At the beginning of the harvest they pluck an ear of corn and say, ‘Whatever god is the guardian of this place, this is your share, take it, and do not interfere.’ The last plants in the field are cut and sent home by a little girl and put at the bottom of the grain-bin of the house. Chitkuar Devi is the goddess of the threshing-floor, and before beginning to winnow the grain they sacrifice a pig and a chicken to her, cutting the throats of the animals and letting their blood drop on to the central post of the threshing-floor. When they are about to take the kodon home, they set aside a basketful and give it to the sister’s son or sister’s husband of the owner, placing a bottle of liquor on the top, and he takes it home to the house, and there they drink one or two bottles of liquor, and then begin eating the new grain.
49. Magical or religious observances in fishing and hunting.
In Mandla the Gonds still perform, or did till recently, various magical or religious rites to obtain success in fishing and hunting. The men of a village were accustomed to go out fishing as a communal act. They arrived at the river before sunrise, and at midday their women brought them pej or gruel. On returning the women made a mound or platform before the house of the principal man of the party. All the fish caught were afterwards laid on this platform and the leader then divided them, leaving one piece on the platform. Next morning this piece was taken away and placed on the grave of the leader’s ancestor. If no fish were caught on the first day, then on the next day the women took the men no food. And if they caught no fish for two or three days running, they went and dug up the platform erected in front of the leader’s house and levelled it with the ground. Then the next morning early all the people of the village went to another village and danced the Sela dance before the tombs of the ancestors of that village. Sometimes they went on to a third village and did the same. The headman of the village visited levied a contribution from his people, and gave them food and drink and a present of Rs. 1–4. With this they bought liquor, and coming back to their own village, offered it in front of the platform which they had levelled, and drank it. Next morning they went fishing again, but said that they did not care whether they caught anything or not, as they had pleased their god. Next year all the people of the village they had visited would come and dance the Sela dance at their village the whole day, and the hosts had to give the visitors food and drink. This was said to be from gratitude to the headman of the other village for placating their god with an offering of Rs. 1–4. And the visit might even be repeated annually so long as the headman of the other village was alive. Apparently in this elaborate ritual the platform especially represented the forefathers of the village, whose spirits were supposed to give success in fishing. If the fishers were unsuccessful, they demolished the platform to show their displeasure to the spirits, and went and danced before the ancestors of another village to intimate the transfer of their allegiance from their own ancestors to these latter. The ancestors would thus feel themselves properly snubbed and discarded for their ill-nature in not giving success to the fishing party. But when they had been in this condition for a day or so the headman of the other village sent them an offering of liquor, and it was thus intimated to them that, though their own descendants had temporarily transferred their devotion, they were not entirely abandoned. It would be hoped that the ancestors would lay the lesson to heart, and, placated by the liquor, be more careful in future of the welfare of their descendants. The season for fishing was in Kunwār and Kārtik, and it sometimes extended into Aghan (September to November). During these months, from the time the new kodon was cut at the beginning of the period, they danced the Sela, and they did not dance this dance at any other time of the year.[38] At other seasons they would dance the Karma. The Sela dance is danced by men alone; they have sticks and form two circles, and walk in and out in opposite directions, beating their sticks together as they pass. Sometimes other men sit on the shoulders of the dancers and beat their sticks. Sela is said to be the name of the stick. In the Sela dance the singing is in the form of Dadaria, that is, one party recites a line and the other party replies; this is not done in the Karma dance, for which they have regular songs. It seems possible that the Sela dance was originally a mimic combat, danced before they went out to fight in order to give them success in the battle. Subsequently it might be danced before they went out hunting and fishing with the same object. If there was no stream to which they could go fishing they would buy some fish and offer it to the god, and have a holiday and eat it, or if they could not go fishing they might go hunting in a party instead. When a single Gond intends to go out hunting in the forest he first lights a lamp before his household god in the house, or if he has no oil he will kindle a fire, and the lamp or fire must be kept burning all the time he is out. If he returns successful he offers a chicken to the god and extinguishes the lamp. But if he is unsuccessful he keeps the lamp burning all night, and goes out again early next morning. If he gets more game this time he will offer the chicken, but if not he will extinguish the lamp, put his gun outside and not touch it again for eight days. A Gond never takes food in the morning before going out hunting, but goes out in a fasting condition perhaps in order that the god, seeing his hunger, may send him some game to eat. Nor will a Gond visit his wife the night before he goes out hunting. When a Baiga goes out hunting he bangs his liquor-gourd on the ground before his household god and vows that, if successful, he will offer to the god the gourd full of liquor and a chicken. But if he returns empty-handed, instead of doing this he fills the gourd with earth and throws it over the god to show his wrath. Then if he is successful on the next day, he will scrape off the earth and offer the liquor and chicken as promised. A Baiga should worship his god and go out hunting at the new moon, and then he will hunt the whole month. But if he has not worshipped his god at the new moon, and still goes out hunting and is unsuccessful, he will hunt no more that month. Some Gonds before they go hunting draw an image of Mahābīr or Hanumān, the monkey god and the god of strength, on their guns, and rub it out when they get home again.
50. Witchcraft.
The belief in witchcraft has been till recently in full force and vigour among the Gonds, and is only now showing symptoms of decline. In 1871 Sir C. Grant wrote:[39] “The wild hill country from Mandla to the eastern coast is believed to be so infested by witches that at one time no prudent father would let his daughter marry into a family which did not include among its members at least one of the dangerous sisterhood. The non-Aryan belief in the power of evil here strikes a ready chord in the minds of their conquerors, attuned to dread by the inhospitable appearance of the country and the terrible effect of its malicious influences upon human life. In the wilds of Mandla there are many deep hillside caves which not even the most intrepid Baiga hunter would approach for fear of attracting upon himself the wrath of their demoniac inhabitants; and where these hillmen, who are regarded both by themselves and by others as ministers between men and spirits, are afraid, the sleek cultivator of the plains must feel absolute repulsion. Then the suddenness of the epidemics to which, whether from deficient water-supply or other causes, Central India seems so subject, is another fruitful source of terror among an ignorant people. When cholera breaks out in a wild part of the country it creates a perfect stampede—villages, roads, and all works in progress are deserted; even the sick are abandoned by their nearest relations to die, and crowds fly to the jungles, there to starve on fruits and berries till the panic has passed off. The only consideration for which their minds have room at such times is the punishment of the offenders, for the ravages caused by the disease are unhesitatingly set down to human malice. The police records of the Central Provinces unfortunately contain too many sad instances of life thus sacrificed to a mad unreasoning terror.” The detection of a witch by the agency of the corpse, when the death is believed to have been caused by witchcraft, has been described in the section on funeral rites. In other cases a lamp was lighted and the names of the suspected persons repeated; the flicker of the lamp at any name was held to indicate the witch. Two leaves were thrown on the outstretched hand of a suspected person, and if the leaf representing her or him fell above the other suspicion was deepened. In Bastar the leaf ordeal was followed by sewing the person accused into a sack and letting her down into shallow water; if she managed in her struggles for life to raise her head above water she was finally adjudged to be guilty. A witch was beaten with rods of the tamarind or castor-oil plants, which were supposed to be of peculiar efficacy in such cases; her head was shaved cross-wise from one ear to the other over the head and down to the neck; her teeth were sometimes knocked out, perhaps to prevent her from doing mischief if she should assume the form of a tiger or other wild animal; she was usually obliged to leave the village, and often murdered. Murder for witchcraft is now comparatively rare as it is too often followed by detection and proper punishment. But the belief in the causation of epidemic disease by personal agency is only slowly declining. Such measures as the disinfection of wells by permanganate of potash during a visitation of cholera, or inoculation against plague, are sometimes considered as attempts on the part of the Government to reduce the population. When the first epidemic of plague broke out in Mandla in 1911 it caused a panic among the Gonds, who threatened to attack with their axes any Government officer who should come to their village, in the belief that all of them must be plague-inoculators. In the course of six months, however, the feeling of panic died down under a system of instruction by schoolmasters and other local officials and by circulars; and by the end of the period the Gonds began to offer themselves voluntarily for inoculation, and would probably have come to do so in fairly large numbers if the epidemic had not subsided.
51. Human sacrifice.[40]
The Gonds were formerly accustomed to offer human sacrifices, especially to the goddess Kāli and to the goddess Danteshwari, the tutelary deity of the Rājas of Bastar. Her shrine was at a place called Dantewāra, and she was probably at first a local goddess and afterwards identified with the Hindu goddess Kāli. An inscription recently found in Bastar records the grant of a village to a Medipota in order to secure the welfare of the people and their cattle. This man was the head of a community whose business it was, in return for the grants of land which they enjoyed, to supply victims for human sacrifice either from their own families or elsewhere. Tradition states that on one occasion as many as 101 persons were sacrificed to avert some great calamity which had befallen the country. And sacrifices also took place when the Rāja visited the temple. During the period of the Bhonsla rule early in the nineteenth century the Rāja of Bastar was said to have immolated twenty-five men before he set out to visit the Rāja of Nāgpur at his capital. This would no doubt be as an offering for his safety, and the lives of the victims were given as a substitute for his own. A guard was afterwards placed on the temple by the Marāthas, but reports show that human sacrifice was not finally stamped out until the Nāgpur territories lapsed to the British in 1853. At Chānda and Lānji also, Mr. Hislop states, human sacrifices were offered until well into the nineteenth century[41] at the temples of Kāli. The victim was taken to the temple after sunset and shut up within its dismal walls. In the morning, when the door was opened, he was found dead, much to the glory of the great goddess, who had shown her power by coming during the night and sucking his blood. No doubt there must have been some of her servants hid in the fane whose business it was to prepare the horrid banquet. It is said that an iron plate was afterwards put over the face of the goddess to prevent her from eating up the persons going before her. In Chānda the legend tells that the families of the town had each in turn to supply a victim to the goddess. One day a mother was weeping bitterly because her only son was to be taken as the victim, when an Ahīr passed by, and on learning the cause of her sorrow offered to go instead. He took with him the rope of hair with which the Ahīrs tie the legs of their cows when milking them and made a noose out of it. When the goddess came up to him he threw the noose over her neck and drew it tight like a Thug. The goddess begged him to let her go, and he agreed to do so on condition that she asked for no more human victims. No doubt, if the legend has any foundation, the Ahīr found a human neck within his noose. It has been suggested in the article on Thug that the goddess Kāli is really the deified tiger, and if this were so her craving for human sacrifices is readily understood. All the three places mentioned, Dantewāra, Lānji and Chānda, are in a territory where tigers are still numerous, and certain points in the above legends favour the idea of this animal origin of the goddess. Such are the shutting of the victim in the temple at night as an animal is tied up for a tiger-kill, and the closing of her mouth with an iron plate as the mouths of tigers are sometimes supposed to be closed by magic. Similarly it may perhaps be believed that the Rāja of Bastar offered human sacrifices to protect himself and his party from the attacks of tigers, which would be the principal danger on a journey to Nāgpur. In Mandla there is a tradition that a Brāhman boy was formerly sacrificed at intervals to the god Bura Deo, and the forehead of the god was marked with his hair in place of sandalwood, and the god bathed in his blood and used his bones as sticks for playing at ball. Similarly in Bindrānawāgarh in Raipur the Gonds are said to have entrapped strangers and offered them to their gods, and if possible a Brāhman was obtained as the most suitable offering. These legends indicate the traditional hostility of the Gonds to the Hindus, and especially to the Brāhmans, by whom they were at one time much oppressed and ousted from their lands. According to tradition, a Gond Rāja of Garha-Mandla, Madhkur Shāh, had treacherously put his elder brother to death. Divine vengeance overtook him and he became afflicted with chronic pains in the head. No treatment was of avail, and he was finally advised that the only means of appeasing a justly incensed deity was to offer his own life. He determined to be burnt inside the trunk of the sacred pīpal tree, and a hollow trunk sufficiently dry for the purpose having been found at Deogarh, twelve miles from Mandla, he shut himself up in it and was burnt to death. The story is interesting as showing how the neurotic or other pains, which are the result of remorse for a crime, are ascribed to the vengeance of a divine providence.
Killing of Rāwan, the demon king of Ceylon, from whom the Gonds are supposed to be descended