The brothers found this out and forthwith killed the lame bull. Gukchomdeya asked them for the skin. This they gave him. He dried the skin and set out with it on a journey. In the course of his wanderings he arrived at a spot which Beparis (tradesmen) use as a halting-place. He climbed up a tree and lay in wait until some Beparis came and unpacked their bullocks in order to take rest. Quite suddenly he dropped the skin which fell with a loul thud, and the Beparis fled panic-stricken. The boy then climbed down and collected all the goods which the Beparis had abandoned, loaded the bullocks with the goods and went home. He told his mother that he wanted to distribute amongst his brothers the sale-proceeds of the old bull's skin, and he asked her to borrow from them a paila (vessel used as a grain-measure) and a stick from them. He then gave away all the goods and all the bullocks, using the paila in measuring out the former and the stick in driving the bullocks to each of his brothers. His brothers, hoping to make a short cut to affluence, killed all their bullocks and took the skins to the market for sale. No one bought the skins. Many abused them for offering such trash. They returnd home sorely disappointed and firmly determined to kill Gukchomdeya. Seizing him, they sewed him up in a sack and flung him into a river. After it had floated down a long way the sack was seen and dragged out by a Goālā who was tending his herd on the river bank. The Goala opened the sack and found the boy alive. The Goala had a sword and a stick with him. The boy asked him for a loan of the sword, and having possessed himself of the weapon he turned round on the Goala and thus thundered forth :-"You have marred my happiness by dragging me out of the water. Woe to you." As he brandished the sword the Goala took to his heels and never turned back, regarding the boy as a river devil. Gukchomdeya took possession of the cattle and drove the herd home. As on the former so on this occasion he asked his mother to go and fetch his brothers so that he might distribute amongst them the cattle which represented the value of the sack which they had so generously given him. His brothers were overjoyed and they eagerly asked him to sew them up in sacks and to throw them into the river so that they might return home rich as he had done. Gukchomdeya put each of his brothers in a sack but before casting them into the river he took the precaution of belabouring them with sticks so that they were all killed. "Why are you beating us?" they inquired. "It is to ensure your good luck," he replied. Having thus got rid of his brothers he came home. His sisters-in-law (for all his brothers were married men and he alone was single) asked him about their respective husbands. He told them in reply that they had gone abroad to acquire wealth. As a long time passed by and they did not return each of the widows pressed Gukchomdeya to take her to wife. He was thus obliged to take all the six women. Needless to say that between these six women Gukchomdeya's earthly career was of brief duration. V.-Santal Marriage Customs. By the Hon'ble and Rev A. Campbell, D.D. The exclusiveness of the people of India is carried by them to the greatest extremes. Each caste among the Hindus, and each tribe among the aboriginal peoples will only, as a rule, eat or intermarry with persons of their own caste or tribe. In no other country of the world are the people so exclusive, and one wonders how it has come to be so. Was it introduced by the Aryans, or did they find it in existence among the people of India when they entered it? Did they bring it with them, or did they adopt it from the aborigines of India? They have assimilated much which is not Aryan, and why not this also? Exclusiveness of the type found in India does not exist among people who claim the same origin as the Brahmans. Non-Aryans seems to have exerted a greater influence over Aryans than Aryans over Non-Aryans. Hinduism has absorbed tribe after tribe of Non-Aryans, and with them also many of their religious ideas and customs, but many of the aboriginal peoples of India are up till the present day practically uninfluenced by Aryan religious ideas and customs. The Santāls, Munḍās and other cognate tribes who inhabit Chota Nagpur and one or two of the adjoining districts do not seem to have had much intercourse with the Aryan people of India, and among them the exclusiveness already referred to exists in all its rigour. Santāls, for instance, will only eat food cooked by one of themselves. In one of the earlier famines the British authorities were under the impression that Santals would eat food cooked by a Brahman, and it was only when it became known that they preferred death from starvation to contamination that special arrangements were made for them. With regard to marriage the same exclusiveness exists. No Santal may marry a woman of another tribe or caste, and the same law is also applied rigorously to women. A man may not marry a woman of his own sept. He may marry into his mother's sept, but not within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity. These rules are observed with all possible strictness, and no compromise is ever allowed. Children belong to their father's sept: In regular marriages parents conduct all negotiations and it very often happens that the young people meet each other for the first time on the marriage day. Members of a Santal family never speak of a bride as so-and-so's bride, but always as our bride. She has been bought with family funds and so she belongs to the family. It very often happens that a bride, although of full age, is not brought home permanently at first. Immediately after marriage she is taken to the house of her husband's family, and may stay there a few days, after which she is taken home and left there. The reason for this treatment generally being that it is not convenient for the husband's family to keep her as there is a sufficient number of people in the house to do the farm work. At any particularly busy season, such as rice planting or matkom gathering, she may be brought home, and when the press of work is over, taken back to her parents' house. It is not considered the right thing for a young wife to visit her parents unless some male relative goes to fetch her, and the custom generally is for her to remain at her father's house until some one of her husband's family comes to take her back. Infant marriage may be said to be non-existent among Santāls. Instances do occur now and again, but they are so very rare and are so entirely non-Santal that they may be entirely overlooked. Many marriages, however, take place in which the girl is within a year or two of adolescence. In such cases she remains in her father's house until she has reached, or is on the threshold of, puberty. There are several forms of legal marriage among Santals, but, as with a few exceptions, they appear to have originated in the desire to avert the worse of two evils, they are regarded as more or less irregular. The different forms of marriage are:1st The Kirin bahu. 2nd Tünki dipil bāplā. 3rd Hirom chetan bāplā. 4th Sanghā bāplā. 5th Ghardi jawãe. 6th Golat baplā. 7th Jawãe kirinok bāplā. 8th Nir bolok bāplā. 9th Itüt bāplā. 10th Apangir reak bāplā. 11th Kora kuri kūnḍel nāpāmkātē reāk bāplā. The first six are regular marriages and the others irregular, still these latter are valid unions. THE KIRIN BAHU. The first form mentioned, that of the Kirin bahu, or bought bride, is, of course, the most common and is regarded as the most honourable. The bride is bought for a price, but her relatives, as they say, retain the right to interfere if blood is shed. The money paid to the bride's father or other guardian is called pon and has a slightly different meaning from price. The money paid for the purchase of a tenant's right in land is known as pōn. The land is not bought outright, but only the right to cultivate it as a holding under the landlord to whom rent is paid. There are different rates of pōn varying from three rupees to sixteen and even more. Return presents bearing a certain proportion to the amount of pōn are also made by the bride's father. The lowest rate of pon, that of three rupees, is named the "Kulai mandal" or "the hare's hindquarters ", and no return presents are demanded from the father of a bride for whom this sum is paid. For a pōn of five rupees the bride's father gives in return one brass plate and cup and a cow with a calf. |