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, f huldee and rice. 



The Oraons know nothing of Bedo G-osain, 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. f Agrostis linearis. 



