1851.] 



The Migratory Races of India. 



7 



tuous, and expressed themselves shocked when I asked if they 

 ever devoted their girls to the hindoo gods ;* but, notwithstanding 

 this affectation of propriety, however much a wife may err, they 

 never, under any circumstances, send her away : they fine the lotha- 

 rio twelve or sixteen rupees, and beat the woman, but she is never 

 dgpreed. 



They recollected some rare instances of their men having 

 married with girls who had reached puberty, but such wives are 

 never sent to their husbands until two months after they have 

 grown up. 



On first reaching maturity the young woman lives apart for three 

 days, during which she receives a cocoanut and some rice for food, 

 and at the expiration of that period she bathes and her young com- 

 panions are invited to a feast where rice and clarified butter and 

 treacle are plentifully distributed. The same ceremonies are gone 

 through on the following month, but, unlike the Hindoos, their wo- 

 men never afterwards live apart. Their marriages are usually pro- 

 lific and my informants have seen so many as ten children alive, all 

 of them the offspring of one mother. 



They drink all sorts of intoxicating drinks, but never use opium 

 or any of the preparations from hemp. Their principal article of 

 diet is jooaree, "holcus sorghum," and their meals are taken at six 

 in the morning, at noon, and again at sunset. They never use the 

 flesh of the horse, jackall, tiger, cheetah, or crow ; but they eat 

 the hog, mouse, rat, wild rat, and fowls. 



All my questions failed to elicit any information to show that 

 they know any thing of the existence of a Supreme Being as a prin- 

 cipal of good, or of heaven, or other place of rewards ; and it is dif- 

 ficult to say what their religion is. They do not bind on the tali in 

 marriage, or use any of the Hindu sectarian marks on their fore- 

 heads, neither do they revere the Brahmans or any religious superior, 

 nor perform any religious ceremony at any Hindu or Budhist tem- 

 ple, but they told me that when they pray, they construct a small 

 pyramid of clay which they term Mariammah and worship it. But 



* The surprise they then manifested may possibly have been occasioned by 

 their not worshipping the hindoo deities. 



