A man’s sister marries into the family from which comes his wife, and that sister’s daughter may marry his son, and, as male heirs do not inherit, the son-in-law succeeds his father-in-law in right of his wife, and gets his wife’s mother (that is, his father’s sister) as an additional wife.[22] The advances are always made by the girl.  She and her party select the groom, go to his house, and carry him off, though he modestly pretends to run away.  The sacrifice for the wedding is that of a cock and hen, offered to the sun.  The god they worship most is a monster (very much like Civa), but he has no local habitation.

Of the Sav[=a]ras or Sauras of the Dekhan the most interesting deity is the malevolent female called Th[=a]kur[=a]n[=i], wife of Th[=a]kur.  She was doubtless the first patroness of the throttling Thugs (thags are [t.]haks, assassins), and the prototype of their Hindu K[=a]l[=i].  Human sacrifices are offered to Th[=a]kur[=a]n[=i], while her votaries, as in the case of the Thugs, are noted for the secrecy of their crimes.

Birth-rites, marriage-rites, funeral rites (all of blood), human sacrifice, tab[=u] (especially among the Burmese), witchcraft, worship of ancestors, divination, and demonology are almost universal throughout the wild tribes.  In most of the rites the holy stone[23] plays an important part, and in many of the tribes dances are a religious exercise.

Descendants of the great Serpent-race that once ruled M[=a]gadha (Beh[=a]r), the Bh[=a]rs, and Ch[=i]rus (Cheeroos) are historically of the greatest importance, though now but minor tribes of Bengal.  The Bh[=a]rs, and Koles, and Ch[=i]rus may once have formed one body, and, at any rate, like the last, the Bh[=a]rs are Kolarian and not Dravidian.  This is not the place to argue a thesis which might well be supported at length, but in view of the sudden admixture of foreign elements with the Brahmanism that begins to expand at the end of the Vedic period it is almost imperative to raise the question whether the Bh[=a]rs, of all the northern wild tribes the most cultivated, whose habitat extended from Oude (Gorakhpur) on both sides of the Ganges over all the district between Benares and Allah[=a]b[=a]d, and whose name is found in the form Bh[=a]rats as well as Bh[=a]rs, is not one with that great tribe the history of whose war has been handed down to us in a distorted form under the name of Bh[=a]rata (Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata).  The Bh[=a]ratas, indeed, claim to be Aryans.  But is it likely that a race would have come from the Northeast and another from the Northwest, and both have the same name?  Carnegy believed, so striking was the coincidence, that the Bh[=a]rats were a R[=a]jput (Hindu) tribe that had become barbaric.  But against this speaks the type, which is not Aryan but Kolarian.[24] Some influence one may suppose to have come from the more intelligent tribes, and to have worked on Hindu belief.  We believe traces of it may still be found in the classics.