THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 219

frequently leads to their being covered with the scars of
burns, and adopting a grimy complexion of cinders.
Beads and brass ornaments represent their wealth, but
there is little of it, and they are usually sunk in the depths
of extremest poverty. Their faith is simple demonology
and witchcraft ; the one great goddess that all of them
recognise is Matadevi, the goddess of smallpox, whose
influence is acknowledged as much for good as for ill,
with a simplicity of reverence which says much for the
hardness of life amongst them, and the insecurity of its
tenure. Many a little swing with a few grains of rice
as offerings is set up by the road-side to propitiate Matadevi.
 All these people erect monuments to their dead—
monoliths where stone is abundant and slabs of gneiss are
handy, and wood where stone is not available. The
wooden posts are often curiously carved, and it is usual
to find a rough imitation of a peacock as the headpiece,
often clothed with decorative strips of cloth so as to represent
 the original bird more completely. At the foot
of the post there is generally a slab of stone, which is
ised both for sacrificial purposes and as an altar for
offerings made to the spirit of the departed. Their festivals,
 their customs, and their wild fantastic dances which
form part of the recurrent rites of burial, would fill an
interesting chapter ; but we must leave the Gonds, and
turn to a yet more ancient, more perfectly aboriginal
people, who occupy another of the untraversed districts
of Central India, and who represent those tree and serpentworshipping
 races whom the Aryans found in possession
 of the plains of Hindustan when thev first arrived
from Central Asia.
The Bhils occupy a portion of the Mahratta state of
Indore, and a section of Rajputana and Khandeish.
Where the Narbada runs its straight course through a
network of hills thrown out by the Vindhya and Satpura
ranges to the point where, bursting through these enclosing
 mountains, it spreads itself out into a wide stream
in the plains of Bombay—there is the home of the Bhil.
ror the shrines and temples that Brahmanism has erected