1 
ON LINGUISTIC AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 661 
_ 4, Human sacrifice. (Compare the Meriah of the Khands of Central 
India.) 
5. Drinking of rice beer ; ce. 
1. Dadgo is a small village eighteen miles south-west of Ranchi.! 
2. Formerly it was a large village, but now it has been divided into 
three villages, viz. Dadgo, Balandu, and Nawaz¢oli. 
3. At first it was divided in two villages, viz. Dadgo and Nawazfolt, 
and the latter was quite separate from Dadgo, but the other two were 
reckoned as one. 
4. The following tale is told about the separation of Dadgo and 
Balandu. 
5. Dadgo itself was a big village, and contained many rich people. 
6. In such villages there are many young women, and they make their 
Kanri (7.e. the place where the rice is husked) outside the village. 
7. According to this custom the young women here also had made 
their Kanvri outside the village, just where two tamarind trees now stand 
south of Markas Manjan’s (the narrator’s) house. 
8. Now it happened that a man called by the Urdnws Ondok, and by the 
Sadans (low caste Hindus) Otanga (7.e. a man who offers human sacrifice 
to his god), came by with a boy in his bag, whom he was carrying to 
sacrifice. 
9. Hearing the noise made by the people he thought they were tipsy. 
10. He hung the bag on a tamarind tree, and going into a house he 
asked for rice-beer. 
11. When he had taken rice-beer, then he became tipsy. 
12. Meanwhile the young women of the village came to the tamarind 
tree to separate the husks from the rice. 
13. They saw the bag and heard the child cry inside the bag. 
14. They took away the child, and in place of it they put some thorny 
bushes and lumps of earth. 
15. Next morning the man came to the tree and took the bag on his 
back and went away on his journey. 
16. And it is said that when the thorns pricked him, he said, ‘Be 
quiet, little child, now we are near your mother ;’ for the man did not 
know what the young women of the village had done. 
17. That little child was brought up by the chief men of the village, 
and when he became a young man his marriage took place. 
18. After this the chief men of the village consulted together among 
themselves about him, and settled that some portion of the land, apart 
from their children, should be given to him, because he was their adopted 
child. 
19. It is said that in those days there was more rain in Chutia 
Nagpir than nowadays, and therefore the land which is called ‘ chaura,’ 
i.e, the high land, was more fertile than the ‘ kudar,’ z.e. the lowland. 
20. Now when the chief men of the village met to fix what part of 
the village they should give to him, they chose that part where the soil 
was least fertile, and thus they gave their adopted son the spot on which 
the village of Balandu now stands. 
21. They gave half of the lands to him. 
22. This*is now more fertile than the other part. 
‘ Ranchi is the chief town of the province of Chutia Nagpir. 
