8. A Khond combat.
“At about 12 o’clock in the day the people of Bora Des began to advance in a mass across the Sālki river, the boundary between the Districts, into the plain of Kurmīngia, where a much smaller force was arrayed to oppose them. The combatants were protected from the neck to the loins by skins, and cloth was wound round their legs down to the heel, but the arms were quite bare. Round the heads of many, too, cloth was wound, and for distinction the people of Bora Mūta wore peacock’s feathers in their hair, while those of Bora Des had cock’s tail plumes. They advanced with horns blowing, and the gongs beat when they passed a village. The women followed behind carrying pots of water and food for refreshments, and the old men who were past bearing arms were there, giving advice and encouragement. As the adverse parties approached, showers of stones, handed by the women, flew from slings from either side, and when they came within range arrows came in flights and many fell back wounded. At length single combats sprang up betwixt individuals who advanced before the rest, and when the first man fell all rushed to dip their axes in his blood, and hacked the body to pieces. The first man who himself unwounded slew his opponent, struck off the latter’s right arm and rushed with it to the priest in the rear, who bore it off as an offering to Loha Pennu (the Iron God or the God of Arms) in his grove. The right arms of the rest who fell were cut off in like manner and heaped in the rear beside the women, and to them the wounded were carried for care, and the fatigued men constantly retired for water. The conflict was at length general. All were engaged hand-to-hand, and now fought fiercely, now paused by common consent for a moment’s breathing. In the end the men of Bora Des, although superior in numbers, began to give way, and before four o’clock they were driven across the Sālki, leaving sixty men dead on the field, while the killed on the side of the Bora Mūta did not exceed thirty. And from the entire ignorance of the Khonds of the simplest healing processes, at least an equal number of the wounded died after the battle. The right hands of the slain were hung up by both parties on the trees of the villages and the dead were carried off to be burned. The people of Bora Des the next morning flung a piece of bloody cloth on the field of battle, a challenge to renew the conflict which was quickly accepted, and so the contest was kept up for three days.” The above account could, of course, find no place in a description of the Khonds of this generation, but has been thought worthy of quotation, as detailed descriptions of the manner of fighting of these tribes, now weaned from war by the British Government, are so rarely to be found.