Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 7.djvu/262

GONDS. deceased husband marrying the widow of his elder brother, as he is expected to do, though she is at liberty to make her own arrangements; a feast to village elders, and a present of new bangles completes the ceremony.

Gonds profess to respect burning their dead, and all women are burnt, as also old men, but young men are buried without the village. If the head male of the house dies, his spirit is supposed to protect the other inmates, and till finally laid at rest by peculiar ceremonies and sacrifices, food is set aside for it. The Baigas perform the last ceremony of freeing the spirit from its earthly bondage. After death, a pin and a little turmeric are tied to a beam in the house; these are taken down, and presented to one of the gods, with some goat's flesh, and a feast concludes the ceremony.

Gonds gain their livelihood by cultivation after a rude fashion, producing only inferior grains, for the most part, in the hilly and forest tracts they inhabit. They also collect gums, honey and bees' wax, hides and skins, tussar cocoons, and other forest produce; and they sell also grass, bamboos, small timber, and firewood, in towns and villages. But they are idle, as far as the necessities of their families will permit them to be. Contrary to Hindoo practice, they have no objection to slaughtering cows and eating beef. They sometimes settle and clear land on the borders of the forests, where the cultivation is of the ordinary kind; but they seldom remain long in such localities, and retreat into their forest life, which is more acceptable to them. As a class they are necessarily perfectly ignorant, and as yet unreelaiined by any education; but a few take service in the police, and are active and trustworthy.

The Gonds, like all forest tribes in all parts of India, are especially fond of dancing; and no classes of the people of India, except the aboriginal tribes, ever dance. On one occasion we were travelling at night through a Gond district, and hearing a very strange noise, like "thrupp, thrupp," repeated regularly, turned aside from the road to a glade where a party of Gonds were assembled. Some women were sitting on the ground, singing a droning kind of song, to which eleven men were dancing in line; and each, with a movement of his right arm produced the sound "thrupp" from his armpit, in a sort of accompaniment to the drone of the women. The men advanced to them and retired in line, dancing well, throwing out their legs, and performing steps. Sometimes one would dash out of the line, and execute a pas seul, and then rejoin the line, to be succeeded by another. We watched them for nearly an hour, but they showed no signs of fatigue; and one of the men, who could speak a little Mahratta., informed us that such dances and others are one of their chief amusements, and joined in by great numbers at festivals.