ewassis_; the latter form being the Bodo _Deoshi_.
As the names are alike, so are the functions. The _Dewassi_ is an
oracular seer. When he vouchsafes to give answers, his inspiration takes
the form of frenzy--but he neither hurts nor speaks to any one. He makes
signs for a cock, and for a hen's egg as well. The cock's head he
wrenches off, and sucks the bleeding neck. The egg he eats. After this
he seeks the solitude of the wood or stream; and is fed by the deity.
Sometimes he has ridden a snake; sometimes put his hands in the mouth of
a tiger with impunity. Trees too large to move, or too thorny to touch,
he places on the roofs of houses. He sees Bedo Gosaik in visions; and,
in the sacrifices therein enjoined, red paint, rice, and pigeons make a
part. From the touch of women he abstains; so he does from the taste of
flesh. Either would make his prophecies false.

There are also certain sacrifices that the _Maungy_ (chief?) of each
village makes, and in which threads of red silk play a part.

One of their gods--an elemental one--is the god of rain, and the dangers
of a drought are averted by praying to him. A ceremony called the
_Satane_ determines the chief who takes the office of invoker.

A black stone, called _Ruxy_, is much of the same sort of fetish with
these mountaineers as the Sij with the Bodo. The name, too, Ruxy _Nad_,
suggests the Nat worship of the Silong, Kariens, and others.

The northern half of the Tamulian families are, like the Welsh, the
Cornish, and the Bretons of France, members of the same ethnological
group, but not in geographical contact with each other. Or, rather, they
are, like the Celtic population of Wales and the Scottish Highlands,
cut off from one another by a vast tract of intervening Anglo-Saxons.
Yet the time was when all was Celtic, from Cape Wrath to the Land's End;
and when the original population extended, in its full integrity, over
York and Nottingham, as well as over Merioneth and Argyleshire. And so
it is with the populations in question. They stand apart from each
other, like islands in an ocean; the intervening spaces being filled up
by Hindus. At the same time the isolation has been much overvalued, and,
I imagine that when greater attention shall have been bestowed upon this
important subject, connecting links which have hitherto been unnoticed
will be detected.

The next locality where we find a population akin to the Rajmahali
mountaineers, is the mountain system