The priests of the Korkus are of two kinds--Parihars and Bhumkas. The
Parihar may be any man who is visited with the divine afflatus
or selected as a mouthpiece by the deity; that is to say, a man
of hysterical disposition or one subject to epileptic fits. He
is more a prophet than a priest, and is consulted only on special
occasions. Parihars are also rare, but every village has its Bhumka,
who performs the regular sacrifices to the village gods and the
special ones entailed by disease or other calamities. On him devolves
the dangerous duty of keeping tigers out of the boundaries. When
a tiger visits the village the Bhumka repairs to Bagh Deo [602]
and makes an offering to the god, promising to repeat it for so
many years on condition that the tiger does not appear for that
time. The tiger on his part never fails to fulfil the contract thus
silently made, for he is pre-eminently an honourable upright beast,
not faithless and treacherous like the leopard whom no contract can
bind. Some Bhumkas, however, masters of the most powerful spells,
are not obliged to rely on the traditional honour of the tiger, but
compel his attendance before Bagh Deo; and such a Bhumka has been
seen as a very Daniel among tigers muttering his incantations over
two or three at a time as they crouched before him. Of one Bhumka in
Kalibhit it is related that he had a fine large saj tree, into which,
when he uttered his spells, he would drive a nail, and on this the
tiger came and ratified the compact with his enormous paw, with which
he deeply scored the bark. In this way some have lost their lives,
victims of misplaced confidence in their own powers. [603] If a man is
sick and it is desired to ascertain what god or spirit of an ancestor
has sent the malady, a handful of grain is waved over the sick man and
then carried to the Bhumka. He makes a heap of it on the floor, and,
sitting over it, swings a lighted lamp suspended by four strings from
his fingers. He then repeats slowly the name of the village deities and
the sick man's ancestors, pausing between each, and the name at which
the lamp stops swinging is that of the offended one. He then inquires
in a similar manner whether the propitiation shall be a pig, a chicken,
a goat, a cocoanut and so on. The office of Bhumka is usually, but not
necessarily, hereditary, and a new one is frequently chosen by lot,
this being also done when a new village is founded. All the villagers
then sit in a line before the shrine of Mutua Deo, to whom a black and
a white chicken are offered. The Parihar, or, if none be available,
the oldest man present, then sets a pai [604] rolling before the
line of men, and the person before whom it stops is marked out by
this intervention of the deity as the new Bhumka. When a new village
is to be founded a pai measure is filled with grain to a level with
the brim, but with no head (this being known as a mundi or bald pai),
and is placed before Mutua Deo in the evening and watched all night. In
the morning the grain is poured out and again replaced in the measure;
if it now fills this and also leaves enough for a head, and still more
if it brims and runs over, it is a sign that the village will be very
prosperous and that every cultivator's granaries will run over in the
same way. But it is an evil omen if the grain does not fill up to the
level of the rim of the measure. The explanation of the difference
in bulk may be that the grains increase or decrease slightly in size
according as the atmosphere is moist or dry, or perhaps the Bhumka
works the oracle. The Bhumka usually receives contributions in grain
from all the houses in the village; but occasionally each cultivator
gives him a day's ploughing, a day's weeding and a day's wood-cutting
free. The Bhumka is also employed in Hindu villages for the service
of the village gods. But the belief in the powers of these deities
is decaying, and with it the tribute paid to the Bhumka for securing
their favour. Whereas formerly he received substantial contributions
of grain on the same scale as a village menial, the cultivator will
now often put him off with a basketful or even a handful, and say,
'I cannot spare you any more, Bhumka; you must make all the gods
content with that.' In curing diseases the Parihar resorts to swindling
tricks. He will tell the sick man that a sacrifice is necessary, asking
for a goat if the patient can afford one. He will say it must be of a
particular colour, as all black, white or red, so that the sick man's
family may have much trouble in finding one, and they naturally think
the sacrifice is more efficacious in proportion to the difficulty
they experience in arranging for it. If they cannot afford a goat the
Parihar tells them to sacrifice a cock, and requires one whose feathers
curl backwards, as they occasionally do. If the family is very poor
any chicken which has come out of the shell, so long as it has a beak,
will do duty for a cock. If a man has a pain in his body the Parihar
will suck the place and produce small pieces of bone from his mouth,
stained with vermilion to imitate blood, and say that he has extracted
them from the patient's body. Perhaps the idea may be that the bones
have been caused to enter his body and make him ill by the practice
of magic. Formerly the Parihar had to prove his supernatural powers by
whipping himself on the back with a rope into which the ends of nails
were twisted, and to continue this ordeal for a period long enough
to satisfy the villagers that he could not have borne it without some
divine assistance. But this salutary custom has fallen into abeyance.