Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/43

Rh man drives in his stabbing-spear, and the boar is killed at their feet. Those who know what the charge of an Indian boar is, will appreciate the nerve and courage required for this form of sport. People who do this sort of thing for amusement are neither dull nor inert.

The Eastern Kullens have their songs and dances in social as well as religious festivities.

What they call dancing in Kummi is common. Now the men, now the women, perform separately, those who are out, looking on. Stepping or jumping they go round and round while singing a chorus to a verse given out by one. At each verse all stoop forward and clap hands; then round and round again. It is an uncommon form of amusement in South India, where people are rarely aroused to much activity except under religious excitement. Dancing is usually done by proxy. When these people are fully aroused by religious high pressure, as during the Aligiri Festival in Madura, their frenzy is boundless. They dance and leap for days together—it seems—yelling, and laughing, and singing, and lashing themselves with whips.

In the south of the tract where we find the Eastern Kullens, not very far from Ramnad, close to holy Ramêsbaram, one of the most sacred shrines of the Brahminical-Hindu religion, visited by crowds of pilgrims from every part of India, we meet the Konddya Kothai Maravans, who observe a very remarkable ceremony in connection with their dead. An unmarried boy or girl is buried without any ceremony immediately after death. When a married person dies, a death-message is sent to all relatives, who assemble as soon as possible, and in their presence the body is carried outside the house. After mourning and weeping, the corpse is carried on a bier prepared for the occasion, to the spot where the dead are disposed of. There is music by the way. The body is burnt. The man who lit the pyre is shaven. Next day there is the Karmantram ceremony. The relatives go to the place where