112 REV. FR. J. HOFFMANN, S.J. 



The last stanza states the grief of the birds, alluding to the customary wailing 

 of Mundari women which enumerates the good qualities of the deceased and different 

 kinds of miseries brought on the survivor by his loss. 



Gara-kikir ragetana ho ! naiputam niamtan ! 

 Jati jati ragetana ho ! kilinalang niamtan ! 



Hark ! The king-fisher is weeping ! the river-dove is wailing ! 



He is weeping all kinds of grief ! it is wailing every kind of sorrow ! 



The following is a counterpart to the above piece : Parents bewail the lot of a 

 daughter who following her own inclination and disregarding all the laws of caste and 

 clan (kili) marries a young man of either the blacksmith or the weaver caste. The 

 Mundas tolerate these castes in their villages and respect them as useful and necessary 

 inferiors, but they will neither eat nor intermarry with them. 



There are at least three kinds of silk worms cultivated in the country. Lumam is 

 the generic term for all of them. Barwaluman is the largest and attaches its cocoon by 

 one tie only. Laria is a slightly smaller kind attaching its cocoon by two, sometimes 

 three and even four ties. These two are much brighter than the so-called kandeor- 

 lumam the smallest of all, and are therefore often used as terms of endearment. Lumam 

 and laria occur here as variants. It is on this use that the whole simile is based. 

 Lumam-ing means: "my silk-worm," laria-ing, "my small silk-worm." The affec- 

 tionate affix go is added in this piece so that the whole compound lumaming go and 

 lariating go mean " my darling silkworm," i.e., my darling child. 



Silk worms feed on the tenderest leaves of young sal trees and two or three other 

 kinds of Chota Nagpur forest trees. The showy but hard and stringy palm-leaf can 

 afford no nourishment to them : a silkworm attached to a palm-leaf must needs perish 

 miserably. 



Hence the parents complain that their daughter, deceived by mere outward ap- 

 pearances, has contracted a union which must eventually prove as disastrous to her as 

 the palm-leaf to the silkworm. For, on account of that union, she becomes an out- 

 cast forfeiting all the benefits which traditional membership confers on all the indi- 

 viduals of the Munda race in general and of a given kili or clan in particular. Further- 

 more blacksmiths and weavers, besides being socially inferior to the Mundas, are 

 generally landless and therefore poor. Finally they themselves will not extend to 

 the intruded Munda girl the same care and affection which they owe to a daughter- 

 in-law of their own caste. The first stanza is a simple cry of horror. 



Lumaming go lumaming go ! kita suba lumaming go ! 

 Lariaing go lariaing go ! tali suba lariaing go ! 



My sweet silkworm, my sweet silkworm ! under a palm-tree (is) my sweet silk- 

 worm ! 

 My darling laria, my darling laria ! under a palmyra (is) my darling laria ! 



Kita is the generic term for palms ; tali is the Mundarized Sadani or Hindi word 

 for the palmyra or toddy palm. 



