Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/41

Rh Manual of Madura: "Assigning a woman as wife to 10, 8, 6, or 2 husbands, who are held to be the fathers jointly and severally of any children that may be born of her body. And when such children grow up, they call themselves the children of 8 and 2, or of 6 and 2, or of 4 and 2, not of 10, or 8, or 6 fathers."

A remarkable fact concerning the West-country Kullens is that the boys are circumcised between 7 and 12. It has been said that this practice is a relic of the Mahomedan invasion 230 years ago. With this I do not agree. For what purpose did they acquire it from an alien race, for whom they felt nothing but hatred? The Mahomedan influence here was never strong. Like all the earlier races, the Kullens cling to their own beliefs and customs, and are strongly averse to any outside intervention. Even our strong, steady government affects them but little. Is it conceivable that this uncommon rite, practised by no other non-Islamic community in the country, was seized on and perpetuated by them, while remaining impervious to every other influence of the Mahomedan religion. If, as seems probable, circumcision is a mark of fealty to a god, it may be said they required no such mark, for they have one of their own. Every man's arm, over the deltoid, bears two or three scars made with a sharp stone, in boyhood, for the purpose, so they have told me, of enabling their god to recognise them when they pass behind the veil.

The East-country Kullens do not observe circumcision; nor do the Maravans; nor the Ahambadiyans. The West-country Kullens say, "We have always done it, we don't know why."

Ordinary quarrels, and cases of personal injury, are settled by a little court of the caste-folk; murders, too, are often compromised in this way, without reference to the police-courts. For wounding another, a man is made to pay a few rupees—"for treatment of the wound" which he inflicted. If the injury is so serious that the man may die, it is decided that if he dies within a certain number of