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THE PEOPLE totems are the tiger, cobra and tortoise, but the bear, iguana, dog, monkey, goat, bull, cow, lizard, parrot, peacock, and vulture also occur, and in addition certain plants such as the pumpkin and the Baahinia purpurea, and a few inanimate objects like stone and the sun. The usual Uriya name for a totem is horns, which seems to be the same word as vamsa, a family. Members of the same totem may not intermarry, and children take their father's totem. Every totem is revered. Animal totems may on no account be killed or eaten. The very idea of such a possibility makes the totemist shudder, and he declares that so unspeakable an act would result in the entire destruction of his whole tribe. Totems must, indeed, be befriended where possible — a tortoise, for example, being put in the nearest water. If the totem attacks a man he may kill it in self-defence; but its dead body is then often given funeral rites almost as if it was the corpse of a man. When a man sees his totem he folds his hands across his breast and does reverence. Plant totems are not eaten, injured, or even touched. The sun is venerated by the people of its totem fasting when it does not appear; and stone by being excluded from all buildings and all service — stone mortars, for example, being taboo. The idea that members of a totemistic division are all one family is strong. If one of them dies, all the others are under pollution for three days and have to get their food from their wives' relations.

The recognized forms of marriage in the Agency include several of those expressly forbidden by Manu. There is marriage by purchase, by service for three years in the house of the girls' parents, by mutual consent and clandestine elopement (the man having then to pay a fine called dos tonka), by forcible compulsion on the part of the bridegroom and his friends, and by selection at the dhangadi basa or girls' sleeping-hut. One form of this last is described in the account of the Banda Porojas below.

But the usual procedure is for the man's parents to go to the girl's house, leave presents (usually pots of strong drink) there, and judge of the livelihood of their suit being successful by seeing whether the liquor is thrown away or drunk. If it is drunk, they renew the suit with other presents until at length an understanding is arrived at. Subsequent ceremonies are simple and consist mainly in the provision of caste dinners and more liquor.

Divorce and widow remarriage are universally permitted. The younger brother may marry his elder brother's widow, but not conversely, for the elder brother is as the father of the family. If a widow has children and marries outside the family her new 85