The principal deities of the caste are Maroti or Hanuman, Mahadeo or
Siva, Devi, Satwai and Khandoba. Maroti is worshipped principally on
Saturdays, so that he may counteract the evil influences exercised by
the planet Saturn on that day. When a new village is founded Maroti
must first be brought and placed in the village and worshipped, and
after this houses are built. The name Maroti is derived from Marut,
the Vedic god of the wind, and he is considered to be the son of
Vayu, the wind, and Anjini. Khandoba is an incarnation of Siva as a
warrior, and is the favourite deity of the Marathas. Devi is usually
venerated in her Incarnation of Marhai Mata, the goddess of smallpox
and cholera--the most dreaded scourges of the Hindu villager. They
offer goats and fowls to Marhai Devi, cutting the throat of the
animal and letting its blood drop over the stone, which represents
the goddess; after this they cut off a leg and hang it to the tree
above her shrine, and eat the remainder. Sometimes also they offer
wooden images of human beings, which are buried before the shrine
of the goddess and are obviously substitutes for a human sacrifice;
and the lower castes offer pigs. If a man dies of snake-bite they
make a little silver image of a snake, and then kill a real snake,
and make a platform outside the village and place the image on it,
which is afterwards regularly worshipped as Nagoba Deo. They may
perhaps think that the spirit of the snake which is killed passes
into the silver image. Somebody afterwards steals the image, but
this does not matter. Similarly if a man is killed by a tiger he
is deified and worshipped as Baghoba Deo, though they cannot kill a
tiger as a preliminary. The Kunbis make images of their ancestors in
silver or brass, and keep them in a basket with their other household
deities. But when these get too numerous they take them on a pilgrimage
to some sacred river and deposit them in it. A man who has lost
both parents will invite some man and woman on Akshaya Tritiya,
[35] and call them by the names of his parents, and give them a
feast. Among the mythological stories known to the caste is one of
some interest, explaining how the dark spots came on the face of the
moon. They say that once all the gods were going to a dinner-party,
each riding on his favourite animal or _vahan_ (conveyance). But
the _vahan_ of Ganpati, the fat god with the head of an elephant,
was a rat, and the rat naturally could not go as fast as the other
animals, and as it was very far from being up to Ganpati's weight,
it tripped and fell, and Ganpati came off. The moon was looking on,
and laughed so much that Ganpati was enraged, and cursed it, saying,
'Thy face shall be black for laughing at me.' Accordingly the moon
turned quite black; but the other gods interfered, and said that the
curse was too hard, so Ganpati agreed that only a part of the moon's
face should be blackened in revenge for the insult. This happened
on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadon (September),
and on that day it is said that nobody should look at the moon, as
if he does, his reputation will probably be lowered by some false
charge or libel being promulgated against him. As already stated,
the Kunbi firmly believes in the influence exercised by spirits, and
a proverb has it, 'Brahmans die of indigestion, Sunars from bile, and
Kunbis from ghosts'; because the Brahman is always feasted as an act of
charity and given the best food, so that he over-eats himself, while
the Sunar gets bilious from sitting all day before a furnace. When
somebody falls ill his family get a Brahman's cast-off sacred thread,
and folding it to hold a little lamp, will wave this to and fro. If
it moves in a straight line they say that the patient is possessed
by a spirit, but if in a circle that his illness is due to natural
causes. In the former case they promise an offering to the spirit
to induce it to depart from the patient. The Brahmans, it is said,
try to prevent the Kunbis from getting hold of their sacred threads,
because they think that by waving the lamp in them, all the virtue
which they have obtained by their repetitions of the Gayatri or sacred
prayer is transferred to the sick Kunbi. They therefore tear up their
cast-off threads or sew them into clothes.