Hahn’s Oraon Folk-Lore in the Original. A critical text with translations and notes

The presence in a village of two mahtos one in office the other honrary is generally the outcome of some old dispute of the kind in which an ancestor of the latter sued his landlord successfully. [...] Neither is she allowed in the place in which the furnace is : if there be only one room she has to stay in a corner behind a hastily erected partition or screen.—Where as in parts of the Barway and on the Lohardaga side the incoming of a baby defiles the entire household the inconveniences of prolonged uncleanness are felt less severely the newly delivered woman remaining at liberty to cook a [...] Of course the services of women are also required in conection with the transplantation of rice the weeding of fields the picking up of mahua flowers and generally the garnering of crops. [...] Such are the lady of the grove ' (edld-paccO al.o called iltakhrd pace5) it is to her that the Craons have to look for plentiful rains ; the dame of the fields ' (darhd-paccO): her wrath only too easy to rouse may yet imperil a harvest which had the blessing of the former deity ; the dame of the mountains ' (barn ild-paccO) the goddess of hunt ' (condi-deo). [...] Of these fiends the best known are the tribes of the rok is and raksi and the goddess of small-pox (debi mai).