The punishments inflicted by the panchayat consist of feasts, and in
the case of minor offences of a fine. This last, subject perhaps to
some commission to the members for their services, is always spent on
liquor, the drinking of which by the offender with the caste-fellows
will purify him. The Gonds consider country liquor as equivalent to
the Hindu Amrita or nectar.
The penalty for a serious offence involves three feasts. The first,
known as the meal of impurity, consists of sweet wheaten cakes which
are eaten by the elders on the bank of a stream or well. The second or
main feast is given in the offender's courtyard to all the castemen of
the village and sometimes of other villages. Rice, pulse, and meat,
either of a slaughtered pig or goat, are provided at this. The third
feast is known as 'The taking back into caste' and is held in the
offender's house and may be cooked by him. Wheat, rice and pulses
are served, but not meat or vegetables. When the panchayat have
eaten this food in the offender's house he is again a proper member
of the caste. Liquor is essential at each feast. The nature of the
penalty feasts is thus very clear. They have the effect of a gradual
purification of the offender. In the first meal he can take no part,
nor is it served in his house, but in some neutral place. For the
second meal the castemen go so far as to sit in his compound, but
apparently he does not cook the food nor partake of it. At the third
meal they eat with him in his house and he is fully purified. These
three meals are prescribed only for serious offences, and for ordinary
ones only two meals, the offender partaking of the second. The three
meals are usually exacted from a woman taken in adultery with an
outsider. In this case the woman's head is shaved at the first meal
by the Sharmia, that is her son-in-law, and the children put her to
shame by throwing lumps of cowdung at her. She runs away and bathes
in a stream. At the second meal, taken in her courtyard, the Sharmia
sprinkles some blood on the ground and on the lintel of the door as
an offering to the gods and in order that the house may be pure for
the future. If a man is poor and cannot afford the expense of the
penalty feasts imposed on him, the panchayat will agree that only a
few persons will attend instead of the whole community. The procedure
above described is probably borrowed to a large extent from Hinduism,
but the working of a panchayat can be observed better among the Gonds
and lower castes than among high-caste Hindus, who are tending to
let it lapse into abeyance.