w remarriage are permitted. When a woman is divorced she returns
her bangles to her husband, and receives from him a _chhor-chitthi_ or
letter severing connection. Then she goes before the caste _panchayat_
and pronounces her husband's name aloud. This shows that she is no
longer his wife, since so long as she continued to be so, she would
never mention his name.

The tutelary deity of the caste is Kalapat, who resides at Talmul in
Angul District. They offer him a goat at the festival of Nawakhai
when the new rice is first eaten. On this day they also worship a
cattle-goad as the symbol of their vocation. They revere the cobra,
and will not wear wooden sandals because they think that the marks on
a cobra's head are in the form of a sandal. They believe in re-birth,
and when a child is born they proceed to ascertain what ancestor has
become reincarnate by dropping rice grains coloured with turmeric
into a pot of water. As each one is dropped they repeat the name of
an ancestor, and when the first grain floats conclude that the one
named has been born again. The dead are both buried and burnt. At
the head of a grave they plant a bough of the _jamun_ tree (_Eugenia
jambolana_) so that the departed spirit may dwell under this cool
and shady tree in the other world or in his next birth. They have
also a ceremony for bringing back the soul. An earthen pot is placed
upside down on four legs outside the village, and on the eleventh day
after a death they proceed to the place, ringing a bell suspended to
an iron rod. A cloth is spread before the spot on which the spirit
of the deceased is supposed to be sitting, and they wait till an
insect alights on it. This is taken to be the soul of the dead
person, and it is carefully wrapped up in the cloth and carried to
the house. There the cloth is unfolded and the insect allowed to go,
while they proceed to inspect some rice-flour which has been spread
on the ground under another pot in the house. If any mark is found
on the surface of the flour they think that the dead man's spirit
has returned to the house. The carrying back of the insect is thus
an act calculated to assist their belief, by the simple performance
of which they are able to suppose more easily that the invisible
spirit has returned to the house. As already stated, the Taonlas are
now generally farmservants and labourers, and their social position
is low, though they rank above the impure castes and the forest tribes.