The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume III Part 4

19. Wedding expenditure.

20. Special customs.

21. Taking omens.

22. Marriage by capture. Weeping and hiding.

23. Serving for a wife.

24. Widow remarriage.

25. Divorce.

26. Polygamy.

(d) Birth and Pregnancy

27. Menstruation.

28. Superst.i.tions about pregnancy and childbirth.

29. Procedure at a birth.

30. Names.

31. Superst.i.tions about children.

(e) Funeral Rites

32. Disposal of the dead.

33. Funeral ceremony.

34. Mourning and offerings to the dead.

35. Memorial stones to the dead.

36. House abandoned after a death.

37. Bringing back the soul.

38. The dead absorbed in Bura Deo.

39. Belief in a future life.

(f) Religion

40. Nature of the Gond religion. The G.o.ds.

41. Tribal G.o.ds, and their place of residence.

42. Household G.o.ds.

43. Nag Deo.

44. Narayan Deo.

45. Bura Deo.

46. Charms and magic.

47. Omens.

48. Agricultural superst.i.tions.

49. Magical or religious observances in fis.h.i.+ng and hunting.

50. Witchcraft.

51. Human sacrifice.

52. Cannibalism.

53. Festivals. The new crops.

54. The Holi Festival.

55. The Meghnath swinging rite.

56. The Karma and other rites.

(g) Appearance and Character and Social Rules and Customs

57. Physical type.

58. Character.

59. Shyness and ignorance.

60. Villages and houses.

61. Clothes and ornaments.

62. Ear-piercing.

63. Hair.

64. Bathing and was.h.i.+ng clothes.

65. Tattooing.

66. Special system of tattooing.

67. Branding.

68. Food.

69. Liquor.

70. Admission of outsiders and s.e.xual morality.

71. Common sleeping-houses.

72. Methods of greeting and observances between relatives.

73. The caste panchayat and social offences.

74. Caste penalty feasts.

75. Special purification ceremony.

76. Dancing.

77. Songs.

78. Language.

(h) Occupation

79. Cultivation.

80. Patch cultivation.

81. Hunting. Traps for animals.

(a) Origin and History

1. Numbers and distribution.

Gond.--The princ.i.p.al tribe of the Dravidian family, and perhaps the most important of the non-Aryan or forest tribes in India. In 1911 the Gonds were three million strong, and they are increasing rapidly. The Kolis of western India count half a million persons more than the Gonds, and if the four related tribes Kol, Munda, Ho, and Santal were taken together, they would be stronger by about the same amount. But if historical importance be considered as well as numbers, the first place should be awarded to the Gonds. Of the whole caste the Central Provinces contain 2,300,000 persons, Central India, and Bihar and Orissa about 235,000 persons each, and they are returned in small numbers from a.s.sam, Madras and Hyderabad. The 50,000 Gonds in a.s.sam are no doubt immigrant labourers on the tea-gardens.

2. Gondwana.

In the Central Provinces the Gonds occupy two main tracts. The first is the wide belt of broken hill and forest country in the centre of the Province, which forms the Satpura plateau, and is mainly comprised in the Chhindwara, Betul, Seoni and Mandla Districts, with portions of several others adjoining them. And the second is the still wider and more inaccessible ma.s.s of hill ranges extending south of the Chhattisgarh plain, and south-west down to the G.o.davari, which includes portions of the three Chhattisgarh Districts, the Bastar and Kanker States, and a great part of Chanda. In Mandla the Gonds form nearly half the population, and in Bastar about two-thirds. There is, however, no District or State of the Province which does not contain some Gonds, and it is both on account of their numbers and the fact that Gond dynasties possessed a great part of its area that the territory of the Central Provinces was formerly known as Gondwana, or the country of the Gonds. [37] The existing importance of the Central Provinces dates from recent years, for so late as 1853 it was stated before the Royal Asiatic Society that "at present the Gondwana highlands and jungles comprise such a large tract of unexplored country that they form quite an oasis in our maps." So much of this lately unexplored country as is British territory is now fairly well served by railways, traversed almost throughout by good roads, and provided with village schools at distances of five to ten miles apart, even in the wilder tracts.