154 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDL4. 



notwithstcandiDg the lacquer of Hinduism many of them 

 have received ; and such I may add is not very different 

 from that of the vast mass of the so-called Hindus of 

 the plains, who look on Vishnu and Siva as little nearer 

 to them than do these savages, and pay their real de- 

 votion to the village gods, to the gods of the threshing- 

 floor, and to their lares and joenates — all unrecognised 

 by the orthodox priest. In both cases their religious 

 belief is wholly unconnected with any idea of morality. 

 A moral deity, demanding morality from his creatures, 

 is a religious conception far beyond the present capacity 

 cither of the aborigine or the ordinary Hindii. 



The idea of a Great Spirit, above and beyond all 

 personal gods, and whom they call Bhagwan, is, how- 

 ever, accepted by all Hindus, and has been borrowed 

 from them by the Gonds. He is the great First Cause 

 of all things, but himself endowed v.dth neither form nor 

 moral qualities. He is unrepresented, and receives no 

 adoration. A Hindii will accurately describe all the 

 gods of his pantheon ; but of Bhagwan he has no idea, 

 except that he is the great Creator. He is, in fact, that 

 " Unknown God " w^hom humanity has never yet learned 

 to approach save through the medium of some human or 

 anthroj)omorphous substitute. 



I have not yet touched on the religion of the Korkiis. 

 It is, I think, purer than that of the Gonds. The 

 powers of nature are equally adored, such as the Tiger 

 God, the Bison God, the Hill God, the Deities of Small- 

 pox and Cholera. But these are all secondary to the 

 Sun and the Moon, which, among this branch of the 

 Kolarian stock as among the Kols in the far East, are 

 the principal objects of adoration. I have seen nothing 

 resembling Fetishism among them ; and if, as some con- 



