Part 56

Cumberlege, pp. 4, 5.

Cumberlege, l.c.

This custom is noticed in the article on Khairwar.

Cumberlege, p. 18.

Mr. Hira Lal suggests that this custom may have something to do with the phrase Athara jat ke gayi, or 'She has gone to the eighteen castes,' used of a woman who has been turned out of the community. This phrase seems, however, to be a euphemism, eighteen castes being a term of indefinite multitude for any or no caste. The number eighteen may be selected from the same unknown association which causes the goat to be cut into eighteen pieces.

Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 344, quoting from Moor's Narrative of Little's Detachment.

Cumberlege, p. 35.

Berar Census Report, 1881.

Cumberlege, p. 21.

The following instance is taken from Mr. Balfour's article, 'Migratory Tribes of Central India,' in J. A. S. B., new series, vol. xiii., quoted in Mr. Crooke's Tribes and Castes.

From the Sanskrit Hatya-adhya, meaning 'That which it is most sinful to slay' (Balfour).

Monograph, p. 12.

Asiatic Studies, i. p. 118 (ed. 1899).

Cumberlege, p. 23 et seq. The description of witchcraft is wholly reproduced from his Monograph.

His motive being the fine inflicted on the witch's family.

The fruit of Buchanania latifolia.

Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 507, quoting from the Rev. J. Cain, Ind. Ant. viii. (1879).

Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, p. 70.

Monograph, p. 19.

The Patwas are weavers of silk thread and the Nunias are masons and navvies.

An impure caste of weavers, ranking with the Mahars.

Semecarpus Anacardium.

Malcolm, Memoir of Central India, ii. p. 296.

Cumberlege, p. 16.

Small double shells which are still used to a slight extent as a currency in backward tracts. This would seem an impossibly cumbrous method of carrying money about nowadays, but I have been informed by a comparatively young official that in his father's time, change for a rupee could not be had in Chhattisgarh outside the two principal towns. As the cowries were a form of currency they were probably held sacred, and hence sewn on to clothes as a charm, just as gold and silver are used for ornaments.

Jungle Life in India, p. 516.

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable contains the following notice of horns as an article of dress: "Mr. Buckingham says of a Tyrian lady, 'She wore on her head a hollow silver horn rearing itself up obliquely from the forehead. It was some four inches in diameter at the root and pointed at the extremity. This peculiarity reminded me forcibly of the expression of the Psalmist: "Lift not up your horn on high; speak not with a stiff neck. All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted" (Ps. lxxv. 5, 10).' Bruce found in Abyssinia the silver horns of warriors and distinguished men. In the reign of Henry V. the horned headgear was introduced into England and from the effigy of Beatrice, Countess of Arundel, at Arundel Church, who is represented with the horns outspread to a great extent, we may infer that the length of the head-horn, like the length of the shoe-point in the reign of Henry VI., etc., marked the degree of rank. To cut off such horns would be to degrade; and to exalt and extend such horns would be to add honour and dignity to the wearer." Webb (Heritage of Dress, p. 117) writes: "Mr. Elworthy in a paper to the British Association at Ipswich in 1865 considered the crown to be a development from horns of honour. He maintained that the symbols found in the head of the god Serapis were the elements from which were formed the composite head-dress called the crown into which horns entered to a very great extent." This seems a doubtful speculation, but still it may be quite possible that the idea of distinguishing by a crown the leader of the tribe was originally taken from the antlers of the leader of the herd. The helmets of the Vikings were also, I believe, decorated with horns.

Monograph, p. 40.