88 REV. FR. J. HOFFMANN, S.J. 



They are keenly alive to the beauties of scenery as well as to the charm of flowers, 

 of colours and of the play of light ; and they show their appreciation of all these charms 

 in striking word-pictures, sometimes of great and deeply poetic beauty, which they 

 use as terms of comparison, as symbols or as frames to the subjects treated of. Simple, 

 limited and hard, as their life may seem to us, and to a great extent is in reality, it 

 still offers to them a source from which they draw in abundance the honey of poetry, 

 one of the greatest and truest blessings, ever ready for the lowest as well as the highest 

 of men. 



This original poetry will of course be worthless to the scoffer ; and to narrow 

 minds, unable to appreciate aught that lies beyond their own little circle, refined or 

 otherwise, it must appear crude. But though it lays no claim to artistic perfection, it 

 brightens the Mundas' lives ; and it certainly is not without its own intrinsic merits. 

 Not the least among these merits is the fact, that of the hundreds of songs, which after 

 the day's work resound over the whole country evening after evening, not one is defiled 

 by a lewd expression nor even by an indecent allusion. 



Horace enunciated but the verdict of common sense when, comparing poetry to 

 honey, he said that even as honey that was not entirely sweet had better not be served 

 up, so verses that were not very good had better not be made at all. Do these abori- 

 ginal forest-dwellers instinctively feel that what the Roman poet exacted for the 

 outward form applies with even greater force to the inward soul, or essence of all 

 human ideals, amongst which poesy occupies a foremost place, viz., that a single vice 

 destroys them as such ? A lesson from an unexpected quarter indeed to a certain 

 school who, under the specious pretence of art being its own end, produce would-be 

 ideals, poetry and other so-called works of art, which contribute more to the degrada- 

 tion of art and of life itself than can easily be expressed. 



In considering the outward form we first meet with a very characteristic feature 

 which is in a way akin to the Hebrew psalms, but has no distinct counterpart in Aryan 

 poetry. In mast of the songs, two lines are devoted to the expression of one and the 

 same idea. This is done in various ways : — 



(i) If the idea is adequately expressed in the first line, then the second line merely 

 repeats the same idea. But this repetition must be made, not in the same but 

 in synonymous terms. The perfection aimed at is the substitution of a synonym for 

 each term of the first line. This is frequently not attained, but the leading words of 

 the second line are generally synonymous with the leading words of the first line. 



By way of illustration, take the first stanza of a song which inculcates, on the 

 members of a family, the necessity of submitting to any inconvenience rather than 

 break any of those sacred rules which have done so much for the maintenance of mutual 

 respect and a really wonderful morality among all the members of the often very large 

 families huddled together, so to say, in comparatively small huts. One of these rules 

 forbids the wife of a junior brother to stand or sit on the same mat with either the 

 senior brothers or sisters of her husband ; for to these she owes respect, and in return 

 the seniors in question owe her the consideration due to a junior brother's wife. On 

 her mat she is queen. Nobody may so much as step on it except her husband, her 



