THE RELIGION AND CUSTOMS OE THE URAONS. 181 



A woman never pronounces the name of her husband. This is good to know, as 

 the time wasted in pressing for an answer will be saved. If she pronounces his name, 

 the cotton crop is sure to fail. 



Along the road you meet very often with heaps of stones. It is generally believed 

 that these mark the place where a man has been caught by a tiger. It is not so. Those 

 heaps are called pathal puvji. When people go to the bazar, they add a stone to the 

 heap in the hope they will then make good bargains. When they go for a visit, they 

 do the same in the hope of getting plenty of rice-beer to drink. 



Bihi khedna (to drive away the portent). — Generally once a year, sometimes twice, 

 the whole country is startled by some wonderful news and some portent from heaven. 

 It is difficult to know how these rumours originate, but they spread like wildfire. The 

 two last ones were these. In Palamau a man had sown pumpkins in his garden. Among 

 them was a very big one, and, when he opened it, there sallied forth two children. 

 One of them stood with an inkstand in one hand and a pen in the other hand and said, 

 " Aye ! aye ! fly from home for three days and do not look at your children." Having 

 said this he fell down dead. In a few days the whole country was in a great state of 

 commotion. As soon as this warning was imparted to them from heaven, people began 

 running in all directions to avoid the sight of their children. Lots of people actually 

 built small huts with branches and lived in the jungle to escape the wrath to come. In 

 this the Hindus and Mahomedans joined. 



One of these scares is almost annual in its recurrence. Suddenly the news spreads 

 that a woman has given birth to a young pig. The rumour at least has the good effect 

 of ridding the country of many of those animals, for, as soon as the news reaches the 

 women, they raise a cry as if the village was on fire, and the whole female population 

 immediately turn out armed with sticks, and, running to the nearest village, make a 

 hecatomb of all the pigs they meet. No one dare make any objection. Of course, 

 the women of the village so visited take the hint and, in their turn, go to the village 

 nearest theirs and so on, so that the country is resonant with squeaking and screech- 

 ing. The more incredible and the more unlikely the scare is, the more readily will it 

 be believed. Any man endowed with a strong imagination, and having a command of 

 the language, and of graphic and figurative speech, could bring those people to 

 believe anything and do anything provided it be sufficiently stupid. Have we not 

 had an example of it in Birsa Bhagwan ? There was nothing remarkable in him, 

 but a strong imagination, some cunning and a perfect command of the language, which 

 enabled him to put things vividly and graphically so as to strike in an irresistible 

 manner on the imagination of his countrymen. Is not this a plausible explanation 

 of this phenomenon ? Their intellect is naturally very weak, and nothing, absolutely 

 nothing, is done by them to develop it. To add two and two they have to make use of 

 small stones or count on their fingers. Their imagination, on the contrary, which is 

 naturally vivid, is extraordinarily developed by the most wonderful stories, most wonder- 

 fully and vividly related by the ojhas, and all those that dabble in sorcery, so that the folic 

 du login gets complete mastery of the mass. 



