2. Exogamous divisions.
Each family has a got or sept and a varga or family name. The vargas are much more numerous than the gots, and marriages are arranged according to them, unions of members of the same varga only being forbidden. The sept names are totemistic and the family names territorial or titular. Among the former are bachhās (calf), nāgas (cobra), hasti or gaj (elephant), harin (deer), mahumāchhi (bee), dīpas (lamp), and others; while instances of the varga names are Pitmundia, Hulbulsingia, Giringia and Dumania, all names of villages in Angul State; and Nāyak (headman), Mahanti (writer), Dehri (worshipper), Behera (cook), Kandra (bamboo-worker), and others. The different gots or septs revere their totems by drawing figures of them on their houses, and abstaining from injuring them in any way. If they find the footprints of the animal which they worship, they bow to the marks and obliterate them with the hand, perhaps with the view of affording protection to the totem animal from hunters or of preventing the marks from being trampled on by others. They believe that if they injured the totem animal they would be attacked by leprosy and their line would die out. Members of the dīpas sept will not eat if a lamp is put out at night, and will not touch a lamp with unclean hands. Those of the mahumāchhi or bee sept will not take honey from a comb or eat it. Those of the gaj sept will not join an elephant kheddah. Some of the septs have an Ishta Devata or tutelary Hindu deity to whom worship is paid. Thus the elephant sept worship Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, and also do not kill rats because Ganesh rides on this animal. Similarly the harin or deer sept have Pāwan, the god of the wind, as their Ishta Devata, because a deer is considered to be as swift as the wind. It would appear then that the septs, each having its totem, were the original divisions for the restriction of marriage, but as these increased in size they were felt to debar the union of persons who had no real relationship and hence the smaller family groups were substituted for them; while in the case of the old septs, the substitution of the Hindu god representing the animal worshipped by the sept for the animal itself as the object of veneration is an instance of the process of abandoning totem or animal worship and conforming to Hinduism. In one or two cases the vargas themselves have been further subdivided for the purpose of marriage. Thus certain families of the Padhān (leader, chief) varga were entrusted with the duty of readmitting persons temporarily put out of caste to social intercourse, for which they received the remuneration of a rupee and a piece of cloth in each case. These families were called the Parichha or ‘Scrutinisers’ and have now become a separate varga, so that a Parichha Padhān may marry another Padhān. This is a further instance of the process of subdivision of exogamous groups which must take place as the groups increase in size and numbers, and the original idea of the common ancestry of the group vanishes. Until finally the primitive system of exogamy disappears and is replaced by the modern and convenient method of prohibition of marriage within certain degrees of relationship.