THE RELIGION AND CUSTOMS OF THE URAONS. 125 



Worship of God. — There is no doubt that the Uraons have a more perfect idea of God 

 than the other tribes. They call him Dharmes, viz., " the beneficient one," and look upon 

 him as their creator, but they have a very poor idea of his providence. He is 

 far above everything, and has given the management of the world into the hands 

 of tutelary divinities and bhnts or devils whom they have to propitiate. As there are 

 bad men and good men in the world, and God does not interfere, so there are good and 

 bad divinities whom God leaves quite free to act as they please. Of course, the intercourse 

 of the Uraons with the Kolarian tribes has spoiled, to a certain degree, their first idea of a 

 supreme and almost immaterial Being. With the Kols the Godhead is nearly identical 

 with the sun. The word for God common among them and the Hindus is Bhagwan, and 

 it is remarkable that the words Dharmes and Bhagwan seem to have different meanings 

 tor the Uraons. When they use Dharmes the idea of God is entirely separated from 

 the sun, whilst when they use Bhagwan they naturally look to the sun as the Kols do. 



The Uraons invoke God in their greatest difficulties, and especially when having had 

 recourse to thepzhan, ojha and sokha they have found everything useless ; then they turn 

 to him and say: " Now we have tried everything, but we have still you who can help 

 us." They sacrifice to him a white cock. They wash the feet of the bird and cut its throat 

 with a knife, saying, " God, you are our creator, have mercy onus." This sacrifice of a 

 white cock to God is offered at all the feasts and when the sorcerer drives away the bhuts. 



Here we come to what seems to have been the most ancient form of worship among 

 the Uraons. They look upon God as being too good to punish them, and therefore they 

 do not think that they are answerable to him in any way for their conduct ; they believe 

 that everybody will be treated in the same way in the other world. Everybody will be 

 reunited to his ancestors, and everything will go on in the other world nearly as it does 

 in this. Only everybody will be happier. There is no hell for them, no place of punish- 

 ment. They say they go to Merkha which corresponds to heaven. The Red Indians 

 speak of the happy hunting-grounds and the Uraons imagine something like the happy 

 ploughing-grounds where everybody will have plenty of land, plenty of bullocks to 

 plough it with, and plenty of rice-beer to drink after their labour. Hence they have no 

 anxiety at all about their future life, provided that they conform to all the customs imposed 

 o.ithem by the panchayat of the other world, which they personify under the name of Nasre. 

 All their anxiety is about this world, and all their religious practices tend only to worldly 

 things, namely, to get good crops and be free from sickness. It seems that the Uraons at 

 first attributed all the evils of this world to the evil eye and evil mouth. Hence their most 

 ancient practice of the pa/khansna. The believe that envy distils from the eye and mouth 

 of the envious man a kind of poison most fatal to crops and men. Let a man but come, 

 stand before their field and look at it and say: " What a. beautiful field it is, most prom- 

 ising, "and it is enough to throw the master of the field into the greatest anxiety. Let a big 

 official come into their country or any notorious stranger ; if his visit is followed by some 

 misfortune, the failing of the crops and especially the sickness of children, these misfortunes 

 will infallibly be attributed to his evil eye. It is really wonderful how much they worry 

 themselves about that evil eye and evil mouth. In this they believe God interferes, and 

 they have recourse to him in the pa Ik kansna, i.e., the breaking of teeth. 



