Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/428

KONDH concerning whom the author of the Ganjam Manual writes as follows. "The parents arrange the marriages of their children. The bride is looked upon as a commercial speculation, and is paid for in gontis. A gonti is one of anything, such as a buffalo, a pig, or a brass pot; for instance, a hundred gontis might consist of ten bullocks, ten buffaloes, ten sacks of corn, ten sets of brass, twenty sheep, ten pigs, and thirty fowls. The usual price, however, paid by the bridegroom's father for the bride, is twenty or thirty gontis. A Khond finds his wife from among the women of any mutah (village) than his own. On the day fixed for the bride being taken home to her husband's house, the pieces of broom in her ears are removed, and are replaced by brass rings. The bride is covered over with a red blanket, and carried astride on her uncle's back towards the husband's village, accompanied by the young women of her own village. Music is played, and in the rear are carried brass play-things, such as horses, etc., for the bridegroom, and cloths and brass pins as presents for the bridegroom from the bride's father. On the road, at the village boundary, the procession is met by the bridegroom and the young men of his village, with their heads and bodies wrapped up in blankets and cloths. Each is armed with a bundle of long thin bamboo sticks. The young women of the bride's village at once attack the bridegroom's party with sticks, stones, and clods of earth, which the young men ward off with the bamboo sticks. A running fight is in this manner kept up until the village is reached, when the stone-throwing invariably ceases, and the bridegroom's uncle, snatching up the bride, carries her off to her husband's house. This fighting is by no means child's play, and the men are sometimes seriously injured. The whole party is then entertained by the bridegroom