MUNDARI POETRY, MUSIC AND DANCES. 118 



The second stanza states the fact of the mesalliance : 



Kita suba lumaming go ! kitarege tolenjana ! 

 Tali suba lariaing go ! talirege neonranjan ! 



My sweet silkworm under a palm tree ! to the palm tree it has attached itself ! 

 My darling laria under a palmyra ! to the palmyra is wound fast ! 

 The third stanza complains of the senselessness of that mesalliance : Were there not 

 plenty of suitable young Mundas to choose a husband from ? 



Bale opad'bano'leka kitarege tolenjana ! 

 Lindung sarjom bano'leka talirege neonranjan ! 



As though there were no young saplings, it attached itself to a palm-tree ! 

 As though there were no tender young sal trees, to a palmyra it is wound fast. 

 The last stanza foreshadows the dreary future of the wayward girl and reproaches 

 her for her ingratitude in having thus left her own : 



Kitage chiaputia, kitarege tolenjana ? 

 Talige chi engatia, talirege neonranjan ? 



Will or can the palm tree ever be a father to it, that it attached itself to a 



palm tree ? 

 Can the palmyra ever be a mother to it, that to the palmyra it wound itself fast ? 



Mundas are exceedingly fond of their children, in fact unreasonably so. They 

 will hardly ever inflict corporal punishment and even with a sharp reprimand they are 

 far too sparing " lest the little one cry." The children know that where asking and 

 coaxing fails, a few tears are pretty sure to procure whatever there is to be had. True, 

 that is always little enough. Very often they have to cry not for the gratification of 

 a mere whim but for very pain and not rarely from hunger. Malaria fever carries 

 off numbers of babies, and the survivors are all subject to more or less regular 

 attacks of that dread infliction up to the age of about fifteen, when they appear to be 

 pretty well immunized for a long period. 



For an ordinary attack of malaria nobody would think of offering a sacrifice, no 

 more than for curing a sprain or a broken limb. This shows that they consider malaria 

 as a very natural thing, a necessary evil which is quite different from other diseases 

 caused always by evil spirits or by witchcraft, according to them. Through these 

 fits of icy cold and burning fever the children must pull as best they can. Not that 

 the parents abandon them, but they have neither the means nor the knowledge to 

 offer such relief as might be given. 



Besides this universal infliction there is for a great many the actual want of suffi- 

 cient food for a part of the year. The people who have grain enough to serve up even 

 a single full meal of rice every day of the year are comparatively few. From May to 

 October many a child cries in vain for a meal of plain rice, but the parents have nothing 

 to offer but an unsavoury and weak food of a little coarse pulse and herbs which few 

 other men would care to touch. It would be a great mistake to fancy that the parents 



