BADAGA MEN.—BADAGA. WOMEN.
As the chorus dies away the bier is taken up amidst lamentation, and earned to the nearest stream, where a pyre has been laid, and it is then lighted while all retire. It is a strange and solemn rite that of the laying on the buffalo calf the sins of the dead, and re-acts the Jewish record of the scape-goat and public rehearsal of the sins of the people; and in this respect all the tribes would seem to be the same, though the Badaga dirge is peculiar to them. Mr. Gover writes "the Jews said, 'cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark;' the People answered, 'Amen.' Turn to the Badaga ritual: 'The landmark stone be moved;' the people cry, 'It is a sin.'" And he gives many parallel instances from Leviticus.
We would fain continue our quotations from Mr. Gover's translations of Badaga songs, and quote some passages from a poem called "The Next World," which is, like Dante's Inferno, a description of Hades. We can give only one quotation.
Oh, brother, who are these,
Most wretched of them all,
In naked shame they're bound
To rugged, gnarled trees;
They ever seem to talk,
But none are there to hear?
Oh! sister, you surely have heard who these are;
Abandoned and profligate women, who wandered astray
From virtue and home. They have nothing wherewith
To cover their shame. They are hungry and cold.
The sentiments in these curious legendary poems—the deep religious feeling and expression used—the pure simple morality they enjoin—lead us back to a simpler, nobler faith than the modern Hindoo, of which, indeed, the Badagas know little. They worship a dead Siva as a divinity, and pray to him; but the abominations of Sivaic worship are happily unknown to them, and already the German missionaries, who have mastered their language, have induced some, and we hope the number increases, to join the Christian belief.
The costume of the Badaga men resembles that of the Todas; it consists of one piece of strong thick cotton cloth wrapped about the person, but is more scanty in dimensions than that of the Todas. The women wear a similar garment, which is tied under the arms and across the chest by a cord, and covers the person like a petticoat to a little below the knees, forming a singularly ungraceful garment. The Badaga villages are large, containing many houses, forming generally a long street, with one or more venerable trees in the midst. The lands cultivated lie around the villages, and are in general well manured and tilled, producing crops of cereals, and sometimes of poppies, from which a coarse opium is extracted and considerably used.
