s younger brother.

4. Religion

As the priests of the Gonds, the Pardhans are employed to conduct the
ceremonial worship of their great god Bura Deo, which takes place on
the third day of the bright fortnight of Baisakh (April). Many goats
or pigs are then offered to him with liquor, cocoanuts, betel-leaves,
flowers, lemons and rice. Bura Deo is always enshrined under a
tree outside the village, either of the mahua or _saj_ (_Terminalia
tomentosa_) varieties. In Chhattisgarh the Gonds say that the origin
of Bura Deo was from a child born of an illicit union between a Gond
and a Rawat woman. The father murdered the child by strangling it,
and its spirit then began to haunt and annoy the man and all his
relations, and gradually extended its attentions to all the Gonds
of the surrounding country. It finally consented to be appeased by
a promise of adoration from the whole tribe, and since then has been
installed as the principal deity of the Gonds. The story is interesting
as showing how completely devoid of any supernatural majesty or power
is the Gond conception of their principal deity.

5. Social Customs

Like the Gonds, the Pardhans will eat almost any kind of food,
including beef, pork and the flesh of rats and mice, but they will
not eat the leavings of others. They will take food from the hands of
Gonds, but the Gonds do not return the compliment. Among the Hindus
generally the Pardhans are much despised, and their touch conveys
impurity while that of a Gond does not. Every Pardhan has tattooed
on his left arm near the inside of the elbow a dotted figure which
represents his totem or the animal, plant or other natural object
after which his sept is named. Many of them have a better type of
countenance than the Gonds, which is perhaps due to an infusion of
Hindu blood. They are also generally more intelligent and cunning. They
have criminal propensities, and the Patharias of Chhattisgarh are
especially noted for cattle-lifting and thieving. Writing forty years
ago Captain Thomson [401] described the Pardhans of Seoni as bearing
the very worst of characters, many of them being regular cattle-lifters
and gang robbers. In some parts of Seoni they had become the terror
of the village proprietors, whose houses and granaries they fired
if they were in any way reported on or molested. Since that time
the Pardhans have become quite peaceable, but they still have a bad
reputation for petty thieving.