Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s6.3
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s6.3
- Language
- German
c48.s6.3.1
**§ 81.** (a) **Central Belt** (9,221,900). The tribes of this tract may be taken first, not only because they form the largest division, but also by reason of their more intimate racial connection with the masses of the plains. Each differs from the rest in some important respects with regard to organisation, customs and beliefs, but there are a few characteristics general throughout the whole. All but three or four of the larger tribes believe themselves to be autochthonous, if not to the tract they now inhabit, at least to one within a comparatively short distance. All the larger tribes, again, have traditions of dominion over a much larger tract than their present one, and in most cases the statement is supported by evidence such as that of ruins, names of places and castes and by identical forms and objects of worship. In every large tribe, again, there are sections which are far more Brāhmanised than the rest, usually with the tendency to separate under a different title, the latter being borrowed from an orthodox community of the plains. Most of the tribes are much subdivided into exogamous divisions, totemistic as a rule; endogamous sections following later, after contact with Brāhmanical castes. Where the tribe is free from such outside influences it employs priests belonging to its own or a neighbouring community, and in several cases the more important sacrifices are performable in the archaic fashion by the head of the family only.
c48.s6.3.2
The usual form of religion is that of the worship of nature or spirits, with the accompaniment of spells, witchcraft and exorcism generally. Among the more Brāhmanised tribes there is the outward acceptance of some manifestation or other of a member of the Purānic pantheon, but from the practical side of devotion and propitiation, the belief in the efficacy of the older system remains unshaken; and it is worth noting that the older the tribe in the locality the higher the reputation of the priests it furnishes. In regard to occupation, the greater part of this population lives by cultivation, a few tribes on the plateau of Cūtiā Nāgpur having attained to a fair degree of skill in their calling, and making use of the plough. The bulk, however, still pursue the primitive and wasteful system of clearing a patch of jungle, burning the vegetation thereof for manure, and raising two or three years’ harvest off it. They then leave it fallow for some years, moving off meanwhile to another patch. Where this is the practice, the village is migratory, within a certain range, or consists merely of detached hamlets; but in the more open country, cultivation being permanent, the village site is so too, and the huts or houses are built more solidly. In a few of the wilder tribes the whole village is apt to flit when untoward events have proved the locality or its deities to be unpropitious.
c48.s6.3.3
In all the large tribes there are sections which live almost entirely upon forest produce, and in some, where an autumn crop only is raised, the people rely during the hot weather entirely upon what the jungle contains. Some communities, again, make it their regular trade to collect lac, tussar-cocoons, berries and other produce for sale to agents from the towns, whilst others habitually work in cane or make tooth-sticks and brushes, smelt iron, or wash the river sands for its minute yield of gold. At the other end of the scale are found in several tribes landed proprietors of considerable wealth, who have long passed out of the tribal into the caste stage, and who, in the case of petty Chieftains, marry into respectable Rājput families — at a distance. Great advantage has been taken by others of the opportunities of earning good wages on the tea-gardens of Dārjiling, the Tarāi and Assam, where they bear an excellent character for industry and docility. The heart of the jungle, however, has hitherto proved almost impervious to the efforts made to improve the inhabitants by land grants or other means of inducement to them to work themselves into a higher material condition. On the outskirts it is different, and there, as before remarked, the tribal population is breaking away from its traditions, and becoming merged gradually into the conditions of the plains.