A black stone, called Ruxy, is much of the same sort of fetish with these mountaineers as the Sij with the Bodo. The name, too, Ruxy Nad, suggests the Nat worship of the Silong, Kariens, and others.
The northern half of the Tamulian families are, like the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Bretons of France, members of the same ethnological group, but not in geographical contact with each other. Or, rather, they are, like the Celtic population of Wales and the Scottish Highlands, cut[139] off from one another by a vast tract of intervening Anglo-Saxons. Yet the time was when all was Celtic, from Cape Wrath to the Land's End; and when the original population extended, in its full integrity, over York and Nottingham, as well as over Merioneth and Argyleshire. And so it is with the populations in question. They stand apart from each other, like islands in an ocean; the intervening spaces being filled up by Hindús. At the same time the isolation has been much overvalued, and, I imagine that when greater attention shall have been bestowed upon this important subject, connecting links which have hitherto been unnoticed will be detected.
The next locality where we find a population akin to the Rajmahali mountaineers, is the mountain system of Orissa. These are called by the Hindús Kóls (Coolies), Khonds and Súrs. Such, however, are no native designations—no more than the classical term Barbarian, or the English word Tartar. The people themselves have no collective name; but, being divided into tribes, have a separate one for each.
I say that this branch of Tamulians is isolated, because I am not able to show its continuity; the range of hill-country which gives rise to the rivers between the Ganges and Mahanuddy being but imperfectly known.
In Orissa, the most northern of the hill-tribes[140] are the Kól of Cuttack. South of these come the Khonds best studied in the neighbourhood of Goomsoor. The following is a list of their gods, and as n seems to stand for d, Pennu is but another name for Bedo, and Gossa Pennu for Bedo Gosaik:—
1. Bera Pennu, or the earth god.
2. Bella Pennu, the sun god, and Danzu Pennu, the moon god.
3. Sandhi Pennu, the god of limits.
4. Loha Pennu, the iron god, or god of arms.
5. Jugah Pennu, the god of small-pox.