154 THE LATE REV. P. DEHON ON 



subject see, hear, taste or feel in obedience to suggestions; and the ojhas, having mes- 

 merised the man, can suggest him to do as they like. It is wonderful how easily natives fall 

 into a trance ! In a Mission School, in Chota Nagpur, every time the boys sang and beat 

 the tamtam together they constantly fell into trances and would run like rats along the 

 rafters of the school, and do all kinds of wonderful things. 



III. — Social Customs. 



The Uraons are a very prolific race, and, whenever they are allowed to live 

 without being too much oppressed, they increase prodigiously. What strikes you when 

 you come to an Uraon village is the number of small dirty children playing every- 

 where, while you can scarcely meet a woman that does not carry a baby on her back. 

 The women seem, to a great extent, to have been exempted from the curse of our first 

 mother : " Thou shalt bring forth, etc. " They seem to give birth to their children with the 

 greatest ease. There is no period of uncleanliness, and, the very day after giving birth 

 to a child, you will see the mother with her baby tied up in a cloth on her back and a 

 ghagri on her head going, as if nothing had happened, to the village spring. 



Generally eight or ten days after the birth of a child they have the ceremony of the 

 chhathi or the giving of the name ; in this we find an instance of how difficult it is at 

 times to reconcile the proverbial indifference and unprovidence of the savage with the 

 precaution they take for the welfare of their children, even at this early stage of their exis- 

 tence. On the day appointed for the chhathi, some men of the village representing the 

 panch, and some members of the family, assemble at the house of the child. Two leaf 

 cups, one full of water and the other full of paddy, are brought. The head of the child 

 is shaved and his hair is put in the cup full of water. The men representing the panch 

 sit round the cups and invoke their forefathers; and, after pronouncing their usual formula, 

 " Above God, below the panch" one of them takes a grain of paddy and lets it fall in 

 the water in the name of God. Then he takes another grain and lets it fall in the name 

 of the panch. These two have to meet, if not they try a second and third, and, if after 

 several attempts the grain do not meet, they give up the ceremony and the child is always 

 looked upon with suspicion. When, however, the two grains have met, they are satisfied 

 that God is propitious to the child. They then let another grain fall in the name of the 

 child, and one in the name of each of his ancestors, continuing till one of the grains 

 meets with the one dropped in the child's name. The name pronounced when this par- 

 ticular crrain is dropped in will be the name of the child. The succession of names 

 brouo-ht on at is as follows : — First the paternal grandfather's name, then the paternal 

 o-reat-grandfather's, the father's, the paternal uncle's, and the maternal grandfather's; 

 then the names of other relatives. 



The paddy left in the second cup after the ceremony is kept for seed, and what it 

 yields at harvest time is kept and sown again, and so on from year to year until, by a 

 constant progression, the paddy is sufficient to buy a cow or some goats which, in their 

 turn, will increase and become the property of the child. This is called punji, and is 

 designed tc be given at the time of marriage. But as the Uraons know fully well how 

 weak are the ties of hymen, they wait generally till the first child is born to the married 



