Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/347

 Reviews. 319

status of their castes. The increased facility of communications has brought castes to rub shoulders together, resulting in the relaxa- tion of caste rules, and has modified the relations between them. In these and a hundred other ways changes are going on and becoming ever more rapid ; though they necessarily take the mould of the prevailing organization, and it will be generations before the spirit of caste is extinguished, if it be not inherent in humanity.

A point to which Mr. Russell recurs again and again throughout the volumes is that of the religious influence of the conquered and degraded aboriginal tribes. This is exhibited not merely despite the caste system. It extends beyond the caste system (which is a Hindu — that is to say, an Aryan — organization built upon conquest) to the descendants of the earlier inhabitants, among whom it seems to have existed before the entrance of the Aryans into India. Thus the Gonds and other Dravidian tribes employ Baigas, Bhuiyas, and other Munda tribes for their village priests, "which is an acknowledgment that the latter as the earlier residents have a more familiar acquaintance with the local deities, and can solicit their favour and protection with more prospect of success." The Mahars are an impure caste of menials, labourers, and village watchmen of the Maratha country. They were, it seems clear, the oldest residents of the plain country of Berar and Nagpur. This is implied, in fact, in their position in Berar as referees on village boundaries and customs. At the Holi or Spring festival the Mahars' fire is kindled before any others. They have functions at weddings of other castes, including in Bhandara the duty of fixing the dates for them. When the Panwar Rajputs of Bhandara celebrate the festival of Narayan Deo (a form of Vishnu) they call a Mahar, impure as he is, " to their house and make him the first partaker of the feast before beginning to eat themselves." More than that, the bunch of peacocks' feathers which does duty for an image of Narayan Deo is generally kept in the house of a Mahar, and is brought thence in a gourd to the Panwar's house to be worshipped. Though he sings and dances during the offering, which consists of a black goat, rice and cakes, and begins the feast upon the sacrificial animal, on ordinary occasions the Mahar is not allowed inside the house, and any Panwar who took food with him would be put out of caste." The