Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/277

Rh to possess a eunuch, a woman performs the ceremony. [At the fire-walking ceremony at Nuvagōde in Ganjam, the priest sits on a thorny swing, and is endowed with prophetic powers.] When there is small-pox or other epidemic disease in a village, a little go-cart is built, composed of a box on legs fixed to a small board on wheels. In this box is placed a little clay image, or anything else holy, and carried away to a distant place, and left there. A white flag is hoisted, which looks like quarantine, but is really intended, I think, to draw the goddess back to her shrine. Vaccination is regarded as a religious ceremony, and the Gadabas, I believe, invariably present the vaccinator as the officiating priest with rice." The Gadabas, like other hill tribes, name their children after the day of the week on which they are born. On the plains, however, some give their children low-country names, e.g., Rāmudu, Lachigadu, Arjanna, etc. Males are, as a rule, burnt; but, if a person dies in the night or on a rainy day, the corpse is sometimes buried. Women and children are usually buried, presumably because they are not thought worth the fuel necessary for cremation. Only relations are permitted to touch a corpse. Death pollution is observed for three days, during which the caste occupation must not be engaged in. Stone slabs are erected to the memory of the dead, and sacrifices are offered to them now and again. The Gadabas have a devil dance, which they are willing to perform before strangers in return for a small present. It has been thus described by Captain Glasfurd. * "At the time of the Dusserah, Hōli, and other holidays,