In the Feudatory States and some of the zamindaris the Gonds retain
the dahia or bewar method of shifting cultivation, which has been
prohibited everywhere else on account of its destructive effects on
the forests. The Maria Gonds of Bastar cut down a patch of jungle on
a hillside about February, and on its drying up burn all the wood in
April or May. Tying strips of the bark of the saj tree to their feet
to prevent them from being burnt, they walk over the smouldering area,
and with long bamboo sticks move any unburnt logs into a burning patch,
so that they may all be consumed. When the first showers of rain fall
they scatter seed of the small millets into the soft covering of wood
ashes, and the fertility of the soil is such that without further
trouble they get a return of a hundred-fold or more. The same patch
can be sown for three years in succession without ploughing, but it
then gives out, and the Gonds move themselves and their habitations
to a fresh one. When the jungle has been allowed to grow on the old
patch for ten or twelve years, there is sufficient material for a fresh
supply of wood-ash manure, and they burn it over again. Teak yields a
particularly fertilising ash, and when standing the tree is hurtful to
crops grown near it, as its large, broad leaves cause a heavy drip and
wash out the grain. Hence the Gonds were particularly hostile to this
tree, and it is probably to their destructive efforts that the poor
growth of teak over large areas of the Provincial forests is due. [94]
The Maria Gonds do not use the plough, and their only agricultural
implement is a kind of hoe or spade. Elsewhere the Gonds are gradually
adopting the Hindu methods of cultivation, but their land is generally
in hilly and jungly tracts and of poor quality. They occupy large
areas of the wretched barra or gravel soil which has disintegrated
from the rock of the hillsides, and covers it in a thin sheet mixed
with quantities of large stones. The Gonds, however, like this land,
as it is so shallow as to entail very little trouble in ploughing, and
it is suitable for their favourite crops of the small millets, kodon
and kutki, and the poorer oilseeds. After three years of cropping it
must be given an equal or longer period of fallow before it will again
yield any return. The Gonds say it is narang or exhausted. In the new
ryotwari villages formed within the last twenty years the Gonds form
a large section, and in Mandla the great majority, of the tenantry,
and have good black-soil fields which grow wheat and other valuable
crops. Here, perhaps, their condition is happier than anywhere else,
as they are secured in the possession of their lands subject to the
payment of revenue, liberally assisted with Government loans at low
interest, and protected as far as possible from the petty extortion
and peculation of Hindu subordinate officials and moneylenders. The
opening of a substantial number of primary schools to serve these
villages will, it may be hoped, have the effect of making the Gond a
more intelligent and provident cultivator, and counteract the excessive
addiction to liquor which is the great drawback to his prosperity. The
fondness of the Gond for his bari or garden plot adjoining his hut
has been described in the section on villages and houses.