THE PEOPLE.
Gadabas, who are the more civilized sections living on or near the plains. Each of these subdivisions is again split into totemistic septs, but some of the low-country Gadabas have abandoned these.
Gadaba men dress like other hill, people, but the women of the tribe have perhaps the most extraordinary garb of any in this Presidency. Round their waists they tie a fringed, narrow cloth, woven by themselves on the most primitive loom imaginable, of which the warp is the hand-spun fibre of different jungle shrubs and the woof is cotton, dyed at home with indigo and Morinda citrifolia, and arranged in stripes of red, blue and white; either over or under this they wear a bustle made of some forty strands of stout black cord woven from other shrubs and tied together at the ends; round the upper part of their bodies is another cloth, similar to but smaller than the waist-cloth; on their right forearms, from wrist to elbow, are a number of brass bracelets; over their foreheads is fixed a chaplet of cowrie shells, the white seeds of the kúsa grass, or the red and black berries of the Abrus precatorius; and in their ears are enormous coils of thick brass wire (one specimen was eight inches across and contained twenty strands) which hang down on their shoulders and in extreme cases prevent them from turning their heads except slowly and with care. The above are the essentials of the costume; the details differ in different places. The bustle is accounted for by the following tradition: A goddess visited a Gadaba villager incognita and asked leave of one of the women to rest on a cot. She was brusquely told that the proper seat for beggars was the floor; and she consequently decreed that thence-forth all Gadaba women should wear a bustle to remind them to avoid churlishness.
Marriage usually occurs after puberty and, as among the Khonds and Savaras, a man generally weds a girl from outside his family. The usual preliminary presents of toddy etc. are sent to the bride's people by the parents of the suitor, and eventually, if there is no just impediment, the latter and his relatives go to the girl's house with more presents and bring her to their village. The wedding is celebrated in a pandal there and is followed by the usual drinking and dancing. If the girl's parents dislike the match she often elopes with the youth, who eventually is punished for his transgression by having to provide a caste dinner. Gadaba children, like those of other primitive tribes here, are usually named after the day of the week on which they were born. Stone slabs are erected to the memory of the dead and sacrifices offered to them now and again.
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