Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/383

Rh another person died, when the first man's bones were dug up and thrown away, and the last person's bones put in their place. Perhaps they did not correctly convey what they meant. I once saw a gaily ornamented hut, evidently quite new, near a burning-place. Rude figures of birds and red rags were tied to five bamboos, which were sticking up in the air about 8 feet above the hut, one at each corner, and one in the centre, and the bamboos were split, and notched for ornament. The hut was about 4½ feet square, on a platform three feet high. There were no walls, but only four pillars, one at each corner, and inside a loft just as in a Saora's hut. A very communicative Saora said he built the hut for his brother after he had performed the Limma, and had buried the bones in the raised platform in the centre of the hut. He readily went inside, and showed what he kept there for the use of his dead brother's Kulba. On the loft were baskets of grain, a bottle of oil for his body, a brush to sweep the hut; in fact everything the Kulba wanted. Generally, where it is the custom to have a hut for the Kulba, such hut is furnished with food, tobacco, and liquor. The Kulba is still a Saora, though a spiritual one. In a village two miles from that in which I saw the gaily ornamented hut, no hut of any kind is built for the Kulba; the bones are merely covered with grass. Weapons, ornaments, etc., are rarely burned with a body outside the Kolakotta villages. In some places, perhaps one weapon, or a few ornaments will be burned with it. In some places the Limma and Guar feasts are combined, and in other places (and this is most common) the Guar and Karja are combined, but there is no burning of houses. In some places this is performed if crops are good. One often sees, placed against the upright stones to the dead, pieces of ploughs for male Kulbas, and