The Koles ('pig-stickers'): Like the last, this tribe worship the sun, but with the moon as his wife, and the stars as their children. Besides these they revere Manes, and countless local and sylvan deities. Like Druids, they sacrifice only in a grove, but without images.[19]
All these tribes worship snakes and trees,[25] and often the only oath binding upon them is taken under a tree.[21] The sun-worship, which is found alike in Kolarian and Dravidian tribes, may be traced through all the ramifications of either. In most of the tribes the only form of worship is sacrifice, but oaths are taken on rice, beasts, ants, water, earth, etc. (among some P[=a]h[=a]riahs on the arrow). Some have a sort of belief in the divinity of the chief, and among the Lurka Koles this dignity is of so much importance that at a chief's death the divine dignity goes to his eldest son, while the youngest son gets the property. In regard to funeral rites, the Koles first burn and then bury the remains, placing a stone over the grave.
Besides the Or[=a]ons' totem of the mouse, the Sunth[=a]ls have a goose-totem, and the Garos and Kassos (perhaps not to be included in either of the two groups), together with many other tribes, have totems, some of them avatars, as in the case of the tortoise. The Garos, a tribe between Assam and Bengal, are in many respects noteworthy. They believe that their vessels are immortal; and, like the Bh[=a]rs, set up the bamboo pole, a religious rite which has crept into Hinduism (above, p. 378). They eat everything but their totem, immolate human victims, and are divided into 'motherhoods,' M[=a]h[=a]ris, particular M[=a]h[=a]ris intermarrying. A man's sister marries into the family from which comes his wife, and that sister's daughter may marry his son, and, as male heirs do not inherit, the son-in-law succeeds his father-in-law in right of his wife, and gets his wife's mother (that is, his father's sister) as an additional wife.[22] The advances are always made by the girl. She and her party select the groom, go to his house, and carry him off, though he modestly pretends to run away. The sacrifice for the wedding is that of a cock and hen, offered to the sun. The god they worship most is a monster (very much like Çiva), but he has no local habitation.
Of the Sav[=a]ras or Sauras of the Dekhan the most interesting deity is the malevolent female called Th[=a]kur[=a]n[=i], wife of Th[=a]kur. She was doubtless the first patroness of the throttling Thugs (thags are [t.]haks, assassins), and the prototype of their Hindu K[=a]l[=i]. Human sacrifices are offered to Th[=a]kur[=a]n[=i], while her votaries, as in the case of the Thugs, are noted for the secrecy of their crimes.
Birth-rites, marriage-rites, funeral rites (all of blood), human sacrifice, tab[=u] (especially among the Burmese), witchcraft, worship of ancestors, divination, and demonology are almost universal throughout the wild tribes. In most of the rites the holy stone[23] plays an important part, and in many of the tribes dances are a religious exercise.
Descendants of the great Serpent-race that once ruled M[=a]gadha (Beh[=a]r), the Bh[=a]rs, and Ch[=i]rus (Cheeroos) are historically of the greatest importance, though now but minor tribes of Bengal. The Bh[=a]rs, and Koles, and Ch[=i]rus may once have formed one body, and, at any rate, like the last, the Bh[=a]rs are Kolarian and not Dravidian. This is not the place to argue a thesis which might well be supported at length, but in view of the sudden admixture of foreign elements with the Brahmanism that begins to expand at the end of the Vedic period it is almost imperative to raise the question whether the Bh[=a]rs, of all the northern wild tribes the most cultivated, whose habitat extended from Oude (Gorakhpur) on both sides of the Ganges over all the district between Benares and Allah[=a]b[=a]d, and whose name is found in the form Bh[=a]rats as well as Bh[=a]rs, is not one with that great tribe the history of whose war has been handed down to us in a distorted form under the name of Bh[=a]rata (Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata). The Bh[=a]ratas, indeed, claim to be Aryans. But is it likely that a race would have come from the Northeast and another from the Northwest, and both have the same name? Carnegy believed, so striking was the coincidence, that the Bh[=a]rats were a R[=a]jput (Hindu) tribe that had become barbaric. But against this speaks the type, which is not Aryan but Kolarian.[24] Some influence one may suppose to have come from the more intelligent tribes, and to have worked on Hindu belief. We believe traces of it may still be found in the classics. For instance, the famous Frog-maiden, whose tale is told in the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata, reminds one rather forcibly of the fact that in Oude and Nep[=a]l frog-worship (not as totem) was an established cult. The time for this worship to Begin is October; it is different to thunder-worship (July, the n[=a]ga-feast), and the frog is subordinate to the snake. And, again, the snake-worship that grows so rapidly into the Hindu cult can scarcely have been uninfluenced by the fact that there are no less than thirty snake-tribes.[2]
But despite some interesting points of view besides those
touched upon here, details are of little added value, since it is manifest that, whether Kolarian or Dravidian, or, for the matter of that, American or African, the same rites will obtain with the same superstition, for they belong to every land, to the Aryan ancestor of the Hindu as well as to the Hindu himself. Even totemism as a survival may be suspected in the 'fish' and 'dog' people of the Rig Veda, as has recently been suggested by Oldenberg. In the Northeast of India many tribes worship only mountains, rivers, and Manes, again a trait both Vedic and Hinduistic, but not necessarily borrowed. Some of these tribes, like the Kh[=a]s[=i]as of Oude, may be of R[=a]jput descent (the Khasas of Manu, X. 22), but it is more likely that more tribes claim this descent than possess it. We omit many of the tribal customs lest one think they are not original; for example, the symbol of the cross among the [=A]bors, who worship only diseases, and whose symbol is also found among the American Indians; the sun-worship of the Katties, who may have been influenced by Hinduism; together with the cult of Burmese tribes too overspread with Buddhism. But often there is a parallel so surprising as to make it certain that there has been influence. The Niadis (of the South), for example, worship only the female principle. Many other tribes worship çakti almost exclusively. The Todas worship stone images, buffaloes, and even cow-bells, but they have a celibate priesthood! We do not hesitate to express our own belief that the çakti-worship is native and drawn from similar cults, and that the celibate priesthood, on the other hand, is taken from civilization.
Such a fate appears to have happened in modern times to several deities, now half Brahmanized. For example, Vet[=a]la (worshipped in many places) is said in the Dekhan to be an avatar, or, properly speaking, a manifestation of Çiva. What is he in reality? A native wild god, without a temple, worshipped in the open air under the shade of a tree, and in an enclosure of stones. Just such a deity, in other words, as we have shown is worshipped in just such a way by the wild tribes. A monolith[26] in the middle of twelve stones represents this primitive Druidic deity. The stones are painted red in flame-shape for a certain distance from the ground, with the upper portion painted white. Apparently there is here a sun-god of the aborigines. He is worshipped in sickness, as is Çiva, and propitiated with the sacrifice of a cock, without the intervention of any priest. The cock to Aesculapius ("huic gallinae immolabantur") may have had the same function originally, for the cock is always the sun-bird. Seldom is Vet[=a]la personified. When he has an image (and in the North he sometimes has temples) it is that of an armless and legless man; but again he is occasionally represented as a giant 'perfect in all his parts.'[27] To the Brahman, Vet[=a]la is still a mere fiend, and presides over fiends; nor will they admit that the red on his stones means aught but blood. In such a god, one has a clue to the gradual intrusion of Çiva himself into Brahmanic worship. At first a mountain lightning fiend, then identified with Rudra, a recognized deity, then made anthropomorphic. There are, especially in the South, a host of minor Hindu deities, half-acknowledged, all more or less of a fiendish nature in the eyes of the orthodox or even of the Çivaite. Seen through such eyes they are no longer recognizable, but doubtless in many instances they represent a crude form of nature-worship or demonology, which has been taken from the cult of the wild tribes, and is now more or less thoroughly engrafted upon that of their civilized neighbors.[28]
One of the most interesting, though not remarkable, cases of similarity between savage and civilized religions is found in the worship of snakes and trees.[29] In the N[=a]ga or dragon form the latter cult may have been aided by the dragon-worshipping barbarians in the period of the northern conquest. But in essentials not only is the snake and dragon worship of the wild tribes one with that of Hinduism, but, as has been seen, the tatter has a root in the cult of Brahmanism also, and this in that of the Rig Veda itself. The poisonous snake is feared, but his beautiful wave-like motion and the water-habitat of many of the species cause him to be associated as a divinity with Varuna, the water-god. Thus in early Hinduism one finds snake-sacrifices of two sorts. One is to cause the extirpation of snakes, one is to propitiate them, Apart from the real snake, there is revered also the N[=a]ga, a beautiful chimerical creature, human, divine, and snake-like all in one. These are worshipped by sectaries and by many wild tribes alike. The N[=a]ga tribe of Chota N[=a]gpur, for instance, not only had three snakes as its battle-ensign, but built a serpent-temple.[30]