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Bowing forward and drawing up his right leg till the heel of the right foot was set some three inches above the inside of the left knee-cap, he met the blow standing on one leg exactly as Gonds stand when they meditate and ready for the fall that would follow.
In an excellent article on the evolution of ceremonial institutions Herbert Spencer mentions the Fuegians, Veddahs, Andamanese, Dyaks, Todas, Gonds, Santals, Bodos, and Dhimals, Mishmis, Kamchadales, and Snake Indians, as among people who form societies to practice simple mutilations in slight forms.
It is not long since the Gónds had arrived at a melancholy condition under the baleful influences of the kulars, or liquor-dealers, who resided among them and created an extraordinary demand for their intoxicating wares by paying for service and for produce in liquor.
Thus, in November the Gonds of India worship Ghansyam Deo, the protector of the crops, and at the festival the god himself is said to descend on the head of one of the worshippers, who is suddenly seized with a kind of fit and, after staggering about, rushes off into the jungle, where it is believed that, if left to himself, he would die mad.
Bowing forward and drawing up his right leg till the heel of the right foot was set some three inches above the inside of the left knee-cap, he met the blow standing on one leg exactly as Gonds stand when they meditate and ready for the fall that would follow.
These peasant farmers are well off nowadays, and not by any means overworked; but somehow you always see in them the historical representative of the serf of yore, and think not so much of present times, which may be prosperous enough, as of the old days when the peasant was taxed beyond possibility of payment, and lived, in Michelet's image, like a hare between two furrows. These very people now weeding their patch under the broad sunset, that very man and his wife, it seems to us, have suffered all the wrongs of France. It is they who have been their country's scape-goat for long ages; they who, generation after generation, have sowed and not reaped, reaped and another has garnered; and who have now entered into their reward, and enjoy their good things in their turn. For the days are gone by when the Seigneur ruled and profited. "Le Seigneur," says the old formula, "enferme ses manants comme sous porte et gonds, du ciel
Again, the identification of the victim with the corn comes out in the African custom of killing him with spades and hoes, and the Mexican custom of grinding him, like corn, between two stones. One more point in these savage customs deserves to be noted. The Pawnee chief devoured the heart of the Sioux girl, and the Marimos and Gonds ate the victim's flesh.
On the other side of the Atlantic the couvade has been noticed in West Africa, and "amongst the mountain tribes known as the Miau-tsze, who are supposed to be, like the Sontals and Gonds of India, remnants of a race driven into the mountains by the present dwellers of the plains."
The eight hundred thousand Gónds of the Góndwana are supposed to be members of the great autochthonal family of ancient India.
The people in these hills are called Gonds, a true hill tribe that is to say, aborigines, somewhat of the negro type. The chiefs are of mixed blood, but the people are almost black. They are supposed to accept the religion of the Hindus, but are in reality deplorably ignorant and superstitious.
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