132 THE LATE REV. P. DEHON ON 



suffice to show how much they trouble themselves about it. Anyone can now conceive 

 the effects of these ideas on the people of a village : everyone suspects his neighbour, 

 many quarrels rise, and very often the life of a poor old ugly woman is quite unbearable. 



Worship of Baranda. 



{Baranda is the son of the Asur woman who was pregnant and worked the bellows whe?i 

 Dharmes punished the Asurs. He kept the boy and gave him his post to reward the labour of 

 his mother?) 



As their mind never soars very high, we cannot expect to find lofty ideas in their worship. 

 They look upon God as a big zemindar, who does nothing by Himself but keeps a chaprasi 

 [messenger] or a kind of tahsildar ; and they conceive the latter as having all the defects so 

 common to his profession. The Uraons seem to be under no obligation to God except the 

 performance of the palkhansna ; and Baranda exacts tribute from them mercilessly — not 

 exactly out of zeal for the service of his master, but out of greed ; for he has to receive his 

 talbaua. When they suspect that a sickness is caused by Baranda, or when the ojha after 

 his incantations has found him in the flickering light of his lamp, they do not proceed 

 with him as they do with the other bhuts, as the ojha cannot exercise any power over him. But 

 if they cannot immediately offer him the customary puja, they make a vow to him (bachchia 

 bandlina) and ratify it in this way. They take a leaf of Sakhua, place on it arwa rice, 

 turmeric and a leaden ring, and sew the leaf together and tie it up with a sabai string 

 and lodge it in the root of the house. The Arwa rice symbolises a sacrifice ; as no 

 sacrifice is performed without the offering which consists in feeding the victim with arwa rice. 

 The sabai string means a bullock, because they lead the animal to the sacrifice with a string 

 of sabai grass : the leaden ring is the dasturi for his wife if he has any : the addition of 

 turmeric tells Baranda that this is only a vow and not the offering itself. Baranda does 

 not take any condiments. If, however, they had not served up turmeric, Baranda would 

 have thought they were only fooling him by offering arwa rice, and inflicted condign 

 punishment. Europeans very often do not understand the worship of those people 

 because their ideas are always flying too high and they cannot disconnect religion from 

 mysticism. In the worship of these savages, everything is most commonplace. Anyone 

 knowing anything of the ways of these people will recognise at once in Baranda the 

 tahsildar or any chaprasi of the sarkar or the money-lender. Do not believe that any 

 Uraon or any Kol has any idea of the mystical meaning of a sacrifice. They cannot 

 conceive any being altogether immaterial ; they live themselves only for eating and drink- 

 ing, and they think that the bluets have to be fed. Their sacrifices therefore are simply 

 the feeding of bhuts, whom they look upon as parasites. The blood of the victim 

 is only offered to appease their hunger. 



The ceremonies used in the sacrifice to Baranda are most complicated, and no one 

 can tell the meaning of them. When the time appointed for the Puja has come, all the 

 relatives of the man are invited. One of them leads the animal, a bullock, with a rope of 

 sabai, and the votary detaches the e.x-voto from the roof and carries it to the place re- 

 served for offering sacrifices to Baranda. This has, meanwhile, been cleaned and besmeared 

 with fresh cow-dung. The Sankatalas proceeds then as he does for the palkhansna, draws 



