140 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



the dialects of Hindi frequently leads to the acceptance of 

 such phrases as purely aboriginal. The greatest difficulty, 

 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 nothing 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 re- 

 motest wilds that either Gonds or Korku s are now found who 

 do not know sufficient Hindi to carry on a simple conversa- 

 tion, 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 are 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 religion is still 

 altogether 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 for- 

 merly reverenced, rather than supplant them. 



The foundation of their creed appears to be a vague pan- 

 theism, in which all nature is looked upon as pervaded by 

 spiritual powers, the most prominent and powerful of which 

 are personified and propitiated by simple offerings. Every 

 prominent mountain top is the residence of the Spirit of the 



