The Saontas of Sargūja and Bilāspur appear to have been separated from the parent tribe for some generations and to have assimilated some of the customs of the Gonds. They have some Gond sept-names, as Markām and Dhurwa. Those of Pendra zamīndāri have no traditions of their origin beyond saying that the adjoining Kenda zamīndāri was their original home. They profess to revere only the sun, fire and water. In order to worship the Jal-deota or water-god they pour water round the fire and then throw a little butter on the fire in his name. Mr. C.U. Wills, Settlement Officer, records of them the following curious custom: When a man is at the point of death or actually dead, they sometimes set fire to the hut in which his body is lying and run away, no doubt to save themselves from being haunted and troubled by his spirit, to the attainment of which end so large a part of funeral ritual is everywhere directed.
The following short account of them by Colonel Dalton may be reproduced for reference:[86]
“The name Saont or Saonta directs us to the Santāl branch of the Kols, and, as I have already noticed, there is in Sargūja a small tribe so called. They are the sole inhabitants of the magnificent tableland forming the southern barrier of Sargūja, called the Mainpāt or more correctly perhaps the Manipāt. They are a small tribe living scattered over the vast area of the plateau in about a dozen hamlets, and they are strong in the belief that they were especially created to dwell there, or that they and the plateau somehow sprang into existence together, and cannot be separated. I saw a number of them when I was last in Sargūja, and from their features I should be inclined to class them as Kols, but they have some customs and notions which they must have derived from the Dravidian Gonds. They acknowledge Dūlha Deo as a household god, and follow the customs of the Gonds and other southerners in their marriage ceremonies.
“They worship the sun as Bhāgwan, and like the Kharias offer sacrifices to that luminary in an open place with an ant-hill for an altar. The Mainpāt is their Mārang Buru, and as it is 16 miles long, 12 miles broad, and rises 3850 feet above the sea-level, it is not unworthy of the name, but they do not use that or any other Kol term. The great Mainpāt is their fatherland and their god. They have it all to themselves except during the summer months, when it becomes a vast grazing field for the cattle of Mīrzapur and Bihār.
“The Saonts are armed like the Korwas with bows and arrows, and the peculiar battle-axe of the country, but it is against the beasts of the forest that these weapons are used. Formerly the Mainpāt was a magnificent hunting field, especially noted for its herds of antelope and gaur. The late Mahārāja of Sargūja strictly preserved it, but on his death it fell into the hands of his widow, a very money-loving old lady, who allowed it to become one of the great grazing tracts, and the pasturage alone gives her an income of £250 a year; but the wild animals have in consequence withdrawn from it.
“The position of the Saonts is altogether very curious, and though they now speak no language but a rude Hindi, the evidence is, on the whole, favourable to their being a remnant of the ancient Kol aborigines of Sargūja, cut off from connection with those people by successive inroads of other races or tribes. Their substitution of a Hindi dialect for their own language seems to indicate that they were first subjugated by Aryans. The Gond chiefs only count about twenty-four generations in Sargūja, and they have all adopted the Hindi language.”
Dāsari religious mendicant with discus and conch-shell of Vishnu
Sanyāsi.—(A religious recluse.) Synonym for Gosain.
Sao.—(For sāhu, a banker, a rich man.) A subcaste of Kalār and Teli. An honorific title of Chhīpa or Rangāri. A sept of Gond.