Page:The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the Dwellers Therein, with comparative vocabularies of the hill dialects.djvu/18

 10 THE HILL TRACTS OF CHITTAGONG makes drinking cups of it, and his head at night rests on a bamboo pillow ; his forts are built of it ; he catches fish, makes baskets aud stools, and thatches his house with the help of the bamboo. He smokes from a pipe of bamboo ; and from bamboo ashes he obtains potash. Finally, his funeral pile is lighted with bamboo. The hill man would die without the bamboo, and the thing he finds hardest of credence is, that in other countries the bamboo does not grow, and that men live in igno- rance of it. (For detailed description of the different species of bamboo and canes found in the hills, see Appendix C.) Throughout the whole of India, indeed,, the bamboo occupies a forward place in the domestic economy of the inhabitants. It remained only that it should be deified ; and this, it seems, has been done. In Dr. Balfour's account of the migratory tribes of Central India (J. A. S., No. 61 of ]844), he tells of a tribe called the Bhatos, a tribe who follow the profession of athletse, and perform most of their feats with the aid of a bamboo. " Their patron goddess is Korewa, an incarnation of Mahadeva. Her shrine is situated at the village of Thekoor, near Kittoor, around which dense forests of bamboos grow. One they select, and the attendants of the temple consecrate it. It is now called " gunnichari," or chief, and receives their worship annually. To it, as to a human chief, all respect is shown ; and in cases of marriage, of disputes requiring arbitration, or the occurrence of knotty points demanding consultation, the " gunnichari " i*erected in the midst of the counsellors or arbiters, and all prostrate themselves to it before commencing the discussion of the subject before them/' This is certainly the best kind of chief I ever heard of. In like manner, one of the clans in the Hill Tracts (the Biang Tipperahs) offer worship to the bamboo. They do not, however, go the length of the Bhatos, in considering it as a chief, for it is to them merely an impersonation or representative of the deity of the forest. The mode of cultivation pursued in the hills is common to all the tribes ; indeed, wherever hill tribes are found throughout India, this special mode of cultivating the earth seems to prevail. It is known as "toung-ya" in Burmah and A r mean, as " dhai-ya" in the Central Pro- vinces, while here the method is usually called " joom," and the hill men pursuing it " joomahs." The modus operandi is as follows : — In the month of April, a convenient piece of forest land is fixed upon, generally on a hill-side, the luxuriant under-growth of shrubs and creepers has to be cleared away, and the smaller trees felled : the trees of larger growth