quid. Bhagavati, as soon as
she had drunk, became aware of the fact, and in her anger condemned
the offender to the vile and servile occupation of making spirituous
liquors for mankind." Like other castes in Sambalpur the Sundis have
two subcastes, the Jharua and the Utkal or Uriya, of whom the Jharuas
probably immigrated from Orissa at an earlier period and adopted some
of the customs of the indigenous tribes; for this reason they are
looked down on by the more orthodox Utkalis. The caste say that they
belong to the Nagas or snake gotra, because they consider themselves
to be descended from Basuki, the serpent with a thousand heads who
formed a canopy for Vishnu. They also have _bargas_ or family titles,
but these at present exercise no influence on marriage. The Sundis
have in fact outgrown the system of exogamy and regulate their
marriages by a table of prohibited degrees in the ordinary manner,
the unions of _sapindas_ or persons who observe mourning together at
a death being prohibited. The prohibition does not extend to cognatic
relationship, but a man must not marry into the family of his paternal
aunt. The fact that the old _bargas_ or exogamous groups are still in
existence is interesting, and an intermediate step in the process of
their abandonment may be recognised in the fact that some of them are
subdivided. Thus the Sahu (lord) group has split into the Gaj Sahu
(lord of the elephant), Dhavila Sahu (white lord), and Amila Sahu
sub-groups, and it need not be doubted that this was a convenient
method adopted for splitting up the Sahu group when it became so large
as to include persons so distantly connected with each other that the
prohibition of marriage between them was obviously ridiculous. As
the number of Sundis in the Central Provinces is now insignificant
no detailed description of their customs need be given, but one or
two interesting points may be noted. Their method of observing the
_pitripaksh_ or worship of ancestors is as follows: A human figure
is made of _kusha_ grass and placed under a miniature straw hut. A
lamp is kept burning before it for ten days, and every day a twig for
cleaning the teeth is placed before it, and it is supplied with fried
rice in the morning and rice, pulse and vegetables in the evening. On
the tenth day the priest comes, and after bathing the figure seven
times, places boiled rice before it for the last meal, and then sets
fire to the hut and burns it, while repeating