________________
mingling with Hindus and other tribes, lie and steal like civilized people. In fact, the mixed Gonds are particularly noted for servility and dishonesty. The uncivilized Gonds of the table-lands are said still to cut up and eat their aged relatives and friends, not to speak of strangers unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. Among the pure Gonds is found the practice of carrying an axe, which is the sign of their religious devotion to the sacrifice-god.[7] The favorite religious practice used to be to take a prisoner alive, force him to bow before the god-stone, and at the moment when he bent his head, to cut it off. To this and to self-defence against other gods (wild beasts) the hatchet is devoted, while for war are used the bow and knife. One particular celebration of the Gonds deserves special notice. They have an annual feast and worship of the snake. The service is entirely secret, and all that is known of it is that it is of esoteric, perhaps phallic character. Both at the sun-feast and snake-feast[8] licentious and bacchanalian worship are combined, and the latter trait is also the chief feature of wedding and funeral sports. In the former case (the natives of the same tribe intermarry, but with the same pretence of running off with the bride that is found in the Hindu ritual)[9] there is given a wedding feast by the bridegroom's father, and the feast ends with a causerie de lundi (the favorite drink of the Gonds is called lundi); while on the latter occasion there is a mourning feast, or wake, which also ends in general drunkenness.
The Khonds: Even more striking is the religion of the Khonds. Their chief rite is human sacrifice to the earth-goddess, [10] Tari; but, like the Gonds, they worship the sun as chief divinity. Other gods among them are the river-god, rain-god, spring, wealth, hillgod, and smallpox-god. All their religious feasts are excuses for excess both in drinking and otherwise. One of their beliefs is that there is a river of hell, which flows around a slippery rock, up which climbs the one that would escape torment. Their method of sacrificing a human victim is to put him into the cleft of a tree, where he is squashed, or into fire. They seem to have an odd objection to shedding blood for this purpose, and in this respect may be compared with the Thugs. Another very interesting trait is the religion which is intertwined with business, and its peculiar features. Victims offered either to the sun or to the war-god serve to mark boundary lines. Great is the patience with which these victims, called merias, are waited for. The sacrificer captures fit
