Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 8.djvu/214

KHONDS IN WAR DRESS. villages of from thirty to eighty houses, generally comprising one long street; and the houses are capacious, well built, and much more comfortable than those of the plains. The cultivation extends from the very precincts of the villages, and when the crops are on the ground, many of the villages present pretty specimens of rural scenery. On the plateau of the hills the ground is gently undulating and sometimes flat, and covered with grass; but as the plateau breaks into ravines, dense jungle and forest begin, which continue into the plains below. The Khonds are short, wiry people, very active, and enduring great fatigue; but they are, as a race, extremely ill favoured and dirty. Their ordinary costume is a strong cloth round their loins, with an embroidered end hanging behind, which has the appearance of a tail. The women are even more ill favoured than the men, and their clothing, in possible, more scanty. Marriage seems to be hardly known as a sacred rite. It is simply one of purchase, a man giving goats, pigs, or cattle to purchase a girl, who is a consenting party. When this is effected, the bridegroom must carry off his wife from her village, running the gauntlet of the male inhabitants, and not escaping without severe blows. If he should succeed iii his purpose he is heartily applauded, and if not, must make another trial; but the bride considers it an act of bravery in her husband to carry her away, and with him it is a point of honour to do so. The dead are buried, but no particular rites seem to be observed, except throwing flowers upon the body, and accompanying it to the grave with music. The Khonds in their way are a musical people; they have flageolets, flutes, pipes, drums, and horns, but it cannot be said beyond a wild plaintiveness at times, that there is any melody in it. They have also a lute with two strings, made out of a dry gourd, and the shepherd's pipe is heard everywhere. Music is used chiefly at feasts and marriage ceremonies, in accompaniment to marriage and festal songs and chants, which are common, and in sonic instances, though wild and barbarous, by no means uninteresting or unpleasing On festival occasions the varied head dresses of the men have a curious effect. "Their hair being worn very long and thick, is wound round the head, and rolled upwards in the shape of a horn projecting between the eyes, and is wrapped in a piece of red cloth, decorated with bright feathers, and in this the Khond carries his comb, pipe, and other little domestic requisites."

There can be no question that the Khonds are one of the most ancient primitive tribes of India, though their position in ethnological distribution has not been determined. It is certain that they have never been disturbed; unless the ancient rulers of Orissa subdued them they have been free from the first, only recognising, probably of comparatively late years, the nominal control of their Hindoo chief, the Bissoyes. Of the limits within which they exist, Colonel Campbell gives the following detail:—"On the eastern side, the Telengahs,