Note 162 — K (continued 5)

In a note on the tribes of the Agency tracts of the Vizagapatam district, Mr. W. Francis writes as follows.162 “Of these, by far the most numerous are the Khonds, who are about 150,000 strong. An overwhelming majority of this number, however, are not the wild barbarous Khonds regarding whom there is such a considerable literature, and who are so prominent in Ganjam, but a series of communities descended from them, which exhibit infinite degrees of difference from their more interesting progenitors, according to the grade of civilisation to which they have attained. The only really primitive Khonds in Vizagapatam are the Dongria (jungle) Khonds of the north of Bissamkatak tāluk, the Dēsya Khonds who live just south-west of them in and around the Nimgiris, and the Kuttiya (hill) Khonds of the hills in the north-east of the Gunupur tāluk. The Kuttiya Khond men wear ample necklets of white beads and prominent brass earrings, but otherwise they dress like any other hill people. Their women, however, have a distinctive garb, putting on a kind of turban on state occasions, wearing nothing above the waist except masses of white bead necklaces which almost cover their breasts, and carrying a series of heavy brass bracelets half way up their forearms. The dhangadi basa system (separate hut for unmarried girls to sleep in) prevails among them in its simplest form, and girls have opportunities for the most intimate acquaintance before they need inform their parents they wish to marry. Special ceremonies are practiced to prevent the spirits of the dead (especially of those killed by tigers) from returning to molest the living. Except totemistic septs, they have apparently no sub-divisions.163 The dress of the civilised Khonds of both sexes is ordinary and uninteresting. These civilised Khonds worship all degrees of deities, from their own tribal Jākara down to the orthodox Hindu gods; follow every gradation of marriage and funeral customs from those of their primitive forefathers to those of the low-country Telugu; speak dialects which range from good Khond through bastard patois down to corrupt Telugu; and allow their totemistic septs to be degraded down to, or divided into, the intipērulu of the plains.”