Gonds

“ It is derived from the aboriginal tribe of Gonds, who still form the largest element in the population and who were at one time the ruling power. From the 12th to as late as the 18th century three or four Gond dynasties reigned over this region with a degree of civilization that seems surprising when compared with the existing condition of the people. They built large walled cities, and accumulated immense treasures of gold and silver and jewels. ”

“ Murder is a comparatively frequent crime among Gonds, and is usually due either to some quarrel about a woman or to a drunken affray. The kidnapping of girls for marriage is also common, though hardly reckoned as an offence by the Gonds themselves. Otherwise crime is extremely rare in Gond villages as a rule. As farmservants the Gonds are esteemed fairly honest and hard-working ”

“ 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 proverb says, ‘The Gond considers himself a king as long as he has a pot of grain in the house,’ meaning that while he has food for a day or two he will not work for any more. During the hot weather the Gonds go about in parties and pay visits to their relatives, staying with them several days, and the time is spent simply in eating, drinking when liquor is available, and conversation. ”

“ The Gonds seem originally to have had no idea of a place of abode for the spirits of the dead, that is a heaven or hell. So far as can be conjectured, their primary view of the fate of the spirits of the dead, after they had come to consider the soul or spirit as surviving the death of the body, was that they hung about the houses and village where they had dwelt, and were able to exert considerable influence on the lives and fortunes of their successors. ”

“ We learned after much trouble that there was a tribe of Gonds who resided in the hills of Amarkantak and to the south-east in the Gondwāna country, who held very little intercourse with the villagers and never went among them except to barter or purchase provisions. This race live in detached parties and seldom have more than eight or ten huts in one place. They are cannibals in the real sense of the word, but never eat the flesh of any person not belonging to their own family or tribe ”

“ The Gonds are mainly engaged in agriculture, and the great bulk of them are farmservants and labourers. In the hilly tracts, however, there is a substantial Gond tenantry, and a small number of proprietors remain, though the majority have been ousted by Hindu moneylenders and liquor-sellers. ”

“ There is some reason to suppose that the immigration of the Gonds into the Central Provinces took place after the establishment of these Hindu kingdoms, and not before, as is commonly held.7 But the point must at present be considered doubtful. There is no reason however to doubt that the Gonds came from the south through Chānda and Bastar. During the fourteenth century and afterwards the Gonds established dynasties at the places already mentioned in the Central Provinces. ”

“ They commonly work as farmservants, women as well as men, and illicit connections with their Hindu masters have been a natural result. This [119] interbreeding, as well as the better quality of food which those who have taken to regular cultivation obtain, have perhaps conduced to improve the Gond physical type. Gond men as tall as Hindus, and more strongly built and with comparatively well-cut features, are now frequently seen, though the broad flat nose is still characteristic of the tribe as a whole. Most Gonds have very little hair on the face. ”

“ Some tribes, such as the Gonds, Binjhwārs and Kawars, counted amongst them the owners of large estates or even kingdoms, and consequently had many Hindu cultivators for their subjects. And, as the Hindus themselves say, they could not regard the Gonds as impure when they had a Gond king. Nevertheless, the Gond labourers in Hindu villages in the plains are more despised than the Gonds who live in their own villages in the hill country. ”

“ The adoption of Gond names and septs appears to indicate that Gonds were in former times freely admitted into the Baiga tribe; and this continues to be the case at present among the lower subtribes, so far that a Gond girl marrying a Baiga becomes a regular member of the community. But the Binjhwārs and Bharotias, who have a somewhat higher status than the others, refuse to admit Gonds, and are gradually adopting the strict rule of endogamy within the subtribe.
4. Marriage.
A Baiga must not take a wife from his own sept or from another one worshipping the same number of gods. ”

“ Mr. Smith derives the Chandels either from the Gonds or Bhars, but inclines to the view that they were Gonds. The following considerations tend, I venture to think, to favour the hypothesis of their origin from the Bhars. According to the best traditions, the Gonds came from the south, and practically did not penetrate to Bundelkhand. ”

“ The Gonds were once dominant over the greater part of the Central Provinces, which was called Gondwana [71] after them. The above three names have in each case been given to the tribes by the Hindus. The following tribes are found in the Province:
Gond, Oraon or Kurukh, Khond, Kolām, Parja, Kamār. Tribal Castes: Bhatra, Halba, Dhoba. Doubtful: Kawar, Dhanwār.
The Gonds and Khonds call themselves Koi or Koitur, a word which seems to mean man or hillman. The Oraon tribe call themselves Kurukh, which has also been supposed to be connected with the Kolarian horo, man. ”

“ A strip of cloth worn by the lower population of India around the loins.
[35] The Gonds are supposed to be the aborigines of the Sagar and Nagpoor provinces, and have much in common with the Khandsor Khands, another tribe of North Sarkar. They have dialects peculiar to themselves, and which have no affinity whatever with the Sanskrit, but probably are akin to that of the Dravidian stock. They kept up their old religious custom of human sacrifice until 1835-45, when the strong arm of the English interfered and has almost put a stop to it. ”

“ The Gonds are the most numerous among the aboriginal tribes, but so great an intermixture has taken place between them and the Hindu races that they have lost their language and most of their ethnical characteristics, such as the flat forehead, squat nose, prominent nostril, dark skin, &c., and are scarcely distinguishable from the other classes of the Hindu labouring population. ”

“ The Kasdhonia Dhīmars wash the sands of the sacred rivers to find the coins which pious pilgrims frequently drop or throw into the river as an offering when they bathe in it. The Gondia subcaste is clearly an offshoot from the Gond tribe, but a large proportion of the whole caste in the Central Provinces is probably derived from the Gonds or Kols, members of this latter tribe being especially proficient as palanquin-bearers. The Suvarha subcaste is named after the suar or pig, because members of this subcaste breed and eat the unclean animal; they are looked down on by the others. ”

“ The remains of a two-class system appear to be traceable among the Gonds of the Central Provinces. In one part of Bastar all the Gond clans are divided into two classes without names, and a man cannot marry a woman belonging to any clan of his own class, but must take one from a clan of the other class. ”

“ The Gonds have scarcely any restriction on diet. They will eat fowls, beef, pork, crocodiles, certain kinds of snakes, lizards, tortoises, rats, cats, red ants, jackals and in some places monkeys. Khatola and Rāj-Gonds usually abstain from beef and the flesh of the buffalo and monkey. They consider field-mice and rats a great delicacy, and will take much trouble in finding and digging out their holes. The Māria Gonds are very fond of red ants, and in Bastar give them fried or roasted to a woman during her confinement. ”

“ Speaking of some of the most savage tribes, the Gonds, for instance, he maintains that nothing would induce them to tell a lie, though they would think nothing of lifting a herd of cattle from a neighboring plain. ”

“ The Gonds, if they wish a child to be a good dancer, cause it to eat the flesh of a kind of hawk, which hangs gracefully poised over the water, with its wings continually flapping, on the look-out for its prey. They think that by eating the flesh the limbs of the child will become supple like the wings of the bird. If a child is slow in learning to speak, they give it to eat the leaves of the pīpal tree, which rustle continually in the wind and are hence supposed to have the quality of making a noise. ”

“ The people in these hills are called Gonds, a true hill tribe—that is to say, aborigines, somewhat of the negro type. The chiefs are of mixed blood, but the people are almost black. They are supposed to accept the religion of the Hindus, but are in reality deplorably ignorant and superstitious. ”

“ The use of the bow and arrow is being forgotten owing to the restrictions placed by Government on hunting. The Gonds can still throw an axe fairly straight, but a running hare is a difficult mark and has a good chance of escaping. The hare, however, falls a victim to the fascination of fire. The Gond takes an earthen pot, knocks a large hole in the side of it, and slings it on a pole with a counterbalancing stone at the other end. Then at night he slings the pole over one shoulder, with the earthen pot in front containing fire, and sallies out hare-hunting. ”

“ Possibly they ate the bodies of their parents, as many races ate the bodies of animal gods, in order to obtain their divine virtues and qualities. No corroboration of this custom is known in respect of the Gonds, but Colonel Dalton records43 a somewhat similar story of the small Birhor tribe who live in the Chota Nāgpur hills not far from Amarkantak, and it has been seen that the Bhunjias of Bilāspur eat small portions of the bodies of their dead relatives.44 ”

“ Speaking generally, the enforcement of rules of sexual morality appears to be comparatively recent, and there is no doubt that the Baigas and other tribes who have lived in contact with the Gonds, as well as the Ahīrs and other low castes, have a large admixture of Gond blood. In Bastar a Gond woman formerly had no feelings of modesty as regards her breasts, but this is now being acquired. Laying the hand on a married woman’s shoulder gives great offence. Mr. Low writes:55 “It is difficult to say what is not a legal marriage from a Gond point of view ”

“ He is accompanied by a man who bears a bamboo. The hare, attracted and fascinated by the light, comes close and watches it stupidly till the bamboo descends on the animal’s head, and the Gonds have hare for [143] supper.” Sometimes a bell is rung as well, and this is said to attract the animals. They also catch fish by holding a lamp over the water on a dark night and spearing them with a trident.
1 The country of Gondwāna properly included the Satpūra plateau and a section of the Nāgpur plain and Nerbudda valley to the south and west. ”

“ The word Kandra may be derived from kānd, an arrow, just as Dhānuk, often a synonym for Basor, has the meaning of an archer. It is not improbable that among the first articles made of bamboo were the bow and arrow of the forest tribes, and that the bow-maker was the parent of the modern Basor or basket-maker, bows being a requisite of an earlier stage of civilisation than baskets. In Bhandāra the Kandras are an offshoot of Gonds. Their women do not wear their cloths over the head, and knot their hair behind without plaiting it. They talk a Gondi dialect and are considered an impure caste. ”

“ All the people of consequence who had property in and about Gondar, who had fled to Fasil and to the provinces, from fear of Ras Michael when he returned from Tigrè, had gone back upon Gusho's word, each man to his house; Gondar was full of men in arms. In Gusho's and Ayabdar's army, and depending on them, was the property of all Gondar. Ras Woodage, Gusho's father, and brother to Ayabdar, had been Ras in Yasous' time, till he died, universally beloved and regretted; Ayto Engedan and Aylo, sons of Kasmati Eshté, (by a sister of king Yasous) had the property of near one half of the town. ”

“ If there was no stream to which they could go fishing they would buy some fish and offer it to the god, and have a holiday and eat it, or if they could not go fishing they might go hunting in a party instead. When a single Gond intends to go out hunting in the forest he first lights a lamp before his household god in the house, or if he has no oil he will kindle a fire, and the lamp or fire must be kept burning all the time he is out. If he returns successful he offers a chicken to the god and extinguishes the lamp. ”

“ Immediately after the assembly, the king ordered Tebedin to be put in irons, and sent to a mountainous prison. He then returned to Gondar.
This year, the 9th of Yasous reign, there appeared a comet, remarkable for its size and fiery brightness of its body, and for the prodigious length and distinctness of its tail. It was first taken notice of at Gondar, two days before the feast of St Michael, on which day the army takes the field. A fight so uncommon alarmed all sorts of people ”