Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/443

Rh to the crowd of enthusiastic admirers that surrounded them on all sides. But for the wild scene around, the noise and shrieking of instruments, and the fantastic dresses of the Khonds (many of whom had buffalo horns tied on to their painted faces, or had decorated their heads with immense wigs of long black hair), one might easily have supposed these shrinking damsels to have been the pick of a Mission School specially selected for propriety to dance the South Indian kummi before, say, an itinerant Bishop of ascetic tendencies and æsthetic temperament. When their heaving, panting bodies showed that exhausted nature claimed them for her own, the man with the trumpet or the drum would rush up, and blow or beat it almost under their drooping heads, urging them with shouts and gesticulations to further energy, till at length the shades of night crept over the hills, and, with one accord, the dancing and the deafening music ceased, while the six girls stole quietly back and were soon lost in the crowd."

Of superstitions among the Kondhs, the following are recorded by Mr. Jayaram Moodaliar: — "When a Kondh starts out on a shooting expedition, if he first meets an adult female, married or unmarried, he will return home, and ask a child to tell the females to keep out of his way. He will then make a fresh start, and, if he meets a female, will wave his hand to her as a sign that she must keep clear of him. Before a party start out for shooting, they warn the females not to come in their way. The Kondh believes that, if he sees a female, he will not come across animals in the jungle to shoot. If a woman is in her menses, her husband, brothers, and sons living under the same roof, will not go out shooting for the same reason.