175 
1882.] It. C. Temple— Some Hindu Folksongs from the Punjab. 
Who is brahman of the highest kind : 
Who worships him, 
With him will he remain day and night. 
They call him God (Allah) 
Whose nature is good, 
He is not pleased without love, 
Though you rub away your whole nose. 
Muhammad had female posterity 
And no male posterity. 
What is written in fate 
Will all obtain justly. 
What is written in fate 
Is already arrived : 
(As) the child lies in the womb, 
And the milk comes into the breasts. 
’Ali and Muhammad have been, 
Who were much loved by him (? God) : 
In the end they too died 
And were buried in the earth. 
Notes . 
This is a remarkable song in its way. It came to me as a Brahman 
song and was given me by a Brahman from Kangra. It is remarkable for 
its cosmopolitan nature and allusions to Muhammadanism. It is in pure 
Hindi excepting the Panjabi word bach’ndf to read, and is therefore proba¬ 
bly a wholesale importation from Hindi literature, perhaps straight from 
the writings of some free-thinking poet or Bhagat. 
Bache : Panj. bach’na, to read. 
Sodh : Hindi, news : not in the Dictionaries. 
Patr'ka = patri; almanac, scripture, holy book. 
Jdt, zdt. These words are now synonymous in common parlance to 
mean ‘caste.’ Jat is Sansk. in origin from root jan, to be born, and zat 
is probably a Munshi’s corruption of the word to make it fit in with the 
Arabic oti essence, which, however, in Persian also means ‘ tribe, clan, 
sort.’ Here we have both senses : jat applied to the Brahman and zdt 
applied to Allah, God. 
Jo us'kd sindran kare : (?) ought this to be translated “ who worship 
him (God) in the Brahman’s form.” ? 
Bind prem etc., i. e., Allah (God) is not pleased with mere outward 
show. 
* [The word bdch'nd or bdncli'na is a very common pure Hindi word ; in fact 
parh'na is more Urdti, than Hindi. Ed.] 
z 
