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12.

Tobacco.

into little balls and put into the pipe. Opium-smokers are
gregarious and partake of the drug together. As the fumes
mount to their brains, their intellects become enlivened, their
tongues unloosed and the conversation ranges over all
subjects in heaven and earth. This factitious excitement
must no doubt be a powerful attraction to people whose lives
are as dull as that of the average Hindu. And thus they
become madakis or confirmed opium-smokers and are of no
more use in life. Dhimars or fishermen consume opium
and gānja largely under the impression that these drugs
prevent them from taking cold. Ganja is smoked and is
usually mixed with tobacco. It is much less injurious than
opium in the same form, except when taken in large quantities,
and is also slower in acquiring a complete hold over its
votaries. Many cultivators buy a little gānja at the weekly
bazār and have one pipeful each as a treat. Sweepers are
greatly addicted to gānja, and their patron saint Lālbeg was
frequently in a comatose condition from over-indulgence in
the drug.
Ahirs or herdsmen also smoke it to while away
the long days in the forests. But the habitual consumers
of either kind of drug are now only a small fraction of
the population, while English education and the more
strenuous conditions of modern life have effected a substantial
decline in their numbers, at least among the higher classes.
At the same time a progressive increase is being effected
by Government in the retail price of the drugs, and the
number of vend licences has been very greatly reduced.

The prohibition of wine to Muhammadans is held to include drugs, but it is not known how far the rule is strictly observed. But addiction to drugs is at any rate uncommon among Muhammadans,

No kind of sanctity attaches to tobacco and, as has been seen, certain classes of Brahmans are forbidden to smoke though they may chew the leaves. Tobacco is prohibited by the Sikhs, the Satnāmis and some other Vaishnava sects. The explanation of this attitude is simple if, as is supposed, tobacco was first introduced into India by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. In this case as a new and foreign product it could have no sacred character, only those things

1 Sir G. Watt's Commercial Products of India, s.v. Nicotiana.

II

CUSTOMS IN CONNECTION WITH DRINKING

321

being held sacred and the gifts of the gods whose origin is lost in antiquity. In a note on the subject1 Mr. Ganpat Rai shows that several references to smoking and also to the huqqa are found in ancient Sanskrit literature; but it does not seem clear that the plant smoked was tobacco and, on the other hand, the similarity of the vernacular to the English name2 is strong evidence in favour of its foreign origin.

toms in

drinking.

The country liquor, consisting of spirits distilled from 13. Custhe flowers of the mahua tree, is an indispensable adjunct to connection marriage and other ceremonial feasts among the lower castes with of Hindus and the non-Aryan tribes. It is usually drunk before the meal out of brass vessels, cocoanut-shells or leafcups, water being afterwards taken with the food itself. If an offender has to give a penalty feast for readmission to caste but the whole burden of the expense is beyond his means, other persons who may have committed minor offences and owe something to the caste on that account are called upon to provide the liquor. Similarly at the funeral feast the heir and chief mourner may provide the food and more distant relatives the liquor. The Gonds never take food while drinking, and as a rule one man does not drink alone. Three or four of them go to the liquor-shop together and each in turn buys a whole bottle of liquor which they share with each other, each bottle being paid for by one of the company and not jointly. And if a friend from another village turns up and is invited to drink he is not allowed to pay anything. In towns there will be in the vicinity of the liquor-shop retailers of little roasted balls of meat on sticks and cakes of gram-flour fried in salt and chillies. These the customers eat, presumably to stimulate their thirst or as a palliative to the effects of the spirit. Illicit distillation is still habitual among the Gonds of Mandla, who have been accustomed to make their own liquor from time immemorial. In the rains, when travelling is difficult and the excise officers cannot descend on them without notice, they make the liquor in their houses. In the open season they go to

1 Ind. Ant., January 1911, p. 39. 2 Tobacco is no doubt a derivative from some American word, and Platts derives the Hindi tanbāku or tambāku from tobacco. The fact that tanbāku

VOL. III

is also Persian for tobacco militates
against the Sanskrit derivation sug-
gested by Mr. Ganpat Rai and others,
and tends to demonstrate its American
importation.

Y

the forest and find some spot secluded behind rocks and also near water. When the fermented mahua is ready they put up the distilling vat in the middle of the day so that the smoke may be less perceptible, and one of them will climb a tree and keep watch for the approach of the Excise SubInspector and his myrmidons while the other distils.

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traditions.

Kamār.-A small Dravidian tribe exclusively found in 1. Origin the Raipur District and adjoining States. They numbered and about 7000 persons in 1911, and live principally in the Khariar and Bindrānawāgarh zamīndāris of Raipur. In Bengal and Chota Nagpur the term Kamār is merely occupational, implying a worker in iron, and similarly Kammala in the Telugu country is a designation given to the five artisan castes. Though the name is probably the same the Kamārs of the Central Provinces are a purely aboriginal tribe and there is little doubt that they are an offshoot of the Gonds, nor have they any traditions of ever having been metal-workers. They claim to be autochthonous like most of the primitive tribes. They tell a long story of their former ascendancy, saying that a Kamar was the original ruler of Bindrānawāgarh. But a number of Kamārs one day killed the bhimraj bird which had been tamed and taught hawking by a foreigner from Delhi. He demanded satisfaction, and when it was refused went to

1 This article is based on papers drawn up by Mr. Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner, Pyare Lal Misra, Ethnographic Clerk, and a very full account of the tribe by Mr.

Ganpati Giri, Manager of Bindrāna-
wagarh, which has furnished the
greater part of the article, especially
the paragraphs on birth, religion and
social customs.

2. Subdivisions

and

Delhi and brought man-eating soldiers from there, who ate up all the Kamārs except one pregnant woman. She took refuge in a Brahman's hut in Patna and there had a son, whom she exposed on a dung-heap for fear of scandal, as she was a widow at the time. Hence the boy was called Kachra-Dhurwa or rubbish and dust. This name may be a token of the belief of the Kamārs that they were born from the earth as insects generate in dung and decaying organisms. Similarly one great subtribe of the Gonds are called Dhur or dust Gonds. Kachra-Dhurwa was endowed with divine strength and severed the head of a goat made of iron with a stick of bamboo. On growing up he collected his fellow-tribesmen and slaughtered all the cannibal soldiers, regaining his ancestral seat in Bindrānawāgarh. It is noticeable that the Kamārs call the cannibal soldiers Aghori, the name of a sect of ascetics who eat human flesh. They still point to various heaps of lime-encrusted fossils in Bindrānawagarh as the bones of the cannibal soldiers. The state of the Kamārs is so primitive that it does not seem possible that they could ever have been workers in iron, but they may perhaps, like the Agarias, be a group of the Gonds who formerly quarried iron and thus obtained their distinctive name.

They have two subdivisions, the Bundhrajia and Mākadia. The latter are so called because they eat monkeys and are marriage. looked down on by the others. They have only a few gots or septs, all of which have the same names as those of Gond septs. The meaning of the names has now been forgotten. Their ceremonies also resemble those of the Gonds, and there can be little doubt that they are an offshoot of that tribe. Marriage within the sept is prohibited, but is permitted between the children of brothers and sisters or of two sisters. Those who are well-to-do marry their children at about ten years old, but among the bulk of the caste adult-marriage is in fashion, and the youths and maidens are sometimes allowed to make their own choice. At the betrothal the boy and girl are made to stand together so that the caste panchayat or elders may see the suitability of the match, and a little wine is sprinkled in the name of the gods. The marriage ceremony is a simple one, the

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