Their dress is of the most simple description, a small strip of rag
between the legs and another wisp for a head-covering sufficing for
the men, though the women are decently covered from their shoulders
to half-way between the thighs and knees. A Baiga may be known by his
scanty clothing and tangled hair, and his wife by the way in which
her single garment is arranged so as to provide a safe sitting-place
in it for her child. Baiga women have been seen at work in the field
transplanting rice with babies comfortably seated in their cloth,
one sometimes supported on either hip with their arms and legs out,
while the mother was stooping low, hour after hour, handling the rice
plants. A girl is tattooed on the forehead at the age of five, and over
her whole body before she is married, both for the sake of ornament and
because the practice is considered beneficial to the health. The Baigas
are usually without blankets or warm clothing, and in the cold season
they sleep round a wood fire kept burning or smouldering all night,
stray sparks from which may alight on their tough skins without being
felt. Mr. Lampard relates that on one occasion a number of Baiga men
were supplied by the Mission under his charge with large new cloths
to cover their bodies with and make them presentable on appearance in
church. On the second Sunday, however, they came with their cloths
burnt full of small holes; and they explained that the damage had
been done at night while they were sleeping round the fire.
A Baiga, Mr. Lampard continues, is speedily discerned in a forest
village bazar, and is the most interesting object in it. His almost
nude figure, wild, tangled hair innocent of such inventions as brush
or comb, lithe wiry limbs and jungly and uncivilised appearance,
mark him out at once. He generally brings a few mats or baskets which
he has made, or fruits, roots, honey, horns of animals, or other
jungle products which he has collected, for sale, and with the sum
obtained (a few pice or annas at the most) he proceeds to make his
weekly purchases, changing his pice into cowrie shells, of which he
receives eighty for each one. He buys tobacco, salt, chillies and
other sundries, besides as much of kodon, kutki, or perhaps rice, as
he can afford, always leaving a trifle to be expended at the liquor
shop before departing for home. The various purchases are tied up in
the corners of the bit of rag twisted round his head. Unlike pieces
of cloth known to civilisation, which usually have four corners,
the Baiga's headgear appears to be nothing but corners, and when the
shopping is done the strip of rag may have a dozen minute bundles
tied up in it.
In Baihar of Balaghat buying and selling are conducted on perhaps
the most minute scale known, and if a Baiga has one or two pice [97]
to lay out he will spend no inconsiderable time over it. Grain is
sold in small measures holding about four ounces called _baraiyas_,
but each of these has a layer of mud at the bottom of varying degrees
of thickness, so as to reduce its capacity. Before a purchase can be
made it must be settled by whose _baraiya_ the grain is to be measured,
and the seller and purchaser each refuse the other's as being unfair
to himself, until at length after discussion some neutral person's
_baraiya_ is selected as a compromise. Their food consists largely
of forest fruits and roots with a scanty allowance of rice or the
light millets, and they can go without nourishment for periods which
appear extraordinary to civilised man. They eat the flesh of almost
all animals, though the more civilised abjure beef and monkeys. They
will take food from a Gond but not from a Brahman. The Baiga dearly
loves the common country liquor made from the mahua flower, and this is
consumed as largely as funds will permit of at weddings, funerals and
other social gatherings, and also if obtainable at other times. They
have a tribal _panchayat_ or committee which imposes penalties for
social offences, one punishment being the abstention from meat for a
fixed period. A girl going wrong with a man of the caste is punished
by a fine, but cases of unchastity among unmarried Baiga girls are
rare. Among their pastimes dancing is one of the chief, and in their
favourite dance, known as _karma_, the men and women form long lines
opposite to each other with the musicians between them. One of the
instruments, a drum called _mandar_, gives out a deep bass note which
can be heard for miles. The two lines advance and retire, everybody
singing at the same time, and when the dancers get fully into the
time and swing, the pace increases, the drums beat furiously, the
voices of the singers rise higher and higher, and by the light of the
bonfires which are kept burning the whole scene is wild in the extreme.