150 THE HiaHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



and imprisonment by the ofEended Hindii deity; the 

 appearance by miraculous birth and life among them of 

 a Hindu saint named Lingo/ whom they ungratefully 

 put to death, but who rises again, and, after much penance 

 and suffering, delivers them from bondage, introduces 

 Hindu observances, the arts of agriculture, and the worship 

 of tribal gods, and eventually disappears and goes to the 

 gods. The programme thus bears a singular resemblance 

 in many respects to the legend of Hiawatha, the prophet 

 of the Red Indians ; and to some an even more startling 

 parallelism may suggest itself. 



My own opinion is that its origin is comparatively 

 recent, subsequent to the propagation among the Gonds 

 of Hindu ideas and rules. It seems to possess little 

 value as bearing on their origin, assigning to them a 

 northern descent, which is contradicted by the sttong 

 southern afl&nities of their language, and which is obviously 

 only introduced as part of the Hindii machinery which 

 pervades the piece. As a composition it has little merit, 

 though here and there exhibiting something of beauty, 

 and more often a good deal of quiet humour. The style 

 of the original is very discursive, constantly losing sight 

 of the narrative, often apparently leading to nothing, and 

 full of repetition — defects which are probably the natural 

 result of its usage as a ballad, handed down by mere word 

 of mouth. It gives the idea of having been composed 

 by the gradual accretion round a very slender thread of 

 original story of successive episodes, manufactured by the 

 semi-Hindu Pardhans for recitation before the almost 

 entirely Hindii chiefs of the Gonds. Yet even as such 

 it possesses some interest, as exhibiting, in a somewhat 

 dramatic form, the recent Hinduisation of many of the 

 Gond tribes; and I have, accordingly, endeavoured to 

 throw it into a shape that will not greatly fatigue my 

 readers. I have excised from it most of the Hindii 

 mythology with which it was overlaid, and which was 

 often anything but orthodox; and I have thought it 



''■ This name is probably typical of the Liagaet sect, who are known 

 to have actively propagated the worship of the Phallic Siva in the 

 Deccan. 



