The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 3. Robert Vane Russell
it go; it will come again, then I will catch it. It has gone now.
Then what happened? the Gond returned and came to his brethren.
And said to them: Hear, O brethren, I went for fire, as you sent me, to that field; I beheld an old man like a giant.
With hands stretched out and feet lifted up. I ran. I thus survived with difficulty.
The brethren said to Lingo, We will not go. Lingo said, Sit ye here.
O brethren, what sort of a person is this giant? I will go and see him.
So saying, Lingo went away and reached a river.
He thence arose and went onward. As he looked, he saw in front three gourds.
Then he saw a bamboo stick, which he took up.
When the river was flooded
It washed away a gourd tree, and its seed fell, and each stem produced bottle-gourds.
He inserted a bamboo stick in the hollow of the gourd and made a guitar.
He plucked two hairs from his head and strung it.
He held a bow and fixed eleven keys to that one stick, and played on it.
Lingo was much pleased in his mind.
Holding it in his hand, he walked in the direction of the old man’s field.
He approached the fire where Rikad Gawādi was sleeping.
The giant seemed like a log lying close to the fire; his teeth were hideously visible;
His mouth was gaping. Lingo looked at the old man while sleeping.
His eyes were shut. Lingo said, This is not a good time to carry off the old man while he is asleep.
In front he looked, and turned round and saw a tree
Of the pīpal sort standing erect; he beheld its branches with wonder, and looked for a fit place to mount upon.
It appeared a very good tree; so he climbed it, and ascended to the top of it to sit.
As he sat the cock crew. Lingo said, It is daybreak;
Meanwhile the old man must be rising. Therefore Lingo took the guitar in his hand,
And held it; he gave a stroke, and it sounded well; from it he drew one hundred tunes.
It sounded well, as if he was singing with his voice.
Thus (as it were) a song was heard.
Trees and hills were silent at its sound. The music loudly entered into
The old man’s ears; he rose in haste, and sat up quickly; lifted up his eyes,
And desired to hear (more). He looked hither and thither, but could not make out whence the sound came.
The old man said: Whence has a creature come here to-day to sing like the maina bird?
He saw a tree, but nothing appeared to him as he looked underneath it.
He did not look up; he looked at the thickets and ravines, but
Saw nothing. He came to the road, and near to the fire in the midst of his field and stood.
Sometimes sitting, and sometimes standing, jumping, and rolling, he began to dance.
The music sounded as the day dawned. His old woman came out in the morning and began to look out.
She heard in the direction of the field a melodious music playing.
When she arrived near the edge of her field, she heard music in her ears.
That old woman called her husband to her.
With stretched hands, and lifted feet, and with his neck bent down, he danced.
Thus he danced. The old woman looked towards her husband, and said, My old man, my husband,
Surely, that music is very melodious. I will dance, said the old woman.
Having made the fold of her dress loose, she quickly began to dance near the hedge.
9. Death and resurrection of Lingo
Then Lingo disclosed himself to the giant and became friendly with him. The giant apologised for having tried to eat his brother, and called Lingo his nephew. Lingo invited him to come and feast on the flesh of the sixteen scores of nīlgai. The giant called his seven daughters and offered them all to Lingo in marriage. The daughters produced the arrow which they had treasured up as portending a husband. Lingo said he was not marrying himself, but he would take them home as wives for his brothers. So they all went back to the cave and Lingo assigned two of the daughters each to the three elder brothers and one to the youngest. Then the brothers, to show their gratitude, said that they would go and hunt in the forest and bring meat and fruit and Lingo should lie in a swing and be rocked by their seven wives. But while the wives were swinging Lingo and his eyes were shut, they wished to sport with him as their husbands’ younger brother. So saying they pulled his hands and feet till he woke up. Then he reproached them and called them his mothers and sisters, but they cared nothing and began to embrace him. Then Lingo was filled with wrath and leapt up, and seeing a rice-pestle near he seized it and beat them all with it soundly. Then the women went to their houses and wept and resolved to be revenged on Lingo. So when the brothers came home they told their husbands that while they were swinging Lingo he had tried to seduce them all from their virtue, and they were resolved to go home and stay no longer in Kachikopa with such a man about the place. Then the brothers were exceedingly angry with Lingo, who they thought had deceived them with a pretence of virtue in refusing a wife, and they resolved to kill him. So they enticed him into the forest with a story of a great animal which had put them to flight and asked him to kill it, and there they shot him to death with their arrows and gouged out his eyes and played ball with them.
But the god Bhagwān became aware that Lingo was not praying to him as usual, and sent the crow Kageshwar to look for him. The crow came and reported that Lingo was dead, and the god sent him back with nectar to sprinkle it over the body and bring it to life again, which was done.
10. He releases the Gonds shut up in the cave and constitutes the tribe
Lingo then thought he had had enough of the four brothers, so he determined to go and find the other sixteen score Gonds who were imprisoned somewhere as the brothers had told him. The manner of his doing this may be told in Captain Forsyth’s version:51
And our Lingo redivivus
Wandered on across the mountains,
Wandered sadly through the forest
Till the darkening of the evening,
Wandered on until the night fell.
Screamed the panther in the forest,
Growled the bear upon the mountain,
And our Lingo then bethought him
Of their cannibal propensities.
Saw at hand the tree Niruda,
Clambered up into its branches.
Darkness fell upon the forest,
Bears their heads wagged, yelled the jackal
Kolyal, the King of Jackals.
Sounded loud their dreadful voices
In the forest-shade primeval.
Then the Jungle-Cock Gugotee,
Mull the Peacock, Kurs the Wild Deer,
Terror-stricken, screeched and shuddered,
In that forest-shade primeval.
But the moon arose at midnight,
Poured her flood of silver radiance,
Lighted all the forest arches,
Through their gloomy branches slanting;
Fell on Lingo, pondering deeply
On
This extract is reproduced by permission of the publishers, Messrs. Chapman & Hall, London.