Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/297

 Reviews. 261

The Garos. By Major A. Playfair. Introduction by Sir J. Bampfylde Fuller. (Published under the orders of the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam.) Nutt, 1909. 8vo, pp. xvi + 172. Illustrations and maps.

This account of the Garos forms one of the excellent series of monographs on the tribes of Eastern Bengal and Assam which we owe to the Government of that province.

The Garos, the first of the wilder forest tribes which came into contact with the British, inhabit a range of hills forming the southern boundary of the Brahmaputra valley, and numbered at the last census 160,000 souls, divided into two branches, — one, the more primitive group, occupying the hilly tract, and the other newcomers settled in the districts of the plains. They are members of the Tibeto-Burman stock, emigrants from the trans-Himalayan plateaux, their connection with which is proved by some interesting survivals, — their matrilinear social organisation, portions of their vocabulary, their reverence for the yak {bos gruniens), and their habit of collecting gongs, which are highly prized. They have now to a great extent abandoned the predatory habits which formed the subject of repeated complaints against them in the older reports, and they have settled down to agriculture, cultivating cotton and other staples with much success. Their economical position is thus superior to that of the neighbouring tribes.

Major Playfair has given a detailed account of the religion, ethnology, traditions, customs, sociology, and folklore of this interesting tribe, which it is impossible to summarise or discuss in detail.

Their religion is of the animistic type, a number of departmental spirits being supposed to control all the spheres of human activity. Thus Tatara-Rabuga is the creator of all things ; Chorabudi the benign protector of crops ; Nostu-Nopantu the fashioner of the earth; Goera god of strength and causer of thunder and lightning; Kalkame, brother of Goera, holds in his hands the lives of men ; Susime gives riches, and causes and cures blindness and lameness ; and so on. Ancestor worship plays a leading part in the funeral rites. The main elements of the worship of this pantheon are