As the priests of the Gonds, the Pardhans are employed to conduct the
ceremonial worship of their great god Bura Deo, which takes place on
the third day of the bright fortnight of Baisakh (April). Many goats
or pigs are then offered to him with liquor, cocoanuts, betel-leaves,
flowers, lemons and rice. Bura Deo is always enshrined under a
tree outside the village, either of the mahua or _saj_ (_Terminalia
tomentosa_) varieties. In Chhattisgarh the Gonds say that the origin
of Bura Deo was from a child born of an illicit union between a Gond
and a Rawat woman. The father murdered the child by strangling it,
and its spirit then began to haunt and annoy the man and all his
relations, and gradually extended its attentions to all the Gonds
of the surrounding country. It finally consented to be appeased by
a promise of adoration from the whole tribe, and since then has been
installed as the principal deity of the Gonds. The story is interesting
as showing how completely devoid of any supernatural majesty or power
is the Gond conception of their principal deity.