Excessive drinking is the common vice of the Gonds and the principal
cause which militates against their successfully competing with the
Hindus. They drink the country spirit distilled from the flowers of the
mahua tree, and in the south of the Province toddy or the fermented
juice of the date-palm. As already seen, in Bastar their idea of
hell is a place without liquor. The loss of the greater part of the
estates formerly held by Gond proprietors has been due to this vice,
which many Hindu liquor-sellers have naturally fostered to their own
advantage. No festival or wedding passes without a drunken bout,
and in Chanda at the season for tapping the date-palm trees the
whole population of a village may be seen lying about in the open
dead drunk. They impute a certain sanctity to the mahua tree, and
in some places walk round a post of it at their weddings. Liquor is
indispensable at all ceremonial feasts, and a purifying quality is
attributed to it, so that it is drunk at the cemetery or bathing-ghat
after a funeral. The family arranges for liquor, but mourners
attending from other families also bring a bottle each with them,
if possible. Practically all the events of a Gond's life, the birth
of a child, betrothals and weddings, recovery from sickness, the
arrival of a guest, bringing home the harvest, borrowing money or
hiring bullocks, and making contracts for cultivation, are celebrated
by drinking. And when a Gond has once begun to drink, if he has the
money he usually goes on till he is drunk, and this is why the habit is
such a curse to him. He is of a social disposition and does not like
to drink alone. If he has drunk something, and has no more money, and
the contractor refuses to let him have any more on credit as the law
prescribes, the Gond will sometimes curse him and swear never to drink
in his shop again. Nevertheless, within a few days he will be back,
and when chaffed about it will answer simply that he could not resist
the longing. In spite of all the harm it does him, it must be admitted
that it is the drink which gives most of the colour and brightness to
a Gond's life, and without this it would usually be tame to a degree.
When a Gond drinks water from a stream or tank, he bends down and
puts his mouth to the surface and does not make a cup with his hands
like a Hindu.