his allegiance to the Egyptian Caliph and made himself the head of his own sect with the title of Shaikh-ul-Jabal or Lord. He was known to the Crusaders as the 'Old Man of the Mountain.' His third successor Hasan (A.D. 1163) declared himself to be the unrevealed Imām and preached that no action of a believer in him could be a sin. It is through this Hasan that His Highness the Aga Khan traces his descent from Ali. Subsequently emissaries of the sect came to India, and one Pir Sadr-ud-din converted the Lohānas. According to one account this man was a Hindu slave of Imam Hasan. Sadr-ud-din preached that his master Hasan was the Nishkalanki or tenth incarnation of Vishnu. The Adam of the Semitic story of the creation was identified with the Hindu deity Vishnu, the Prophet Muhammad with Siva, and the first five Imāms of Ismailia with the five Pandava brothers. By this means the new faith was made more acceptable to the Lohānas. In 1845 Aga Shāh Hasan Ali, the Ismailia unrevealed Imām, came and settled in India, and his successor is His Highness the Aga Khan.

The Khojāhs retain some Hindu customs. Boys have their ears bored and a lock of hair is left on a child's head to be shaved and offered at some shrine. Circumcision and the wearing of a beard are optional. They do not have mosques, but meet to pray at a lodge called the Jama'at Khāna. They repeat the names of their Pirs or saints on a rosary made of 101 beads of clay from Karbala, the scene of the death of Hasan and Husain. At their marriages, deaths and on every new-moon day, contributions are levied which are sent to His Highness the Aga Khan. "A remarkable feature at a Khojah's death," Mr. Farīdi states, "is the samarchhanta or Holy Drop. The Jama'at officer asks the dying Khojāh whether he wishes for the Holy Drop, and if the latter agrees he must bequeath Rs. 5 to Rs. 500 to the Jama'at. The officer dilutes a cake of Karbala clay in water and moistens the lips of the dying man with it, sprinkling the remainder over his face, neck and chest. The touch of the Holy Drop is believed to save the departing soul from the temptation of the Arch-Fiend, and to remove the death-agony as completely as among the Sunnis does

the recital at a death-bed of the chapter of the Korān known as the Surah-i-Ya-sīn. If the dead man is old and greyhaired the hair after death is dyed with henna.

A garland of cakes of Karbala clay is tied round the neck of the corpse. If the body is to be buried locally two small circular patches of silk cloth cut from the covering of Husain's tomb, called chashmah or spectacles, are laid over the eyes. Those Khojāhs who can afford it have their bodies placed in airtight coffins and transported to the field of Karbala in Persia to be buried there. The bodies are taken by steamer to Baghdad, and thence by camel to Karbala.

"The Khojāhs are keen and enterprising traders, and are great travellers by land and sea, visiting and settling in distant countries for purposes of trade. They have business connections with Ceylon, Burma, Singapore, China and Japan, and with ports of the Persian Gulf, Arabia and East Africa. Khojah boys go as apprentices in foreign Khojāh firms on salaries of Rs. 200 to Rs. 2000 a year with board and lodging."

I. Tradi

the tribe.

KHOND1

[The principal authorities on the Khonds are Sir H. Risley's Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Major-General Campbell's Wild Tribes of Khondistan, and Major MacPherson's Report on the Khonds of the Districts of Ganjām and Cuttack (Reprint, Madras Scottish United Press, 1863). When the inquiries leading up to these volumes were undertaken, the Central Provinces contained a large body of the tribe, but the bulk of these have passed to Bihār and Orissa with the transfer of the Kalahandi and Patna States and the Sambalpur District. Nevertheless, as information of interest had been collected, it has been thought desirable to reproduce it, and Sir James Frazer's description of the human sacrifices formerly in vogue has been added. Much of the original information contained in this article was furnished by Mr., Panda Baijnath, Extra Assistant Commissioner, when Diwan of Patna State. Papers were also contributed by Rai Sahib Dinbandhu Patnaik, Dīwān of Sonpur, Mr. Miān Bhai, Extra Assistant Commissioner, Sambalpur, and Mr. Chāru Chandra Ghose, Deputy Inspector of Schools, Kālāhandi.]

Khond, Kandh.1-A Dravidian tribe found in the Uriyations of speaking tract of the Sambalpur District and the adjoining Feudatory States of Patna and Kālāhandi, which up to 1905 were included in the Central Provinces, but now belong to Bihar and Orissa. The Province formerly contained 168,000 Khonds, but the number has been reduced to about 10,000, residing mainly in the Khariar zamīndāri to the south-east of the Raipur District and the Sarangarh State. The tract inhabited by the Khonds was known generally as the Kondhān. The tribe call themselves Kuiloka, or 1 Kandh is the Uriya spelling, and Kond or Khond that of the Telugus,

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TRIBAL DIVISIONS

465

Kuienju, which may possibly be derived from ko or kū, a Telugu word for a mountain.1 Their own traditions as to their origin are of little historical value, but they were almost certainly at one time the rulers of the country in which they now reside. It was the custom until recently

for the Rāja of Kālāhandi to sit on the lap of a Khond on his accession while he received the oaths of fealty. The man who held the Rāja was the eldest member of a particular family, residing in the village of Gugsai Patna, and had the title of Patnaji. The coronation of a new Rāja took place in this village, to which all the chiefs repaired. The Patnaji would be seated on a large rock, richly dressed, with a cloth over his knees on which the Rāja sat. The Diwan or minister then tied the turban of state on the Rāja's head, while all the other chiefs present held the ends of the cloth. The ceremony fell into abeyance when Raghu Kesari Deo was made Rāja on the deposition of his predecessor for misconduct, as the Patnaji refused to install a second Rāja, while one previously consecrated by him was still living. The Rāja was also accustomed to marry a Khond girl as one of his wives, though latterly he did not allow her to live in the palace. These customs have lately been abandoned; they may probably be interpreted as a recognition that the Rajas of Kalahandi derived their rights from the Khonds. Many of the zamindāri estates of Kālāhandi and Sonpur are still held by members of the tribe.

It 2. Tribal divisions.

There is no strict endogamy within the Khond tribe. has two main divisions: the Kutia Khonds who are hillmen and retain their primitive tribal customs, and the plaindwelling Khonds who have acquired a tincture of Hinduism. The Kutia or hill Khonds are said to be so called because they break the skulls of animals when they kill them for food; the word kutia meaning one who breaks or smashes. The plain-dwelling Khonds have a number of subdivisions which are supposed to be endogamous, though the rule is not strictly observed. Among these the Rāj Khonds are the highest, and are usually landed proprietors. A man, however, is not considered to be a Rāj Khond unless he 1 Linguistic Survey of India.

VOL. III

2 II

3. Exogamous

septs.

possesses some land, and if a Rāj Khond takes a bride from another group he descends to it. A similar rule applies among some of the other groups, a man being relegated to his wife's division when he marries into one which is lower than his own. The Dal Khonds may probably have been soldiers, the word dal meaning an army. They are also known as Adi Kandh or the superior Khonds, and as Bālūsudia or 'Shaven.' At present they usually hold the honourable position of village priest, and have to a certain extent adopted Hindu usages, refusing to eat fowls or buffaloes, and offering the leaves of the tulsi (basil) to their deities. The Kandhanas are so called because they grow turmeric, which is considered rather a low thing to do, and the Pākhia because they eat the flesh of the por or buffalo. The Gauria are graziers, and the Nāgla or naked ones apparently take their name from their paucity of clothing. The Utar or Satbhuiyān are a degraded group, probably of illegitimate descent; for the other Khonds will take daughters from them, but will not give their daughters to them.

Traditionally the Khonds have thirty-two exogamous septs, but the number has now increased. All the members of one sept live in the same locality about some central village. Thus the Tupa sept are collected round the village of Teplagarh in the Patna State, the Loa sept round Sindhekala, the Borga sept round Bangomunda, and so on. The names of the septs are derived either from the names of villages or from titles or nicknames. Each sept is further divided into a number of subsepts whose names are of a totemistic nature, being derived from animals, plants or natural objects. Instances of these are Bachhas calf, Chhatra umbrella, Hikoka horse, Kelka the kingfisher, Konjaka the monkey, Mandinga an earthen pot, and so on. It is a very curious fact that while the names of the septs appear to belong to the Khond language, those of the subsepts are all Uriya words, and this affords some ground for the supposition that they are more recent than the septs, an opinion to which Sir H. Risley inclines. On the other hand, the fact that the subsepts have totemistic names appears difficult of explanation under this hypothesis.