Children are named on the sixth day after birth, special names being
given to avert ill-luck, while they sometimes go through the ceremony
of selling a baby for five cowries in order to disarm the jealousy
of the godlings who are hostile to children. They will not call any
person by name when they think an owl is within hearing, as they
believe that the owl will go on repeating the name and that this
will cause the death of the person bearing it. The caste generally
revere Dulha Deo, the bridegroom god, whose altar stands near the
cooking place, and the goddess Devi. Once in three years they offer
a white goat to Bura Deo, the great god of the Gonds. They worship
the sickle, the implement of their trade, at Dasahra, and offer
cocoanuts and liquor to Ghasi Sadhak, a godling who lives by the peg
to which horses are tied in the stable. He is supposed to protect
the horse from all kinds of diseases. At Dasahra they also worship
the horse. Their principal festival is called Karma and falls on the
eleventh day of the second half of Bhadon (August). On this day they
bring a branch of a tree from the forest and worship it with betel,
areca-nut and other offerings. All through the day and night the men
and women drink and dance together. They both burn and bury the dead,
throwing the ashes into water. For the first three days after a death
they set out rice and pulse and water in a leaf cup for the departed
spirit. They believe that the ghosts of the dead haunt the living,
and to cure a person possessed in this manner they beat him with
shoes and then bury an effigy of the ghost outside the village.