160 The " Kok" of Chota-Nagpore. 



were great hunters, and could sing and dance and make merry. The 

 Oraon youth and maidens speedily acquired the songs and the steps, 

 and this I doubt not aided greatly the harmonious blending of the 

 two peoples. 



There are no ancient temples or other antiquities on the plateau of 

 Chota-Nagpore to indicate that the early Braminical races or 

 Buddhists ever obtained a footing there ; there is no tradition even 

 of the " Munis" having sought retreats amongst its rocks or by its 

 waterfalls for their devotional exercises. We find such monuments 

 in Sirgoojah to the very foot of the western face of the plateau ; and, as 

 I have recently described in a paper dovoted to the antiquities of 

 Manbhoom, we find numerous remains of Arian colonization close to 

 its southern and eastern approaches, but none on the platean itself. 

 Left to themselves, the Kols increased and multiplied, and lived a happy 

 arcadian sort of life under their republican form of government for 

 many centuries ; but it is said that a wily Bramin at last obtained a 

 footing amongst them, and an important change in the form of 

 government was the result. 



The Rajah of the Purha of which Satyomba was the head quarters, 

 was a Moondah named Madura. His occupation of the supposed 

 cradle of the race gave him precedence in the confederate councils ; 

 and a child of his house, reared in it if not born there, was, through 

 his influence and by the advice of a Bramin he had taken into his 

 service, elected supreme chief over the whole confederacy ; but as it 

 would not suit the noble family, his descendants, to have it supposed 

 that their ancestor was one of the despised race called Kol, they have 

 adopted the following legend as their origin : — 



" When Jonmajoya, Rajah of Hustinapoor, attempted the destruc- 

 tion of the Nags or Serpent race, one of them, Poondorik, assumed the 

 form of a Brahmin and went to the house of a Bramin at Benares 

 to study the ' shasters.' The Benares Bramin, pleased with the 

 intelligence and grace of his pupil, gave him his only daughter 

 ' Parbutee' to be his wife. Poondorik and his wife, Parbutee, 

 together visited Juggernath, and on their return, passing through this 

 country, then called ' Jharkhund,' the forest land, she was seized 

 with the pains of labour near Satyomba, and gave birth to a child 

 and died. 



