Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/136

 io8 Reviews.

Father P. Dehon in the Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal} They are apparently a simple, cheerful, industrious and attractive folk, and both these authors, and especially Father Dehon, write of them in very eulogistic terms. Mr. Roy's account is of course much fuller, and he has also avoided a criticism to which both his predecessors to some extent laid themselves open, in that he has not glossed over or omitted their more repulsive habits and customs. This is always a strong temptation to those who are describing savage life, because no author likes to disfigure his account with details which are scarcely fit to print, and frequently also, having lived with them and liked them, he views the people he is describing through rose-tinted glasses. But it seems essential that the temptation should be resisted, because otherwise the moral and social gulf which exists between savagery and civiliza- tion, and hence the measure of human progress, tends to be obscured. Mr. Roy's account indicates with sufficient clearness that the daily life and customs of the Oraons are far removed from those of the shepherds and nymphs of classical Arcadia.

An interesting feature is the description of the khunt or sub-clan in its relation to the village, and the fact that the members of the khunt form a compact whole, standing in a special relation to the village, almost as if they were held to belong and to form part of it, is well brought out. The bones of all members are deposited once a year in the kundi^ or common burial place, being brought back for this purpose when they have died elsewhere. Food is laid out in the evening for the manes of all the dead members of the khunt. In the periodical sacrifices offered by the eldest member of the khunt even those who have migrated to other villages come together, contribute their share of the expenses, and eat the sacrificial meat together. The detailed account of the Dhurnkuria, or system of the bachelors' dormitory, adds a number of new and interesting details to those already known. There is practically promiscuous intercourse between boys and girls of the same village before marriage, but it is not considered right that these unions should end in marriage, for which partners are usually obtained from other villages. Mr. Roy finds reason for inferring the former existence among the Oraons of a system of marriage or ' Vol. i., No. 9, 1906.