148 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDLV. 



frequently leads to tlie acceptance of such phrases as 

 purely aboriginah The greatest diflQculty, however, is 

 their vagueness of conception, and their want of abstract 

 ideas. Thus, for instance, in all the recorded vocabu- 

 laries it will be found that the term for " sky " is 

 nothino- but the Hindi name for "clouds," or "sun," 

 or "moon," or some specific object in the sky, not 

 for the sky generally, for which they do not seem 

 to possess a name. It is only in the remotest wilds 

 that either Gonds or Korkiis are now found who do 

 not know sufficient Hindi to carry on a simple conver- 

 sation, although they generally employ their own 

 tongue in talking among themselves. The tribes 

 bordering on the plains, who visit some bazaar town 

 once a week for purposes of exchange, and who arer 

 constantly in contact with the people of the plains, 

 have in many cases lost all knowledge of their own 

 language, and speak the Hindi of the plains. There 

 is nothing that is worth preserving in these rudimentary 

 indigenous tongues ; and their inevitable absorption in 

 the more copious lingua franca of the plains is not 

 at all to be regretted. 



In religion the Gond tribes have passed through 

 all the earlier stages of belief, and are now entering 

 on that of idolatry pure and simple — the last in which 

 relie^ion is still altos^ether dissevered from ideas of 

 morality. As has been generally observed, however, 

 the objects of worship of each new stage of development 

 here form additions to those formerly reverenced, rather 

 than supplant them. 



The foundation of their creed appears to be a 

 vague pantheism, in which all nature is looked upon 

 as pervaded by spiritual powers, the most prominent 



