the human ‘merry go round,’ circling about the unfortunate buffalo. The women, who had followed their lords and masters at a discreet distance, stood sedately by in a group, and took no part whatever in the revels. They were for the most part fine buxom girls, well groomed and oiled, and stood demurely watching everything with their sharp black eyes. The hitherto quiet buffalo, who for nearly two days had been without food and water, now began to get excited, and, straining at its tether, plunged and butted at the dancers, catching one man neatly on the nose so that the blood flowed copiously. However, the Khonds were too excited to care, and circled round and round the poor maddened brute, singing and blowing horns into its ears, beating drums, and every now and then offering it cakes brought with them from their villages, and then laying them on the top of the post as offerings. As they thus madly careered about, we had ample time to note their extraordinary costumes. One man had somehow got hold of an old blue Police overcoat, which he had put on inside out, and round his waist he had gathered what seemed to be a number of striped tent carpets, forming a stiff ballet skirt or kilt. He was one of the most athletic in spinning round the buffalo, flourishing a kitchen chopper. Another man’s costume consisted of almost nothing at all. Hehad, however, profusely daubed his body with white and black spots, and on his head he had centred all his decorative genius. The head in question was swathed in yards of cloth, terminating at the back in a perfect cascade of cock’s feathers. He excitedly waved over this erection an ancient and very rusty umbrella, with many ventilations, with streamers of white cloth attached to the top. Others had tied on to their heads with bands of cloth the horns of buffaloes, or brass horns made in imitation of those of the spotted deer. Their long, black and curly hair hung in masses from beneath this strange erection, giving them a most startling appearance. The dancing round the buffalo lasted quite two hours, as they were waiting for the arrival of the Pātro, before concluding the final ceremonies, and the great man was fashionably late. To incite their jaded energies to further terpsichorean efforts, from time to time the dancers drank copious draughts of a kind of beer, used specially on these occasions, and made from kukuri, a species of grain. At last, the long expected Pātro arrived with the usual uproar of many deafening sounds, both artificial and natural, and with the waving of green boughs. On this occasion he walked last, while the whole of his retinue preceded him dancing, headed by an ancient and withered hag, carrying on her shoulders a Māliah drum of cow-hide stretched tightly over a hoop of iron, and vigorously beaten from behind her by a Khond with stiff thongs of dried leather. The great man himself walked sedately, followed by his ‘charger,’ a broken-kneed tat (pony), extraordinarily caparisoned, and led by a youth of tender years, whose sole garment consisted of a faded red drummer’s coat of antiquated cut. As soon as the Pātro had seated himself comfortably on a log near the dancers, a change came over the scene.The hitherto shouting and madly revolving throng stopped their gyrations round the stupefied beast, too much exhausted and frightened to offer any resistance, and, falling on its neck and body, began to smother it with caresses and endearments, and, to a low plaintive air, crooned and wailed over it, the following dirge, of which I append a rude translation. Tradition says that they used to sing it, with slight variations, over their human victims before the sacrifice:—

Blame us not, O buffalo!Thus for sacrificing thee,For our fathers have ordainedThis ancient mystery.We have bought thee with a price,Have paid for thee all thy worth.What blame can rest upon us,Who save our land from dearth?Famine stares us in the face,Parched are our fields, and dry,Death looks in at ev’ry door,For food our young ones cry.Thadi Pennoo veils her face,Propitiate me, she cries,Give to me of flesh and blood,A willing sacrifice.That where’er its blood is shed,On land, or field, or hill,There the gen’rous grain may spring,So ye may eat your fill.Then be glad, O buffalo!Willing sacrifice to be,Soon in Thadi’s meadows green,Thou shalt brouse eternally.

Blame us not, O buffalo!Thus for sacrificing thee,For our fathers have ordainedThis ancient mystery.

Blame us not, O buffalo!

Thus for sacrificing thee,

For our fathers have ordained

This ancient mystery.

We have bought thee with a price,Have paid for thee all thy worth.What blame can rest upon us,Who save our land from dearth?

We have bought thee with a price,

Have paid for thee all thy worth.

What blame can rest upon us,

Who save our land from dearth?

Famine stares us in the face,Parched are our fields, and dry,Death looks in at ev’ry door,For food our young ones cry.

Famine stares us in the face,

Parched are our fields, and dry,

Death looks in at ev’ry door,

For food our young ones cry.

Thadi Pennoo veils her face,Propitiate me, she cries,Give to me of flesh and blood,A willing sacrifice.

Thadi Pennoo veils her face,

Propitiate me, she cries,

Give to me of flesh and blood,

A willing sacrifice.

That where’er its blood is shed,On land, or field, or hill,There the gen’rous grain may spring,So ye may eat your fill.

That where’er its blood is shed,

On land, or field, or hill,

There the gen’rous grain may spring,

So ye may eat your fill.

Then be glad, O buffalo!Willing sacrifice to be,Soon in Thadi’s meadows green,Thou shalt brouse eternally.

Then be glad, O buffalo!

Willing sacrifice to be,

Soon in Thadi’s meadows green,

Thou shalt brouse eternally.

After the Khonds had been chanting this sacrificial hymn for some time, the buffalo was untied from the carvedpost, and led, with singing, dancing and shouting, and with the noise of many musical instruments, to a sacred grove a few hundred yards off, and there tied to a stake. As soon as it had been firmly tied, the Khonds threw off all their superfluous clothing to the large crowd of womankind waiting near, and stood round the animal, each man with his hand uplifted, and holding a sharp knife ready to strike at a moment’s notice, as soon as the priest or Janni had given the word of command. The Janni, who did not differ outwardly from the others, now gave the buffalo a slight tap on the head with a small axe. An indescribable scene followed. The Khonds in a body fell on the animal, and, in an amazingly short time, literally tore the living victim to shreds with their knives, leaving nothing but the head, bones, and stomach. Death must, mercifully, have been almost instantaneous. Every particle of flesh and skin had been stripped off during the few minutes they fought and struggled over the buffalo, eagerly grasping for every atom of flesh. As soon as a man had secured a piece of flesh, he rushed away with the gory mass, as fast as he could, to his fields, to bury it therein according to ancient custom, before the sun had set. As some of them had to do good distances to effect this, it was imperative that they should run very fast. A curious scene now took place, for which we could obtain no explanation. As the men ran, all the women flung after them clods of earth, some of them taking very good effect. The sacred grove was cleared of people, save a few that guarded the remnants left of the buffalo, which were taken, and burnt with ceremony at the foot of the stake.”

I pass on to the subject of infanticide among the Kondhs. It is stated, in the Manual of the Vizagapatam district, that female infanticide used to be very common all over the Jeypore country, and the Rājah is said tohave made money out of it in one large tāluk (division). The custom was to consult the Dāsari (priest) when a child was born as to its fate. If it was to be killed, the parents had to pay the Amīn of the tāluk a fee for the privilege of killing it; and the Amīn used to pay the Rājah three hundred rupees a year for renting the privilege of giving the license and pocketing the fees. The practice of female infanticide was formerly very prevalent among the Kondhs of Ganjam, and, in 1841, Lieutenant Macpherson was deputed to carry into effect the measures which had been proposed by Lord Elphinstone for the suppression of the Meriah sacrifices and infanticide. The custom was ascribed to various beliefs, viz., (1) that it was an injunction by god, as one woman made the whole world suffer; (2) that it conduces to male offspring; (3) that woman, being a mischief-maker, is better out of the world than in it; (4) that the difficulty, owing to poverty, in providing marriage portions was an objection to rearing females. From Macpherson’s well known report170the following extracts are taken. “The portion of the Khond country, in which the practice of female infanticide is known to prevail, is roughly estimated at 2,400 square miles, its population at 60,000, and the number of infants destroyed annually at 1,200 to 1,500. The tribes (who practice infanticide) belong to the division of the Khond people which does not offer human sacrifices. The usage of infanticide has existed amongst them from time immemorial. It owes its origin and its maintenance partly to religious opinions, partly to ideas from which certain very important features of Khond manners arise. The Khonds believe that the supreme deity, the sun god, created all thingsgood; that the earth goddess introduced evil into the world; and that these two powers have since conflicted. The non-sacrificing tribes make the supreme deity the great object of their adoration, neglecting the earth goddess. The sacrificing tribes, on the other hand, believe the propitiation of the latter power to be the most necessary worship. Now the tribes which practice female infanticide hold that the sun god, in contemplating the deplorable effects produced by the creation of feminine nature, charged men to bring up only as many females as they could restrain from producing evil to society. This is the first idea upon which the usage is founded. Again, the Khonds believe that souls almost invariably return to animate human forms in the families in which they have been first born and received. But the reception of the soul of an infant into a family is completed only on the performance of the ceremony of naming upon the seventh day after its birth. The death of a female infant, therefore, before that ceremonial of reception, is believed to exclude its soul from the circle of family spirits, diminishing by one the chance of future female births in the family. And, as the first aspiration of every Khond is to have male children, this belief is a powerful incentive to infanticide.” Macpherson, during his campaign, came across many villages of about a hundred houses, in which there was not a single female child. In like manner, in 1855, Captain Frye found many Baro Bori Khond villages without a single female child in them.

In savage societies, it has been said, sexual unions were generally effected by the violent capture of the woman. By degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form. Whereof an excellent example is afforded by the Kondhs,concerning whom the author of the Ganjam Manual writes as follows. “The parents arrange the marriages of their children. The bride is looked upon as a commercial speculation, and is paid for in gontis. A gonti is one of anything, such as a buffalo, a pig, or a brass pot; for instance, a hundred gontis might consist of ten bullocks, ten buffaloes, ten sacks of corn, ten sets of brass, twenty sheep, ten pigs, and thirty fowls. The usual price, however, paid by the bridegroom’s father for the bride, is twenty or thirty gontis. A Khond finds his wife from among the women of any mutāh (village) than his own. On the day fixed for the bride being taken home to her husband’s house, the pieces of broom in her ears are removed, and are replaced by brass rings. The bride is covered over with a red blanket, and carried astride on her uncle’s back towards the husband’s village, accompanied by the young women of her own village. Music is played, and in the rear are carried brass playthings, such as horses, etc., for the bridegroom, and cloths and brass pins as presents for the bridegroom from the bride’s father. On the road, at the village boundary, the procession is met by the bridegroom and the young men of his village, with their heads and bodies wrapped up in blankets and cloths. Each is armed with a bundle of long thin bamboo sticks. The young women of the bride’s village at once attack the bridegroom’s party with sticks, stones, and clods of earth, which the young men ward off with the bamboo sticks. A running fight is in this manner kept up until the village is reached, when the stone-throwing invariably ceases, and the bridegroom’s uncle, snatching up the bride, carries her off to her husband’s house. This fighting is by no means child’s play, and the men are sometimes seriously injured. The whole party is then entertained by the bridegroomas lavishly as his means will permit. On the day after the bride’s arrival, a buffalo and a pig are slaughtered and eaten, and, upon the bride’s attendants returning home on the evening of the second day, a male and female buffalo, or some less valuable present, is given to them. On the third day, all the Khonds of the village have a grand dance or tamāsha (festivity), and on the fourth day there is another grand assembly at the house of the bridegroom. The bride and bridegroom are then made to sit down on a cot, and the bridegroom’s brother, pointing upwards to the roof of the house, says: “As long as this girl stays with us, may her children be as men and tigers; but, if she goes astray, may her children be as snakes and monkeys, and die and be destroyed!” In his report upon the Kondhs (1842), Macpherson tells us that “they hold a feast at the bride’s house. Far into the night the principals in the scene are raised by an uncle of each upon his shoulders, and borne through the dance. The burdens are suddenly exchanged, and the uncle of the youth disappears with the bride. The assembly divides itself into two parties. The friends of the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the bridegroom to cover her flight, and men, women, and children mingle in mock conflict. I saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth. He was surrounded by twenty or thirty young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attacks made upon him by a party of young women. The man was just married, and the burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends were, according to custom, seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom, until he reached the confines of his own village. Then the tables wereturned, and the bride was fairly won; and off her young friends scampered, screaming and laughing, but not relaxing their speed till they reached their own village.” Among the Kondhs of Gumsūr, the friends and relations of the bride and bridegroom collect at an appointed spot. The people of the female convoy call out to the others to come and take the bride, and then a mock fight with stones and thorny brambles is begun by the female convoy against the parties composing the other one. In the midst of the tumult the assaulted party takes possession of the bride, and all the furniture brought with her, and carry all off together.171According to another account, the bride, as soon as she enters the bridegroom’s house, has two enormous bracelets, or rather handcuffs of brass, each weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, attached to each wrist. The unfortunate girl has to sit with her two wrists resting on her shoulders, so as to support these enormous weights. This is to prevent her from running away to her old home. On the third day the bangles are removed, as it is supposed that by then the girl has become reconciled to her fate. These marriage bangles are made on the hills, and are curiously carved in fluted and zigzag lines, and kept as heirlooms in the family, to be used at the next marriage in the house. According to a still more recent account of marriage among the Kondhs172an old woman suddenly rushes forward, seizes the bride, flings her on her back, and carries her off. A man comes to the front, catches the groom, and places him astride on his shoulder. The human horses neigh and prance about like the live quadruped, and finally rush away to the outskirts of the village. This is a signal forthe bride’s girl friends to chase the couple, and pelt them with clods of earth, stones, mud, cowdung, and rice. When the mock assault is at an end, the older people come up, and all accompany the bridal pair to the groom’s village. A correspondent informs me that he once saw a Kondh bride going to her new home, riding on her uncle’s shoulders, and wrapped in a red blanket. She was followed by a bevy of girls and relations, and preceded by drums and horns. He was told that the uncle had to carry her the whole way, and that, if he had to put her down, a fine of a buffalo was inflicted, the animal being killed and eaten. It is recorded that a European magistrate once mistook a Kondh marriage for a riot, but, on enquiry, discovered his mistake.

Reference has been made above to certain brass playthings, which are carried in the bridal procession. The figures include peacocks, chamæleons, cobras, crabs, horses, deer, tigers, cocks, elephants, human beings, musicians, etc. They are cast by thecire perdueprocess. The core of the figure is roughly shaped in clay, according to the usual practice, but, instead of laying on the wax in an even thickness, thin wax threads are first made, and arranged over the core so as to form a network, or placed in parallel lines or diagonally, according as the form of the figure or fancy of the workman dictates. The head, arms, and feet are modelled in the ordinary way. The wax threads are made by means of a bamboo tube, into the end of which a moveable brass plate is fitted. The wax, being made sufficiently soft by heat, is pressed through the perforation at the end of the tube, and comes out in the form of long threads, which must be used by the workmen before they become hard and brittle. The chief place where these figures are made is Belugunta, near Russellkonda inGanjam. It is noted by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson173that the Kondhs of Gumsūr, to represent their deities Jara Pennu, the Linga Dēvata, or Petri Dēvata, keep in their houses brass figures of elephants, peacocks, dolls, fishes, etc. If affliction happens to any one belonging to the household, or if the country skin eruption breaks out on any of them, they put rice into milk, and, mixing turmeric with it, sprinkle the mixture on the figures, and, killing fowls and sheep, cause worship to be made by the Jāni, and, making bāji, eat.

At a marriage among the Kondhs of Baliguda, after the heads of the bride and bridegroom have been brought together, an arrow is discharged from a bow by the younger brother of the bridegroom into the grass roof of the hut. At the betrothal ceremony of some Kondhs, a buffalo and pig are killed, and some of the viscera eaten. Various parts are distributed according to an abiding rule, viz., the head to the bridegroom’s maternal uncle, the flesh of the sides to his sisters, and of the back among other relations and friends. Some Kondh boys of ten or twelve years of age are said to be married to girls of fifteen or sixteen. At Shubernagiri, in the Ganjam Māliahs, are two trysting trees, consisting of a jāk (Artocarpus integrifolia) and mango growing close together. The custom was for a Kondh, who was unable to pay the marriage fees to the Pātro (headman), to meet his love here by night and plight his troth, and then for the two to retire into the jungle for three days and nights before returning to the village. Afterwards, they were considered to be man and wife.

It is noted by Mr. Friend-Pereira174that, at the ceremonial for settling the preliminaries of a Kondhmarriage, a knotted string is put into the hands of the sēridāhpa gātāru (searchers for the bride), and a similar string is kept by the girl’s people. The reckoning of the date of the betrothal ceremony is kept by undoing a knot in the string every morning.

Some years ago, a young Kondh was betrothed to the daughter of another Kondh, and, after a few years, managed to pay up the necessary number of gifts. He then applied to the girl’s father to name the day for the marriage. Before the wedding took place, however, a Pāno went to the girl’s father, and said that she was his daughter (she had been born before her parents were married), and that he was the man to whom the gifts should have been paid. The case was referred to a council meeting, which decided in favour of the Pāno.

Of birth ceremonies, the following account is given by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar. The woman is attended in her confinement by an elderly Kondh midwife, who shampooes her abdomen with castor-oil. The umbilical cord is cut by the mother of the infant. For this purpose, the right thigh of the baby is flexed towards its abdomen, and a piece of cooled charcoal placed on its right knee. The cord is placed on the charcoal, and divided with the sharp edge of an arrow. The placenta is buried close to the house near a wall. After the cord has been severed, the mother daubs the region of the infant’s navel with her saliva, over which she smears castor-oil. She then warms her hands at a fire, and applies them to the infant’s body. [It is stated, in the Ganjam Manual, that the infant is held before a hot fire, and half roasted.] The warming is repeated several times daily for four or five days. When the umbilical cord has sloughed off, a spider is burnt to ashes over a fire, placed in a cocoanut shell, mixed with castor-oil, and applied by means of afowl’s feather to the navel. The infant’s head is shaved, except over the anterior fontanelle, the hair from which is removed after about a month. Its body is smeared all over daily with castor-oil andturmericpaste until it is a month old. The mother then goes with her baby and husband to her brother’s house, where the infant is presented with a fowl, which is taken home, and eaten by her husband. The appropriation of the fowl varies according to the locality. In some places, the infant’s father, and other relations, except the mother, may eat it, and, in others, both its parents, and relations living in the house, may do so. In still other places, the father, paternal grandfather and grandmother, and paternal uncle, may partake of it.

The naming ceremony among the Kondhs of Gumsūr is thus described by Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson. “Six months after birth, on a fixed day, they make gāduthuva (the ceremony of naming the child). On that day, killing a dog, and procuring liquor, they make bāji. They wash the feet of the child. The Jāni being come, he ties a cord from the haft to the point of a sickle, and they divine by means of it. Having assembled the petrilu (literally ancestors, but here denoting household images or gods), they put rice on the sickle. As the names (of the ancestors or family?) are repeated in order, each time the rice is put on, that name is chosen on the mention of which the sickle moves, and is given to the child. They then drink liquor, and eat bāji. They give rice and flesh to the Jāni.”

Of death ceremonies, the following account is given in the manual of the Ganjam district. “Immediately after death, a cloth is wrapped round the corpse, but no cloths or valuables are removed. A portion of paddy (unhusked rice), and all the cooking utensils of the deceased aregiven to the village Sitra. [The Sitras manufacture the brass rings and bangles worn by the Kondhs.] The body is then burnt. On the following day, a little rice is cooked, put on a dish, and laid on the spot where the corpse was burnt. An incantation is then pronounced, requesting the spirit of the deceased person to eat the rice and enjoy itself, and not to change itself into a devil or tiger, and come bothering the survivors in the village. Three days after death, the madda ceremony is performed. An effigy of the deceased is prepared of straw, which is stuck up in front of or on the roof of the house, and the relations and friends assemble, lament, and eat at the expense of the people of the deceased’s house. Each person brings a present of some kind or other, and, on his departure on the next day, receives something of slightly higher value. The death of a man in a village requires a purification, which is made by the sacrifice of a buffalo on the seventh day after death. If a man is killed by a tiger, the purification is made by the sacrifice of a pig, the head of which, cut off with a tangi (axe) by a Pāno, is passed between the legs of the men in the village, who stand in a line astraddle. It is a bad omen for him if the head touches any man’s legs. If the Pātro attends a funeral, he gets a fee of a goat for firing his gun, to drive away the dead man’s ghost.” According to Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar, if a person is killed by a tiger, the head of the decapitated pig is placed in a stream, and, as it floats down, it has to pass between the legs of the villagers. If it touches the legs of any of them, it forebodes that he will be killed by a tiger.

In a note on the death ceremonies in Gumsūr, Mr. J. A. R. Stevenson writes as follows. “On life ceasing, they tie a sheep to the foot of the corpse. They carry the clothes, brass eating-dish, brass drinking-vessel,ornaments, grain in store, and the said sheep to the burning-ground. Having burned the body, and gone around about the pile, they leave all those things there, and, beating drums, return home. The garments the Pānos take away. They procure liquor, and drink it. They then go to their respective houses, and eat. On the next day, they kill a she-buffalo, and get together a great quantity of liquor. The whole of the tribe (near and distant relations) being assembled, they make bāji, and eat. They beat drums. If the deceased were of any consequence, dancers come and dance to the sound of the drums, to whom some animal is given, which they take, and go away. Subsequently, on the twelfth day, they carry a hog to the spot where the body was burned, and, after perambulating the site of the pyre, return to their home, where they kill a hog in the place set apart for their household gods, and, procuring liquor, make baji, the members of the tribe eating together. Should a tiger carry off any one, they throw out of doors all the (preserved) flesh belonging to him, and all the people of the village, not excepting children, quit their homes. The Jāni, being come with two rods of the tummeca tree (Acacia arabica), he plants these in the earth, and then, bringing one rod of the condatamara tree (Smilax macrophylla), he places it transversely across the other two. The Jāni, performing some incantation, sprinkles water on them. Beginning with the children, as these and the people pass through the passage so formed, the Jāni sprinkles water on them all. Afterwards, the whole of them go to their houses, without looking behind them.”

In connection with customs observed in the event of death, Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar writes that “if a woman’s husband dies, she removes the beads from her neck, themetal finger rings, ankle and wrist ornaments, and the ornament worn in the lobe of one ear, that worn in the lobe of the other ear being retained. These are thrown on the chest of the corpse, before it is cremated. The widow does not remove the ornaments worn in the helices of the ears, and in the alæ and septum of the nose. When a Khond dies, his body is cremated. The people in the house of the deceased are not allowed to cook their food on that or the next day, but are fed by their relations and friends in the village. On the day after death, rice and a fowl are cooked separately, put in big leaf cups, and placed on the spot where the corpse was burnt. The spirit of the deceased is invited to eat the meal, and asked not to do them any harm. On the third day, the relations bathe, and smear their heads with clay. An effigy of the deceased is made, and stuck up on the roof of the house. The practice of making an image of the deceased obtains among the Goomsūr Khonds, but, in some other places, is considered inauspicious. On the seventh day, a purificatory ceremony is gone through, and a buffalo killed, with which, and the indispensable liquor, the guests are entertained. At a village two miles from Baliguda, a boy, about sixteen years old, died. His gold ear-rings and silver bracelets were not removed, but burnt. His cloths were thrown on the pyre. Rāgi and other grains, paddy, etc., were placed near the funeral pyre, but not in the fire. The food-stuffs, and a buffalo, were divided among the Haddis, who are the servants of the headman (Pātro) of the muttah. They also took the remains of the jewels, recovered from the ashes after cremation.”

It is recorded by Mr. F. Fawcett175that “once after death, a propitiatory sacrifice is made of animals of thedeceased to the Pidāri Pitta (ancestor) for the sake of the deceased’s spirit, which, after this festive introduction to the shades, must take its chance. A curious ceremony, which I do not remember seeing noted anywhere, is performed the day after death. Some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the burning place. The fowl is split down the breast, and placed on the spot; it is afterwards eaten, and the soul is invoked to enter a new-Aborn child.”

The following note on a Kondh funeral dance in the Ganjam Māliahs is from the pen of an eye-witness.176“The dead Pātro is, as usual, a hill Uriya, of ancient lineage, no less than that of the great totem of nola bompsa or the ancestral wood-pigeon that laid its eggs in the hollow of a bamboo, from which this family sprang. Various and most interesting are the totems of the Māliahs. In passing, I may mention another curious totem, that of the pea-fowl, two eggs of which a man brought home to his wife, who laid them in an earthen pot, and from them sprang a man-child, the progenitor of a famous family. But to return to the Pātro. Before sunset, mourned by his two wives, the younger and favourite one carrying a young child of light bamboo colour, he had been burnt, without much ceremony, in an open grassy spot, his ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven, and the spot marked by wooden posts driven deep into the soil. Not now would be celebrated the funeral obsequies, but a month hence on the accession of his eldest son, the future Pātro, a fair lad of eighteen years. As the day for the obsequies drew near, an unusual bustle filled the air. Potters from the low country arrived, and hundreds upon hundreds ofearthen pots of all sizes and shapes were turned, and piled in great heaps near the village. Huge buffaloes, unconscious of their approaching fate, lay tethered near, or wallowing in bovine luxury in a swamp hard by. Messengers had been sent far and near to all the Pātros, Molikos, and Bissoyis. Even the Kuttiya Khonds were not left out. The auspicious morning at length dawned, when a distinguished company began to arrive, each chief with his followers, and in many cases his wives and little children, all dressed in their best, and bent on enjoying everything to the utmost. I noticed fine stalwart men from Udiagiri on the edge of the ghauts, together with Khonds from more civilised Baliguda, and Khonds from cold and breezy Daringabadi, cheerful in spite of the numbers of their relatives that had found a horrid tomb inside a man-eating tiger that since 1886 (together with another ally lately started) had carried off more than four hundred of their kith and kin. Distinguished amongst even that wild horde for savagery were the Khonds from the Kuttiya country, who live on tops of hills, and whose women are seldom, if ever, seen. These are remarkable for their enormous quantities of frizzly hair tied in huge chignons over the right brow, and decorated with feathers of every hue—the jay, the parrot, the peacock and the white quills of the paddy-bird predominating. Their short, sturdy limbs are hung in every direction with necklaces and curious blue beads and cut agates, said to be dug out of ancient burial places and cromlechs in Central India. Certain it is that almost no inducement will prevail on a Khond to voluntarily part with these precious heirlooms. As each fresh detachment arrived, their first occupation was to go to a neighbouring tank (pond), and, after a wash and decoration of head and hair with either the orthodoxfeathers, or, prettier still, with wreaths of wild flowers, to repair to the late chief’s house, and, presenting themselves at the door, condole, with much vigour of lungs, with the now less disconsolate widows on their recent loss. This ceremony over, they tendered their allegiance to the young son of the dead Pātro, permitted by Government to take his place, and each man received from him an earthen cooking-pot, and each circle of villages a buffalo. The Khond is a beef eater, but a curious custom prevails in some parts, that a married woman must abstain from the flesh of a cow. These preliminary ceremonies over, the crowd adjourned, with great noise of shouting, blowing of buffalo horns, and beating of drums, to the open grassy spot marked by posts, where the late Pātro had been burned, and where a recently killed buffalo, weltering in its gore, now lay. Among the throng of men, women and children, most of the former more than slightly elevated by drinking copious draughts of a kind of beer made from the kuhari grain, were three Khonds carrying long poles surmounted by huge bunches of peacock feathers that blazed in the sunlight like emeralds and sapphires. The funeral dance now commenced. The dance itself is simple in the extreme, for, when the right spot was reached, old men and young began gyrating round and round in a large circle, a perfect human merry-go-round. The old grey-beards, plodding slowly round the ring, and stamping on the soil with their aged feet, presented a great contrast to the younger and wilder men, who capered and pranced about, sometimes outside the circle, waving their tanghis in the air, and every now and then leaping up to the slain buffalo, and dipping their axes into its blood, and then back again, dancing more wildly than ever, round and round from west to east, till theeye ached to behold the perpetual motion of this animated wheel. In the centre revolved the three men with the huge bunches of peacock feathers afore-mentioned. When any dropped out of the circle to rest there were many eager and willing to take their places, and so, with relays of fresh dancers, this human circle revolved on for three whole days, only ceasing at nightfall, when by large fires the various tribes cooked in the earthen pots provided the buffaloes presented by the new Pātro. In olden days, an animal was given to each village, but on this occasion only to a circle of villages, occasioning thereby certain grumblings among the wiseacres for the good old days of the past, when not only buffaloes in plenty, but Meriah human victims as well were lavishly provided and sacrificed. ‘Ichabod,’ said they in Khond, ‘the glory of the Māliahs hath departed.’ On the afternoon of the third day, the Pātros, Molikas, Bissoyis, and others of the great men began to depart with their retainers for their distant homes in the jungles, having had a thoroughly good time. The women, who had been very shy at first, fled at my approach, now, after three days’ familiarity with a white face, began to show symptoms of friendliness, so that they allowed me to go quite near to them to examine their pretty necklaces of coloured grasses, silver coins, and curious beads, and to count the numbers of small sticks (generally about twelve or fifteen) of broom that were arranged in the shape of a crescent round the outer edges of the pierced ears of each unmarried village belle, and to observe at close quarters the strange tattooed patterns in blue of zigzag and curve that to my eyes disfigured their otherwise comely faces. As to beauty of figure, I think very few can compare with a young and well-grown Khond maiden, with her straight back and handsomeproportions. It was, therefore, without much difficulty that I persuaded some of them to dance before me. Six buxom girls stepped out, all of them the respectable daughters of well-to-do Khonds, prepared to dance the famous peacock dance. Round their supple but massive waists was twisted the strip of national Khond cloth of blue, red and white, and for bodices what could be more becoming than their glossy brown skins of nature’s millinery, gracefully wreathed with garlands of coloured grasses and strings of gay beads. The polished jet black hair, neatly tied in a knot at the back, and decorated with pretty lacquered and silver combs, or with forest flowers, added yet more to their picturesque appearance. Each girl now took a long strip of white cloth, and, winding it round her waist, allowed one end to trail at the back in the fashion of a Liberty sash. This was supposed to represent the tail of the peacock. Three of the girls then faced the three others, and, with their left hands resting on their hips, and their elbows sticking out (to represent the wings), and the right arms extended in front with the fingers outstretched to simulate the neck and beak, began to dance to the ear-piercing shrieks of cracked trumpet, and to the deep beatings of a Māliah drum marking excellent time. On and on they danced, advancing and retiring, and now and then crossing over (not unlike the first figure of the quadrille), while their tinkling feet, ‘like little mice, stole in and out,’ the heels alternately clashing against each other, in exact time to the music, and the lips gracefully waving from side to side as they advanced or retired. There was perfect grace of movements combined with extreme modesty, the large expressive eyes veiled by the long lashes never once being raised, and the whole demeanour utterly obliviousto the crowd of enthusiastic admirers that surrounded them on all sides. But for the wild scene around, the noise and shrieking of instruments, and the fantastic dresses of the Khonds (many of whom had buffalo horns tied on to their painted faces, or had decorated their heads with immense wigs of long black hair), one might easily have supposed these shrinking damsels to have been the pick of a Mission School specially selected for propriety to dance the South Indian kummi before, say, an itinerant Bishop of ascetic tendencies and æsthetic temperament. When their heaving, panting bodies showed that exhausted nature claimed them for her own, the man with the trumpet or the drum would rush up, and blow or beat it almost under their drooping heads, urging them with shouts and gesticulations to further energy, till at length the shades of night crept over the hills, and, with one accord, the dancing and the deafening music ceased, while the six girls stole quietly back and were soon lost in the crowd.”

Of superstitions among the Kondhs, the following are recorded by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar:—

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