2. Exogamous septs.
The Dhanuhārs, being a small tribe, have no endogamous divisions, but are divided into a number of totemistic exogamous septs. Many of the septs are called after plants or animals, and members of the sept refrain from killing or destroying the animal or plant after which it is named. The names of the septs are generally Chhattīsgarhi words, though a few are Gondi. Out of fifty names returned twenty are also found in the Kawar tribe and four among the Gonds. This makes it probable that the Dhanuhārs are mainly an offshoot from the Kawars with an admixture of Gonds and other tribes. A peculiarity worth noticing is that one or two of the septs have been split up into a number of others. The best instance of this is the Sonwāni sept, which is found among several castes and tribes in Chhattīsgarh; its name is perhaps derived from Sona pāni (Gold water), and its members have the function of readmitting those temporarily expelled from social intercourse by pouring on them a little water into which a piece of gold has been dipped. Among the Dhanuhārs the Sonwāni sept has become divided into the Son-Sonwāni, who pour the gold water over the penitent; the Rakat Sonwāni, who give him to drink a little of the blood of the sacrificial fowl; the Hardi Sonwāni, who give turmeric water to the mourners when they come back from a funeral; the Kāri Sonwāni, who assist at this ceremony; and one or two others. The totem of the Kāri Sonwāni sept is a black cow, and when such an animal dies in the village members of the sept throw away their earthen pots. All these are now separate exogamous septs. The Deswārs are another sept which has been divided in the same manner. They are, perhaps, a more recent accession to the tribe, and are looked down on by the others because they will eat the flesh of bison. The other Dhanwārs refuse to do this because they say that when Sīta, Rāma’s wife, was exiled in the jungles, she could not find a cow to worship and so revered a bison in its stead. And they say that the animal’s feet are grey because of the turmeric water which Sīta poured on them, and that the depression on its forehead is the mark of her hand when she placed a tīka or sign there with coloured rice. The Deswārs are also called Dui Duāria or ‘Those having two doors,’ because they have a back door to their huts which is used only by women during their monthly period of impurity and kept shut at all other times. One of the septs is named Manakhia, which means ‘man-eater,’ and it is possible that its members formerly offered human sacrifices. Similarly, the Rakat-bund or ‘Drop of blood Deswārs’ may be so called because they shed human blood. A member of the Telāsi or ‘Oil’ sept, when he has killed a deer, will cut off the head and bring it home; placing it in his courtyard, he suspends a burning lamp over the head and places grains of rice on the forehead of the deer; and he then considers that he is revering the oil in the lamp. Members of the Sūrajgoti or sun sept are said to have stood as representatives of the sun in the rite of the purification of an offender.