VERNACULAR NAMES. 



species have names given to tnem in one village but not in 

 another, and generally speaking when plants have a large 

 number of different and dissimilar names none of these are of 

 much value, and the writer has usually rejected those names 

 which have not been repeated in several villages. A large 

 number of the more educated Kols and Santals are no more 

 conversant with the correct names of their trees than is the 

 ordinary Englishman with those of the trees of his native 

 land, and they are the very ones to most readily supply names 

 from their imagination. Descriptive and compound names, 

 especially those formed with sandi (male), enga (female), 

 huring (small), marang (large) and bir (forest, hence wild) 

 as parts, are usually to be regarded with suspicion. The 

 word daru (tree) is almost invariably added after the name 

 of a tree by the Kols, but this has been omitted in the Flora, 

 The forest Kols are well versed in the edible properties of 

 plants, but their medicine is usually very crude. Among 

 them, as among other primitive tribes, ttie Law of Signatures 

 is firmly believed in :. a plant with milky juice is good for pro- 

 moting the secretion of milk, the little plant Biophytum with 

 sensitive leaves is valuable as a soporific. The Bhumij in the 

 extreme east of Singbhum and in Manbhum speak a dialect 

 of Bengali, but in other parts mostly Mundari. One of the 

 wildest tribes in Singbhum are the Birhors (meaning M forest 

 people "). They are a wandering, and now a very small, tribe 

 whose encampments used to be occasionally met with in the 

 north of Singbhum, and about Biru in Rauchi district, but 

 they are also reported from Hazaribagh, They live by 

 snaring monkeys and by collecting the fibre of the Bauhinia 

 Vahlii. The monkey skins form the ends of the large deep- 

 toned drum (dumung) of the Kols, the body of which is made 

 of earth or of jack, while the smaller drum (dulki) is usually 

 of Gmelina. The monkeys snared, which are the small brown 

 Macacus, called gari in Birhor, and gai : in Ho ; (the Huna- 

 man, SemnopithecuB, called Sara in Kol, I have never seen 

 snared) also form their chief article of food, and the Birhor 

 himself has acquired a very strong monkey odour. As far at 



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