THE PEOPLE.
The Pentiyas say their real name is Holuva or Halba and that they are called Pentiya because they emigrated from Bastar to Pentikonna near Sembliguda in Pottangi taluk. They speak Bastari mixed with Uriva. They are split into Bodo and Sanao divisions, like the Omanaitos, and have totemistic septs. The caste headman is called the Bhatto naik, is assisted in his duties by a pradháni (minister) and two others, and has a servant called the choláno who bears a silver wand of office when he summons pancháyats. This sort of pomp is unknown among the agency people proper. The pancháyats take themselves very seriously,also, and any one outcasted by them can only be readmitted after elaborate ceremonial which includes the branding of his tongue with silver wire. Marriages and funerals are of much the usual type.
Dhakkados (1,760 in number) are the illegitimate children of women of non-polluting castes by Uriya Bráhmans, who are legs particular than their castemen elsewhere about forming liaisonsoutside their own community. Dhakkados wear the sacred thread and take Bráhmanical names; but at weddings and funerals they observe the customs of their mother's caste and they adopt these people's occupation.
We now come to the tribes of the Agency who speak their own tribal dialects. Of these by far the most numerous are the Khonds, who are 150,000 strong. An overwhelming majority of this number, however, are not the wild barbarous Khonds regarding whom there is such a considerable literature1[1] and who are so prominent in Ganjám, but a series of communities descended from them which exhibit infinite degrees of difference from their more interesting progenitors according to the grade of civilisation to which they hare attained. The only really primitive Khonds in Vizagapatam are the Dongria ('jungle') Khonds of the north of Bissamkatak taluk, the Désya Khonds who live just south-west of them in and around the Nímgiris, and the Kuitiya ('hill') Khonds of the hills in the north-east of the Gunupur taluk. Time did not permit of any expedition to these out-of- the-way corners and any enquiry into the customs of the people there would have necessitated double interpretation from Khond
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- ↑ 1 E.g., Maopherson's Report on the Khonds of Ganjam and Cuttack (1841);Maj.Gen. Campbell's Service among the Wild Tribes of Khondistan (1864); Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal (1872;; Hunter's Orissa (1872); Risley'e Tribes and Castes of Bengal(1891);the papers in J.R.A.S.. vii, 172 (Macpherson), xiii, 216 (Macpherson) and xvii, 1 (Lieut. Frye); in M.J.L.S., vi, 17 and vii, 89; in Culcutta Review, viii, I and x, 278; and in J.A.S.B, xxv, 39 and xxiii, 39.
