THE PEOPLE
Tradition says that they were the first to cultivate land on the hills. They speak Uriya; have totems; follow éduru ménarikam; and resemble the Bottadas in their marriage and funeral customs.
The Sondis (18,000) are Uriya-speaking distillers, liquor sellers and usurers who are scattered all about the hills. By pandering to the hill man's taste for strong drink they have in many places got him and his property entirely in their hands, and they are the best-hated class in all the Agency. Their own traditions say that they are descended from a Bráhman. This man, a great magician, was ordered by the king to exhibit his powers by setting a tank on fire. A distiller promised to show him how to do so on condition of being given his daughter to wife, and then covered the surface of the tank with liquor,which of course burnt readily enough. His descendants by the Bráhman magician's daughter are the present Sondis.
Like the Bottadas, the Sondis are split into the three endogaraous divisions of Bodo, Madhya and Sanno, the first of which is again sub-divided into exogamous septs corresponding to the inti pérulu of the plains. The caste headman is called Bissóyi. Marriage occurs before puberty and, as among the upper Uriyas generally, a man marries outside his family if he can. The actual ceremony, as with all these Uriyas, lasts seven whole days, and is a wearisome round of rites of which the meaning has been lost. On each day the couple play with cowries, part of the game consisting in the bride trying with both her hands to capture the shells her husband holds in one of his. and in his trying to force from her, with one finger, the cowries she is holding in both hands clasped. A Bráhman presides and hómam is lit, a pusti is tied, and offerings are made to ancestors. The dead are burnt and pollution lasts ten days. On the tenth night the heir performs an odd ceremony. He gets a pot, makes holes in its sides, puts food and a light in it, and carries it to the burning-ground. There he puts it down, calls thrice to the dead, saying that food is ready and asking him to come, and then returns home.
The Koronos, who speak Uriya, have usually been classed with Karnam in the statistics, and under this head have also been included the Telugu-speaking Shristi Karnams, who are apparently an entirely different body, though following the same occupation of clerk, village accountant, etc. The Koronos are split into several divisions, two of which are Mahanti and Patnaik. They marry outside their family if they can, and have the usual seven-days wedding ceremony above referred to, at which a Bráhman officiates.
91
