172 The ‘ Kols’” of Chota-Nagpore. 
Referring to Col. Walter Sherwill’s account of the Rajmahal hill 
people,* I find, in regard to marriage, that ‘it is customary for the 
young couple to sleep together on the same bed before marriage. 
The Oraons would consider this a very indecorous proceeding, though 
a public recognition that the young couple have slept together after 
the marriage is with the Oraons an important sequel to the ceremony. 
In the Rajmahal hills, says Col. Sherwill, the dead are buried. The 
Rig Veda and Ramayun tell us that this was the custom of the 
Dusyas, but the Moondahs and their cognates all burn their dead, and 
the Oraons follow their example. 
The Rajmahal hill men swear on salt, the Oraons have a veneration 
for salt, but swear on dub grass,+ huldee and rice. 
The Oraons know nothing. of Bedo Gosain, the invisible spirit 
adored by the Rajmahalies. Their supreme deity is the sun under 
the title of Dhurmo, but as that and the Rajmahalee term are both of 
Sanscrit origin, it evinces that neither race have in their own language 
any word for the Deity. ; 
Lastly, the hill man is described as less cheerful than the Sonthal, 
less industrious, and as not joining in the dances that the people of 
the Moondah stock are so devoted to. In Chota-Nagpore the Oraons 
are more lively than the Moondahs, quite as industrious, and the most 
enthusiastic and nimble-footed of the dancers. 
The two races, Moondah and Oraon, must have been for ages the 
only colonists of the plateau; it is singular that they have no tradition 
of any disqute having arisen between them. Affecting jealously to 
guard against admixture of the races by sexual intercourse, they in 
other respects lived as one people, the Oraon conforming more to the 
customs of the Moondah than the Moondahs to the Oraon, and in 
many instances adopting the Moondah language and losing their own. 
In villages east of Ranchee, though inhabited wholly by Oraons, the 
Moondah, not Oraon, is the language spoken ; but the Moondah language 
is not much known in the vicinity of Lohardaggah or in Jushpore. 
The village systems of the two people became almost identical in 
form. The village priest, called the Pahan, is probably an Oraon 
institution, as, I think, amongst the Moondahs the principle is that the 
head of the family is priest; but the Moondahs of Chota-Nagpore 
* Asiatic Society’s Journal, Vol. XX. p, 544. + Agrostis linearis. 
