Taonla.—A small non-Aryan caste of the Uriya States. They reside principally in Bāmra and Sonpur, and numbered about 2000 persons in 1901, but since the transfer of these States to Bengal are not found in the Central Provinces. The name is said to be derived from Tālmūl, a village in the Angul District of Orissa, and they came to Bāmra and Sonpur during the Orissa famine of 1866. The Taonlas appear to be a low occupational caste of mixed origin, but derived principally from the Khond tribe. Formerly their profession was military service, and it is probable that like the Khandaits and Pāiks they formed the levies of some of the Uriya Rājas, and gradually became a caste. They have three subdivisions, of which the first consists of the Taonlas whose ancestors were soldiers. These consider themselves superior to the others, and their family names as Nāik (leader), Padhān (chief), Khandait (swordsman), and Behra (master of the kitchen) indicate their ancestral profession. The other subcastes are called Dāngua and Khond; the Dānguas, who are hill-dwellers, are more primitive than the military Taonlas, and the Khonds are apparently members of that tribe of comparatively pure descent who marry among themselves and not with other Taonlas. In Orissa Dr. Hunter says that the Taonlas are allied to the Savaras, and that they will admit a member of any caste, from whose hands they can take water, into the community. This is also the case in Bāmra. The candidate has simply to worship Kālapāt, the god of the Taonlas, and after drinking some water in which basil leaves have been dipped, to touch the food prepared for a caste feast, and his initiation is complete. As usual among the mixed castes, female morality is very lax, and a Taonla woman may have a liaison with a man of her own or any other caste from whom a Taonla can take water without incurring any penalty whatsoever. A man committing a similar offence must give a feast to the caste. In Sonpur the Taonlas admit a close connection with Chasas, and say that some of their families are descended from the union of Chasa men and Taonla women. They will eat the leavings of Chasas. The custom may be accounted for by the fact that the Taonlas are now generally farmservants and field-labourers, and the Chasas, as cultivators, would be their employers. A similar close connection is observable among other castes standing in the same position towards each other as the Panwārs and Gonds and the Rājbhars and Lodhis.

The Taonlas have no exogamous divisions as they all belong to the same gotra, that of the Nāg or cobra. Their marriages are therefore regulated by relationship in the ordinary manner. If two families find that they have no common ancestor up to the third generation they consider it lawful to intermarry. The marriage ritual is of the usual Uriya form. After the marriage the bride and the bridegroom have a ceremony of throwing a mahua branch into a river together. Divorce and widow remarriage are permitted. When a woman is divorced she returns her bangles to her husband, and receives from him a chhor-chitthi or letter severing connection. Then she goes before the caste panchāyat and pronounces her husband’s name aloud. This shows that she is no longer his wife, since so long as she continued to be so, she would never mention his name.

The tutelary deity of the caste is Kālapāt, who resides at Tālmūl in Angul District. They offer him a goat at the festival of Nawākhai when the new rice is first eaten. On this day they also worship a cattle-goad as the symbol of their vocation. They revere the cobra, and will not wear wooden sandals because they think that the marks on a cobra’s head are in the form of a sandal. They believe in re-birth, and when a child is born they proceed to ascertain what ancestor has become reincarnate by dropping rice grains coloured with turmeric into a pot of water. As each one is dropped they repeat the name of an ancestor, and when the first grain floats conclude that the one named has been born again. The dead are both buried and burnt. At the head of a grave they plant a bough of the jāmun tree (Eugenia jambolana) so that the departed spirit may dwell under this cool and shady tree in the other world or in his next birth. They have also a ceremony for bringing back the soul. An earthen pot is placed upside down on four legs outside the village, and on the eleventh day after a death they proceed to the place, ringing a bell suspended to an iron rod. A cloth is spread before the spot on which the spirit of the deceased is supposed to be sitting, and they wait till an insect alights on it. This is taken to be the soul of the dead person, and it is carefully wrapped up in the cloth and carried to the house. There the cloth is unfolded and the insect allowed to go, while they proceed to inspect some rice-flour which has been spread on the ground under another pot in the house. If any mark is found on the surface of the flour they think that the dead man’s spirit has returned to the house. The carrying back of the insect is thus an act calculated to assist their belief, by the simple performance of which they are able to suppose more easily that the invisible spirit has returned to the house. As already stated, the Taonlas are now generally farmservants and labourers, and their social position is low, though they rank above the impure castes and the forest tribes.