Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/429

Rh as lavishly as his means will permit. On the day after the bride's arrival, a buffalo and a pig are slaughtered and eaten, and, upon the bride's attendants returning home on the evening of the second day, a male and female buffalo, or some less valuable present, is given to them. On the third day, all the Khonds of the village have a grand dance or tamāsha (festivity), and on the fourth day there is another grand assembly at the house of the bridegroom. The bride and bridegroom are then made to sit down on a cot, and the bridegroom's brother, pointing upwards to the roof of the house, says: " As long as this girl stays with us, may her children be as men and tigers; but, if she goes astray, may her children be as snakes and monkeys, and die and be destroyed! " In his report upon the Kondhs (1842), Macpherson tells us that "they hold a feast at the bride's house. Far into the night the principals in the scene are raised by an uncle of each upon his shoulders, and borne through the dance. The burdens are suddenly exchanged, and the uncle of the youth disappears with the bride. The assembly divides itself into two parties. The friends of the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the bridegroom to cover her flight, and men, women, and children mingle in mock conflict. I saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth. He was surrounded by twenty or thirty young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attacks made upon him by a party of young women. The man was just married, and the burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends were, according to custom, seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom, until he reached the confines of his own village. Then the tables were