Note 139 — Introductory Essay on Caste (continued 2)

The dances of the Kol tribe consist partly of symbolical enactments of events which they desired to be successfully accomplished. Some variations of the dance, Colonel Dalton states, represent the different seasons and the necessary acts of cultivation that each brings with it. In one the dancers, bending down, make a motion with their hands, as though they were sowing the grain, keeping step with their feet all the time. Then comes the reaping of the crop and the binding of the sheaves, all done in perfect time and rhythm, and making, with the continuous droning of the voices, a quaint and picturesque performance.139 The Karma dance of the Gonds and Oraons is also connected with the crops, and probably was once an enactment of the work of cultivation.140 The Bhīls danced at their festivals and before battles. The men danced in a ring, holding sticks and striking them against one another. Before a battle they had a war-dance in which the performers were armed and imitated a combat. To be carried on the shoulders of one of the combatants was a great honour, perhaps because it symbolised being on horseback. The object was to obtain success in battle by going through an imitation of a successful battle beforehand. This was also the common custom of the Red Indians, whose war-dances are well known; they brandished their weapons and killed their foe in mimicry in order that they might soon do so in reality. The Sela dance of the Gonds and Baigas, in which they perform the figure of the grand chain of the lancers, only that they strike their sticks together instead of clasping hands as they pass, was probably once an imitation of a combat. It is still sometimes danced before their communal hunting and fishing parties. In these mimetic rehearsals of events with the object of causing them to occur we may perhaps discern the origin of the arts both of acting and dancing. Another, and perhaps later form, was the reproduction of important events, or those which had influenced history. For to the primitive mind, as already seen, the results were not conceived of as instrumentally caused by the event, but as part of the event itself and of its life and personality. Hence by the re-enactment of the event the beneficial results would be again obtained or at least preserved in undiminished potency and vigour. This was perhaps the root idea of the drama and the representation of sacred or heroic episodes on the stage.