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Bradley Birt in his interesting book on Chota Nagpur has given a photograph of certain Ho memorial stones, which would appear to resemble greatly the Khasi menhirs, and if his photograph is carefully examined, it will be seen that there are in rear of the stones what would seem to be stone cairns, very similar in appearance to the Khasi cineraria.
The fact that the Ho-Mundas of Chota Nagpur also erect memorial stones and that they possess death customs very similar to those of the Khasis, has also been noticed in the same chapter.
Gandhi dominated last Christmas at Nagpur the 20,000 delegates from all parts of India who persisted in calling themselves the Indian National Congress, though between them and the original Congress founders few links have survived, and the chief business of the session was to repudiate the old Congress profession of loyalty to the British connection as the fundamental article of its creed, and to eliminate the reference hitherto retained, with the consent even of the Extremists, to India's participation on equal terms with the other members of the Empire in all its rights and responsibilities.
S. E. Peal, F.R.G.S., in an interesting and suggestive paper published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1896, drew attention to certain illustrations of "singular shoulder-headed celts," found only in the Malay Peninsula till the year 1875, when they were also discovered in Chota Nagpur, and figured in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for June of that year.
The Oraons or Uraons of Chota Nagpur worship a goddess called Anna Kuari, who can give good crops and make a man rich, but to induce her to do so it is necessary to offer human sacrifices. In spite of the vigilance of the British Government these sacrifices are said to be still secretly perpetrated. The victims are poor waifs and strays whose disappearance attracts no notice.
Peal goes on to state the interesting fact that when he was at Ledo and Tikak, Naga villages, east of Makum, on the south-east frontier of the Lakhimpur district of Assam, in 1895, he found iron implements, miniature hoes, used by the Nagas, of a similar shape to the "shoulder-headed celts" which had been found in the Malay Peninsula and Chota Nagpur.
The Peshwá, at Poona, still maintained a show of independent authority over the other great Maráthá chieftains, Sindhia, Holkar, and the Rájá of Nágpur or Berár. But the real military power of the Maráthás rested with these leaders, and their predatory troops of horsemen terrorised all Central India.
The male mango-hawker is a Deccan Hindu or Musulman gardener who purchases a stock of showy inferior fruit from the wholesale dealers. After the mango season is over he becomes a vendor of Poona figs or Nagpur oranges.
The Rájá of Nágpur was also compelled to cede a large portion of his dominions, and at the same time the Company acquired the overlordship of Rájputána.
The jungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur may have no name for the being to whom, at the appointed season and in the appointed place, he sacrifices fowls; but, as we have seen, the gods only come to have proper, personal names in slow course of time.
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