Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7Thurston, Edgar
History
Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7
Thurston, Edgar
Caste -- India, South; Ethnology -- India, South; India, South -- Social life and customs; Tribes -- India, South
It has been noted that "the character of the Khonds varies as much as
their language. Where there has been much contact with the plains,
it is not as favourable as elsewhere. As a rule, they may be taken
to be a bold, and fitfully laborious mountain peasantry of simple,
but not undignified manners; upright in their conduct; sincere in
their superstitions; proud of their position as landholders; and
tenacious of their rights. The Linepada Khonds affect manners like
Uriyas, and, among other things, will not eat pork (the flesh of
wild pigs excepted). The Khond villages have quite the appearance of
Uriya villages, the houses are built with mud walls, a thing unknown
with Khonds in other parts of the Maliahs; and there is also much
neat garden cultivation, which is rare elsewhere, probably because
the produce thereof would be appropriated by the Uriyas. In 1902,
the Linepada Muttah (settlement) presented the unusual spectacle of
a Khond ruler as Dolabehara, as well as Moliko, with the Uriya Paiks
really at his beck and call. In some places, the most valuable portions
of the land have passed into the possession of Sondis and low-country
sowcars (money-lenders), who have pandered to the Khonds by advancing
them money, the greater portion of which has been expended in drink,
the repayment being exacted in land. Except in the Goomsur Maliahs,
paddy (rice) cultivation is not extensively carried on by the Khonds;
elsewhere it is chiefly in the hands of the Uriyas. The Khonds take
little trouble in raising their crops. The result is that, except
in the Goomsur Maliahs, where they grow crops to sell in the market
for profit, we find a poverty-stricken race, possessing hardly any
agricultural stock, and no signs of affluence. In Kimedi, however, they
are beginning to follow the example of Goomsur, and doubtless their
material prosperity would much increase if some check could be devised
to save them from the Uriyas and Sondis, who are steadily acquiring
all the wet land, and utilising the Khonds merely as cultivators."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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