OF BHARATAVAESA OE INDIA. 
131 
Contact with Hindus more highly civilised exercised 
a remarkably deteriorating influence on the Gond tribes, 
who soon began to lose their own virtues and sink to a 
lower social condition. Harsh treatment, coupled with spite- 
ful scorn, renders men callous and demoralises. Ignorant 
and uncivilised aborigines when they are under the influence 
of civilised and unscrupulous persons are especially subject 
to such degeneration. The Canddlas are an illustration of 
this assertion. 
They were probably the first Graudian tribe whom the 
Aryan invaders reduced to abject servitude, and who 
became thus the prototype of the lowest Indian helots, which 
condition they share with the Dravidian Pariahs. The 
word Canddla is evidently a modification of Kandala, a 
tribe mentioned by Ptolemy.*^ 
Manu stigmatises a Candala as the offspring of a Sudra 
man and a Brahman woman, which definition, fostering no 
the people, from the highest to the lowest, in miserable thraldom. The 
simple and unsophisticated Gond tribes are believed to be expert necro- 
mancers, ' and on the most intimate footing with evil spirits.' Considering 
their secluded position from civilized life, their gross ignorance, and the 
solitary jungles they live in, it is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that the 
people invariably impute their misfortunes to witchcraft." 
Compare also the article " Gonds and Kurkus," by Mr. W. Eamsay in 
the Indian Antiquary, vol. I, pp. 128, 129 : " The Gond admits none of the 
Hindu divinities into his pantheoa, and is moreover bound on occasions of 
death to slay a cow and pour its blood on the grave to ensure peace and rest 
for the manes of the departed. In my experience, Gonds almost always 
bury their dead. . . The Gond deities are numerous : hill tops deified are 
favorite objects of adoration." Mr. Ramsay treats on the same subject 
on pp. 348-50, and he observes : " It is worthy of remark that one of the 
ceremonies after a death consists in killing a cow and sprinkling its blood 
over the grave ; in default of this it is said that the spirit of the departed 
refuses to rest, and returns upon earth to haunt its relatives in life." Allu- 
sions to the Gonds are also contained in the Indian Antiquary, vol. Ill, 
p. 224 ; vol. VI, p. 233 ; vol. IX, p. 140, and vol. X. p. 321. 
Read also the remarks on the Khonds in Sir W. W. Hunter's Orissa, 
vol. II, pp. 67-102, 283-8, and the article " On the Uriya and Kondh 
Population of Urissa" by Lieut. J. P. Frye, in the Journal of the Royal 
Asiatic Society, \o\. XVII (IS60), pp. 1-38. 
" See Part I, p. 60. 
