remained one pair who had nothing, and to them the Kols gave of their share, and these are Ghassees to this hour. And so all these went and lived separately, and peopled the world, and multiplied exceedingly, and Sing Bonga taught those who lived in far countries other languages, and he gave people of different trades their implements. And after this from the Kols, from their senior house, sprung the English, who also eat of bullocks' flesh. But they are the senior children, and the Kols the junior ! And after the world was peopled, Sirma Thakoor destroyed it once, with the exception of sixteen people, because people became incestuous, and unmindful of God, or their superiors. Wicked men are born again as dogs, pigs, or lizards. Suttees never are born again, but remain burning for ever in their pits, and come out at night, wandering about, still burning. Good people after death are born again in some better condition in life than formerly. And this order of things will remain for ever and ever. When men die, their spirits go to the Sing Bonga, who asks them how they have lived, and judges them. The wicked he whips with thorny bushes, and sometimes buries them in great heaps of human ordure, and after a while sends them back to be born in this world as dogs, cats, bullocks, lizards, &c. The good man he sends back to be born a still greater and better man than he lived before, and all that he had given away in charity, Sing Bonga shows him heaped up in heaven, and restores it to him. Other deities are Nagé Erra, Desa Uli, Marang Bonga, and Pangúra, his wife-village gods; Chanala Desum Bonga, whose wife is also Pangúra, the god of married women; Horaten Ko, a god of the roads; Pigs and fowls are the chief offerings. Idols are wholly wanting. There is singing, dancing, and drinking at the festivals, some of which degenerate into orgies. Of domestic worship there is not a little. Every case of sickness involves a sacrifice, and an application to the soothsayer. That the Ho is eminently addicted to superstitions is clear. Whether he be more so than the rest of the rude world is doubtful. The name for a Ho tribe is kílí-word for word, the Afghan kheil. A man cannot marry a woman of his own kílí, nor eat with a man of a different one. The Bendkars.-The Bendkars form a single tribe consisting of about 300 individuals, their occupancy being the Bendkar Buru or the Bendkar hills. These lie to the north of Keonjur and the south of Kolehan. The Bendkars speak either the Ho or the Uriya; are half Hindus; worshippers of Kali; eat neither pork nor beef; drink water from a Ho's hand, but will eat with neither Ho nor Hindu. They burn their dead. As far as I can judge from some short vocabularies from * Hindu. Gondwana, the affinities of the Kol dialects (of which the Ho is one) run westwards rather than eastwards, whereas The Khond dialects extend east and south, in the direction of Orissa and the Telinga frontier. Fuller and more elaborate than Lieut. Tickell's paper on the Ho is that of Captain Macpherson on the Khonds; or rather on their religion, their human sacrifices, and their female infanticide. It is the great repertorium for our knowledge of the superstitions of the so-called aborigines of India. Pagan we can scarcely call them, inasmuch as, in the following notices, it is impossible to overlook the existence of ideas introduced from both ordinary Hinduism and Parsiism. The chief Khond deity, Bura Pennu, created for himself a consort whose name was Tari. He also created the earth. He walked abroad upon the earth-Tari, his wife, with him. But her affections were cold, and when Bura asked her to scratch the back of his neck for him, she refused. There were other causes of quarrel as well, but this refusal was one of them. And now Bura determined upon creating beings that should truly and warmly serve and love him, and, to this end, he made man. Tari opposed him as much as she could, but not effectually. Man, when made, was pure, good, and healthy. But Tari envied his purity, goodness, and health, and sowed the seeds of sin and evil, "as in a ploughed field." Physical evil Bura met by antidotes, but moral evil he left mankind free to either choose or reject. A few rejected it at once and from the first. To these Bura said, "Become ye gods! living for ever, and seeing my face when ye will, and have power over man, who is no longer my immediate care." The greater part, however, chose evil, and had it as mankind has it now. Tari, then, is the evil, Bura the good principle; and whilst the sect of Tari holds that she will eventually win, the sect of Bura believes in the final prevalence of good. Meanwhile, the struggle goes on, the weapons being hail, and rain, and wind, and lightning, and thunder. The comet of '43 was watched by the Kols with intense interest. They took it for a new weapon. The first class of the minor gods of the Khond Pantheon is the offspring of Bura and Tari, and their offices (which may be collected in detail from the subjoined list) are to meet the primary wants of man-wants originating out of the introduction of evil. There are Pidzu Pennu = the God of Rain. Burbi Pennu = the Goddess of New Vegetation and First Fruits. Petterri Pennuthe God of Increase and Gains. Loha Pennu = the Iron God, i. e. the God of War. Sundi Pennu= the God of Boundaries. These are invoked in all ceremonials next to Baru and Tari. The sinless men, who, having at once and from the first rejected evil, were taken up by Bura, form the next class. They are tutelary to the different Khond tribes. The third class consists of deities sprung from the gods of the other two-e. g. Nadzu Pennu = the Village God. Soro Pennu = the Hill God. Jori Pennu God of Streams. Idzu Pennu = House-god. Munda Pennu Tank God. Suga Pennu God of Fountains. = Gossa Pennu = God of Forests. Kutti Pennu = God of Ravines. Bhora Pennu God of New Fruits, Dinga Pennu, the Judge of the Dead, is the only one of the Dii Minores who does not reside on the surface of the earth, or a little above it; for the ordinary habit of the other deities is to move about in atmospheric space, invisible to human eyes, but not invisible to the eyes of the lower animals. Of the spirits, then, Dinga Pennu is one; but he is not one of the spirits that walk abroad upon the earth. He resides in the region beyond the sea, where the sun rises, upon a rock called Grippa Valli = the Leaping Rock. It is smooth and slippery, "like a floor covered with mustard seed," and a black unfathomable river flows around it. To this the souls of men speed after their death, and take bold leaps in order to get on it. Hence its name. Some of these leaps succeed, but the greater part fail, in which case the limbs may be broken, or the eyes knocked out by the attempt, and when this happens, the deformity thereby contracted is communicated to the body next animated. Upon Grippa Valli sits Dinga Pennu writing the register of the deeds of men, and casting-up the account of their good and evil actions. Should he adjudge immediate beatification, the soul passes at once to the world of happy spirits. Should the evil, however, outweigh the good, it is recommitted to earth, and sent to its own proper earthly tribe to be re-born. Men have four souls. First, there is the one which is capable of happy communion with Bura. Secondly, there is one attached to the tribes on earth, and, in each particular tribe to which it belongs, it is re-born as often as it dies. Upon the birth of a child the priest determines who it is whose soul, having previously departed in death, has thus returned. Thirdly, there is a soul that is punished for sins done in the flesh; and, fourthly, there is one that dies with the body. Under such a thorough system of metempsychosis as this |
