"=?- xXf ^"^ •5^ f/'T ^^• : 1 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. ^ o < w p THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA NOTES ON THEIK FORESTS AND WILD TRIBES, NATURAL HISTORY, AND SPORTS. By CAPTAIN J. FORSYTH, BENGAL STAFF COEPH. NEW EDITION. WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited. 1889. tHAKLlCS DICKENS AM) KVAN.- CETbTAL PALACE PKKS3. UN- r^ALIFORNlA ■..RA GOKTENTS. CHAPTEE I. INTRODUCTORY. Physical Description of the Central Highlands— The Satpiira Range — Early History of Gondwana — The Rajputs and their Bards — Mixed Races — Immigration of Hindus — The Conquest by Akber — Fate of the Aborigines — Over- throw of the Gond Kings — Arrival of the Marathas — The Hill-tribes plunder the Low Country — The Pindaris — British Conquest of the Country — Improved Administra- tion— Recent Ignorance of the Interior of the Hills — Constitution of the Central Provinces — Energy of the Xew Administration — Establishment of the Forest De- partment— Exploration of the Hill Tracts — Their Area and Character — Settlement Operations — -Interesting N'ature of the Country — Its Aboriginal Population — The Gonds — K61arian Races — The Kols — The Ivorkus — The Bygas — The Bheels — Singular Facts in Distribution of Organic Products — Timber Trees — Relation to Geological Forma- tions— The Fauna — Wild Buffalo — Twelve-tined Deer — Jungle-fowl — Hog-deer — Partridges — Intrusion of Eastern Forms — Early Destruction of the Forests — The Sal — The Teak — Its Usefulness — Ruin of the Teak Forests CHAPTER 11. THE NARBADA VALLEY. Start for the Mahadeo Hills — Camp of an Explorer — Travelling in Wild Regions — Capture of a Camel — March down the Narbada Valley — Gorge in the River — The Marble Rocks CONTENTS. FA.aB — Colonies of Bees — Fatal Attack by a Swarm — Their Ferocity — Capture of the Honey— Moonlight Picnics — Crocodiles and Fish— Shooting a Crocodile — Cold Weather Marching — Prosperity of the Country — Description of Hindu Eaces in the Valley — Abundance of Game — Wild- fowl and Snipe — Partridge and Quail Shooting — Adventure with a Snake — The Black Antelope — Methods of Stalk- ing— A Solitary Buck — The Indian Gazelle — Method of Shooting — The Nilgai — The Hunting Leopard — The Wolf — Man-killing AVolves — Destruction of a Pair — " Tinker " and the Wolf — Wild Boars — The People of the Narbada Valley — Gond Labourers — The Mhowa Tree — Coal Mines — Snipe Shooting — Hill Forts — Jungle Clearings — Forest Animals .......... 36 CHAPTER II L • THE MAHADEO HILLS. The Mahadeo Mountains — Sacred Hills — Ascent to Puchmurree — Aspect of the Forest — Park-like Scenery — A Moist Night — Solitary Snipe — Description of the Plateau — Fine Views — The Denwa Valley — The Andeh Kdh — Legends of the Place — Ancient Remains — The Great Ravine — The S6nb- hadra Gorge — The Great Red Squirrel — A Hill Chief — Caprice of the Hill-men — Their System of Tillage — -De- struction of the Forests — Incursions of Wild Animals — Gond Legend — Dense Jungles — Restlessness of the Aborigines — Their Precarious Livelihood — Produce of the Jungles — The Seeding of the Bamboo — Scarcity in the Hills — Banjara Carriers — Project a Forest Lodge — Find Lime — The Indian Bison — His Habits and Range — Growth of his Horns — A Grand Hunt — Kill a Stag Sambar — A Bull shot by the Tluikur — Power of the Bison — A Hill Tiger — A Mother's Defence — Description of CONTENTS. vii PAGE Gonds and Korkiis— A Midnight Revel— The Wild Men are conciliated — We teach them to Euild and Plough — The Denwa Sal Forest — The Twelve-tined Deer — Jungle- fowl — Spur-fowl — Gazelles and Hares — Fire-hunting by Night — Bears and Panthers — A Troublesome Panther — Fox-hunting at Puchmurree — Bison-stalking — A Brace of Bulls — Tracking the Bison — A Hard Day's Work — Death of the Bull 86 CHAPTER IV. THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. Interest of the Subject — An Historical Parallel — Influence of Contact with Hinduism — Mixed Races — -The Eaj-G/)nds — The Ivorkus — The Bhilalas — Introduction of Caste — Diffi- culties of Investigation — Meagreness of Aboriginal Lan- guages— G6nd Legends — Religion of the Gonds — Worship of Powers of Nature — Fetishism — Worship of Ancestors — Demigods and Heroes — Idol Worship — Sivaism — Religious Ceremonies — The Great Spirit — Religion of the Korkiis — Sun Worship — Burial Customs of the Tribes — Personal Appearance — Marriage Customs — Economical Position of the Tribes — Drunkenness — Agricultural Position — The Timber Trade —Demoralisation of the Tribes — Retribution — Excise Laws — Forest Regulations — Improvement in the Condition of the Aborigines — Effect of High Prices — Cul- ture of the Oil-seed Plant — Influence of Hinduism — Future of the Aborigines — Measures Required — Hindoo Pilgrims to the Shrine of Mahadeo — An Indian Fair — Description of the Shrine — The Religion of Sivaism — Human Sacrifices — Omkar Mdndhatta — Death of a Victim — A Priestly Murder — Cholera among the Pilgrims — Panic and Flight —The Scapegoat 141 vin CONTEXTS. CHAriER Y. THE LAY OF SAIXT LINGO. PAG8 L The Creation and Exile of the G6nds — 2. The Coming of Lingo — 3. The Deliverance of the Gonds — 4. Subdivision into Tribes, and Worship of the Gond Deities . . .187 CHAPTER YI. THE TEAK EEGIOX. The Trap Country — Condition of the Teak Forests — Other Timber Trees — The Tapti Yalley — The Frankincense Tree — Aspects of the Forests in the Trap Region — Jungle Fires — Ancient Settlements — The Korkiis of the Tapti Yalley — Difficulty of Exploration — Wild Sports — The Sambar Deer — Its Habits and Food — Death of the Bori Stag — Horns of the Sarabar — Curious Occurrences in Shooting — Incidents in Tiger Shooting — Stalking the Sambar— The Hatti Hills— The Bheels— A Bheel Fort— Mahomedan Architecture — Difficulty of finding Sambar — Dhaotea — Disappearance of the Sdrabar — Return to the Plains — The Yalley of the Yultures — Return to the Sambar Ground — Shoot a Stag — Miss another — The Four- horned Antelope — Bison Shooting — The " Shrimp " and the " Skunk " — Find a Herd — Kill a Bull — A Dangerous Position — A Solitary Bull — We miss the Water — Another Bull Killed — A Herd of Sambar — Account of a Bag . . 211 CHAPTER YII. THE TIGER. Tiger-shooting in the Hot AVeather — Different Sorts of Tigers — The Game-killer — The Cattle-eater — The Man-eater — Haunts of the Tiger — Destructiveness of Tigers — Native Shikaris — Beating for Tigers — Shooting on Foot — Shoot- CONTENTS. ix PA OB ing with an Elephant — Difficulty of Finding Tigers — Method of Hunting — Search for Information — Viceregal Tiger-shooting — A Tiger in a Tobacco-field — The Hot Weather Camp — The Village Shikari — Spying out the Land — Nocturnal Life of Wild Animals — Tyranny of the Tiger — Tiger Tracks — The Monkeys Inform — Death of a Tiger — Pranks of Juvenile Tigers — The Monkeys Pre- varicate— Almost too Close — Singular Effect of a Shell — An Abrupt Introduction — A Man-eating Tigress — The Monkeys are Eight — Alarm Cries of Animals — A Beef- eater Slain — Terrific Heat — Size of Tigers — Baits for Tigers— Caste Objections— Tiger Shikaris— The "Lalla" — He is Killed by a Tiger — Kevenge — What a Shikari should not be — The Tiger in his Lair — Trained Elephants — Purchasing Elephants — Their " Points " — Selection of a Hunting Elephant — A Man-killer — Entering Elephants — Elephantine Vices— Keeping Elephants — A Bag of Tigers — Eavages of a Man-eating Tiger — Unfortunate Delay — Denizens of a Mango Grove — Sharp Treatment effects a Cure — Start after the Man-eater — Deserted Villages — A Pilgrim Devoured — Unsuccessful Hunt — A Bait Proposed — Another Victim — On the Trail — A Long Day's Work — Eenew the Chase — Exciting Sport — An Elephant Killed by a Tiger — Find the Man-eater— He charges Home — Blown up by a Shell — Elephant Anecdote — Destructive- ness of Tigers — Proposals for their Extermination — What can be Done — Get Jungle Fever — Eeturn to Puchmurree — A Cool Climate — Completion of " Bison Lodge " — Burst of the Monsoon — Advantages of Puchmurree — Selected as a Sanitarium — Eeturn to Jubbulpiir .... 266 CHAPTEE VI XL THE HIGHEE NAEBADA. Jubbulpiir Transformed — Effects of the Eailway along the Nar- bada — A Station Shikari — The Panther and the Leopard — Dangers of Panther Hunting — A Man-eating Panther — CONTENTS. PAOB Curious Legend — Cunning of Panthers — A Determined Charge — -Baits for the Panther — A Hot-Weather Excursion — Dance of the Peacocks — Deer Shooting from a " Dug- out"— The Spotted Deer — An Interview with a Tiger — The Monkeys' Leap — Immense Herd of Deer — A Eamous Tiger — A Successful Beat— A Midnight Intruder — The Man-eater of Pouhri — Ghostly Legend — Coursing the Sam- bar — Native Dogs — The Wild Dog — Banjiira Dogs — The Black Bear — A Family Charge — Bear Shooting — Large Python 327 CHAPTER IX. THE SAL FOREST. Head Streams of the Narbada — The Mandla Plateau — A Prairie Country — Character of the Uplands — Scenery — Climate — Scanty Population — Gouds — Bygas — Their Retired Habits — Poisoned Arrows — Courage of the Bygas — Patriarchal Institutions — A Singular Race — The Byga Medicine Man — Tiger Charming — A Pleasant Custom — Bygii Seers — Religious Sentiments — Destruction of Sal Trees — The Dammar Resin — Traffic of the Bygiis — Character of the Sal Forests — Forest Products — Lac Dye — Tasser Silk — A Grazing Country — Value of Cattle — Prospects of the Country — Its Resources — Causes of Backwardness — Want- ing Population — Distance of Markets — Malaria — Advan- tages of the Tract for Settlers — European Colonisation — Field for Enterprise — A INIissionary Attemj)t — Land •lobbiug — Prospects of Missions — Wild Animals — The Red Deer — Its Habits — Variety of Game — A Christmas Party — Beating with Elephants — A Tiger Sliot Flying — The Halon Valley — A Mendicant killed by a Tiger — Stalking the Red Deer— Kill a Stag— A Run at a Hind— A Wild Elephant — Singular Freak — Range of AV^ild Elephants — Tigers Roaring at Night — A Remarkable Serenade — Large Herds of Red Deer— The Wild Bufralo . . . . 3G9 CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER X. AN EXPLORATION JN THE FAR EAST. PAGB Commanding Promontory — The Source of the Narbada — Sivite Legends — Fine VieAV — A Long Exploration —The Wild Biitfalo — Its Range and Habits — Criminal Trespass — The Police called in — We slay the Invader — Toughness of the Buffalo — Size of his Horns — A Voyage down the Mahanadi — The Country of the Khonds — More Buffaloes — A Feverish Region — Buffalo Hunting on Horseback — A Vicious Cow — Upset by a Bull — "Tinker" to the Rescue — A Curious Sentinel— Treed by Buffaloes — The Enemy retires — Danger of Buffalo Shooting — A Cumbrous Trophy — March for the Elephant Country — A Decayed City — An Unfortunate Seizure — Retire to Laiifagarh — A Hospitable Chief — The Bygas again — A Primitive Pipe — An Amazing Spectacle — The Elephant God — Life at Laaf;igarh — The Doctor discomfited — Jungle Delicacies — The Thakiir's Yarns — A Tiger shot with an Arrow — An Elephant done to Death — A " Loathly Worm " — Wild Animals on the Hill — An Irksome Prison — Make another Start — A Splendid Game Country — A Herd of Elephants — A Soli- tary Tusker — Almost an Adventure — A Villainous Ter- mination — Explore the Country — Bluimia Trackers — Fate of a Herd of Elephants — A Vast Siii Forest — The Way lost — Beat out a Bhiimia — Habits of the Bhiimias — Aspect of the Country — A Primitive Measure of Distance — Haunts of the Buffaloes — Capture of Wild Elephants — Coal Measures — Prospects of the Country — The Plateau of Amarkantak — A Terrible March — End of the Explora- tion— Effects of Exposure — The Forest Question — Utility of Forests — Prospects of the Forests — Central India as a Field for Sport — Where to go — Outfit — Guns and Rifles — Conclusion ......... 402 i^ MAP OF THE S W 1 MJc, in m IncK r^ THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY, People commonly talk of the " hills " aud the " plains " of India, meaning by the former the great Himalayan range, and by the latter all the rest of the country. The mightiest mountains of the earth are called nothing more than " hills ; " and popular geography has no name for the numerous excrescences of mother earth which intersect the so-called region of "plains." A range called the Nilgherries, in the south of the peninsula, approaching 9,000 feet in altitude, is known to a few beyond the limits of India as a resort of invalids, and a nursery for cinchonas ; but of lesser ranges than this, which would still be called mountains in any other country, the mass of " ordinary readers " has no cognizance. Much of this has reallv been owinsf to the unex- plored and undescribed condition of such regions ; but something also to the overwhelming prominence of the great northern range, which rivets the attention of teachers of geography and their pupils, and also, from the exigencies of the art of chartography, renders it 15 2 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. almost impossible to delineate on ordinary maps of India the features of inferior ranges. Yet in the very centre of India there exists a considerable region to which the term Highlands, which I have adopted for a title, is strictly applicable ; and in which are numerous peaks and ranges, for which the term " mountain " would, in any other country, be used. Several of the great rivers of India have their first sources in this elevated region, and pour their waters into the sea on either side of the peninsula — to the north the Son commingling with the Ganges, to the east the Mahanadi, flowing independently to the Bay of Bengal, to the south some of the principal feeders of the Godavari, and to the west the Narbada and the Tapti, taking parallel courses to tlie Arabian Gulf. If the reader will seek the head-waters of these rivers on the map, he wall find the region I am about to describe. To be more precise, it lies on the 22nd parallel of north latitude, and between the 76th and 82nd of east longitude. It forms the central and culminating section of a ridge of elevated country which stretches across the peninsula, from near Calcutta to near Bombay, and separates Northern India, or Hindostan proper, from the Deccan, or country of the south. The traveller by the Great Indian Peninsular Railway from Bombay to Calcutta, after some 275 miles of his journey, will come to a point where the line branches into two. The northern branch leads him on up the Narbada valley, and so, by Alahabad and the Gangetic valley, to the City of Palaces. If he takes the southern branch instead, he will be landed at Nagpiir, a city in the very heart of India, and its present terminal station. Between these two branches lies a triangle of country in which is IXTEODUCTORY. 3 situated the western half of the highlands I speak of. From its western extremity, in the fork of these lines, the mountainous region extends eastwards for a distance of about 450 miles, with an average width of about 80 miles. The general level of what may be called the plains of Central India has here, by gradual, and to the traveller scarcely perceptible steps, reached an altitude of about 1,000 feet above the level of the sea; and he will rise but little higher than this at any point on the lines of railway. So soon, however, as he leaves the railway, and proceeds a few miles towards the interior of the triangle, he will begin to come on ranges of hills, at first generally low, but in places attaining at once a height of about 1,000 feet from the plain; and beyond them peaks and plateaux will present themselves evidently of much superior elevation. Valleys will everywhere be found penetrating the hills, by following which he may rise gradually to these higher regions ; and soon he will exchange the rich cultivation of the flat land throusfh which the railway passes for unreclaimed w^aste and rugged forest-covered steeps. He will now find himself in a region where all is chaos to the unguided traveller ; where hill after hill of the same wild and undefined character are piled to- gether ; where the streams appear to run in all directions at once ; and it will not be until he has traversed the whole region, or closely studied a map, that some method will begiu to evolve itself, and the geography become plain. He will find that at a height of about 1,000 feet above the plain, that is of about 2,000 above the sea, the hills have a tendency to spread out iu the form of plateaux ; some comprising the top of only one 4 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. hill and a small area ; others like a group of many hills, which support, like buttresses, on their summits, large level or undulating plains. From these again he will find shooting up still higher, a good many other solitary flat-topped hills, reaching the height of nearly 3,500 feet ; some of which in like manner unite into plateaux at about the same elevation. Yet higher than these, but never assuming the character of a plateau, he will see here and there a peak rising to nearly 5,000 feet above the sea. As is usual, the inhabitants of the hills themselves liave no general name for the whole chain ; each in- dividual hill or minor range being called by a local name derived from the nearest village, or the species of tree it bears, or a god, or a river, or some other accidental circumstance. The Hindus of the plains have several terms for its different sections, calling the most easterly the Mykal, the centre the Mahadeo, and the western the Satpura Hills. Geographers have applied the name Satpiira to the entire range ; and the name is perhaps as appropriate as any which could be selected. The watershed of these mountains varies in direction in their several sections. In the extreme east the rans^o terminates in a bluff promontory with a precipitous face to the south, throwing the whole of the drainage of a vast area towards the north. This is the cradle of the Narbada river, which soon leaves its parent hills, and flows through a wide valley of its own along the northern face of the range. In the centre the rano^e culminates in the bold group of the Mahadeos, crowned by the Puchmurree peaks, throwing the drainage almost equally to the north and south, the former into the Narbada, and the latter into the Godavari. The western INTRODUCTOKY. 5 section (the Satpuras proper) is cleft in two by a deep valley, and drains inwards, forming the river Tapti, which, like the Narbada, flows for but a short part of its course within the hills before it leaves them altogether, and runs along their southern face to the sea. Such, however, is the tortuous formation of these mountains, that their streams frequently surprise one by turning short round in their courses, and making off towards the wrong river, as if they had suddenly changed their minds. The drainage of the great central Mahadeo block is a striking example of this. Two streams rise near its southern face, the Denwa and the Sonbadra. Both flow nearly south, away from the Narbada, for a short way, when the former turns to the east, and the latter to the west. Presently, however, they find two vast cracks in the range, and turn sharp to the north, passing through them to the northern face, where they unite and fall into the Narbada after all. This extensive region emerged from the outer dark- ness that shrouds the early history of such immense tracts in India only within the last three centuries. Before then we have nothing to grope by in the thick darkness but the will-o'-the-wisp lights of tradition, and the scarcely more reliable indications of a few ruinous remains and vague inscriptions. The aborigines have never possessed a written language, and the Hindu races, who have within the last few centuries peopled the valleys that surround and interpenetrate the hills, have allowed their literature to remain the monopoly of a priestly caste, whose very existence was bound up in the necessity of falsifying all history. Their only writings which wear even the remotest semblance of 0 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. history — the Mahabharat and Eamayan epics — speak of all India south of the Jamna as a vast wilderness in- habited by hostile demons and snakes. Religions hermits of the northern race are described as dwellinsf in leafy bowers in their midst, while heroes and demi- gods wandered about like knights-errant, protecting the devotees from their hostile acts, which seem more like the pranks of frisky monkeys than the actions of human beings. The snakes and demons have been conjectured, with some probability, to have been the black aborigines of the country, and the scenes of the epics to portray the gradual advance of the Aryan race and religion into their midst. The wandering Rajiis are frequently de- scribed as allying themselves in marriage with the daughters of the potent demons, and so far the poems agree with what is otherwise shown to be probable. Nothing like a connected historical narrative is, how- ever, to be extracted from the mass of Brahminical fiction ; and whatever value such materials may yield to the investigation of the history of the Aryan or con- quering races, they are worth nothing as bearing on that of the wild men of the wilderness, who are through- out regarded as being as much beyond the pale of humanity as their country was beyond the Aryan pale — the land of clearings and the black antelope. We have a few architectural remains and inscriptions that tell of Aryan chiefs holding power in parts of the Narbadd valley and the central plateaux, between the fifth and the fourteenth centuries. But who and what they were, and what was really their position, there is nothing to show. Remains of religious edifices sur- rounded by fortifications point to the probability of their having been the heads of isolated bands of the warlike INTRODUCTOKY. 7 caste, protecting settlements of missionary priests, and perhaps, by superior courage and arms, liolding in nominal subjection the aboriginal tribes around them. Traditions exist of a pastoral race, to whom is attributed every ancient building that cannot be otherwise ac- counted for. It is highly probable that the cow was unknown to the aborigines before it was brought by their Aryan invaders. Tradition would probably fix on so striking a feature as the possession of herds by those early colonists; and thus it does not seem necessary to suppose the existence of any peculiar pastoral people, distinct from other Aryan settlers in these central regions. But what these early immigrants may really have been is unimportant. For, when first the light of true history breaks upon the country, at the period of its contact with the invading Mahomedan in the fourteenth century, all of them had ceased to have any separate existence. Most probably they had been absorbed in the great mass of the aboriginal tribes who surrounded them ; and we find the country then called by the name of Gondwdnd,, from the tribe of Gonds who chiefly inhabited it. The petty tribal chieftainships into which, there is reason to believe, it had formerly been divided, had then been united into three considerable princi- palities, under the sway of chiefs whom all the evidence we have proves to have been of mixed aboriginal and Hindu (Rajput) descent. Architectural remains, and the recorded condition of the country at the time mentioned, show that these little kingdoms had acquired a con- siderable degree of stability and development ; and it has often been wondered how a tribe of such rude savases as the Gonds could have reached a stage of civilisation at 8 THE HIGHLxiNDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. that early period so greatly above anything they have since shown themselves capable of. The explanation seems to lie in the circumstance mentioned. The real establishers of these courts, and introducers of the arts, were not Gonds but Hindus. It is the custom in all families which trace their lineage to the fountain-head of Hindu aristocracy among the Eiijpiit clans of Rajasthan to retain, like the Celtic chieftains of our own country, family bards, whose duty it is to record in a sjenealooical volume, and recite on great occasions, the descent and family history of their patrons. The bardic office is hereditary, and where the lineage of the family is really ancient, the bard is generally also a descendant of the bards of the original clan. Often he is the chief bard of the clan itself, and resides with its hereditary head at the family seat in Eajasthc4n, visiting at intervals the cadet branches of the house to record their domestic events. In Gond- wana, numerous chiefs claim either a pure descent from Eajpiit houses, or, more frequently, admit their remote origin to have sprung from a union between some Rajput adventurer of noble blood and one of the daughters of the aborigines. Few of them are admitted to be pure Rajputs by the blue-blooded chiefs of Rajasthan ; but all have their bards and genealogies. These, like such documents in all countries, often go back to fabulous times, and are overlaid with modern fiction ; but the legendary portion of the bardic chronicle can generally be separated with little difficulty from a solid residue of probable fact. The general conclusion to be drawn from the evidence of these writings, supported as they are by tradition and later history, is that during the fourteenth and fifteenth INTKODUCTORY. U centuries, and it may be even earlier, a great immi- gration of the Rajpiit clans took place into the country of the aborigines. The Mahomedan invaders of Upper India were then pressing hard on the country between the Ganges and the Narbada rivers occupied by the Rajputs ; and it was doubtless the recoil from them that forced these colonies of Eajpiits southwards into the wilds of Central India. Here it would seem that they generally formed matrimonial alliances with the in- digenous tribes. The superior qualities of the Ar3^an race would soon assert themselves among such inert races as these aborigines ; and there is little doubt that before the arrival of the Mahomedans, not only the heads of what have been termed the Gond kingdoms, but also many of the subordinate chiefs, were far more Hindu than aboriginal in blood. The unfailing evidence of physical appearance supports these indications of tradition. Most of the chiefs possess the tall, well-pro- portioned figure and light complexion of the Hindu, but allied with more or less of the thickness of lip and animal type of countenance of the pure aborigine. The mass of the tribes, on the other hand, are marked by the black skin, short squat figure, and features of the negretto race of humanity. Between them are found certain sections of the tribes, who would seem to have been also imbued with something of the foreign blood, though in a less degree than the chiefs. Like the latter they afiect much Hindu manners and customs ; and it is probable that they, too, are the result of some connection in long past times between immigrant Aryans and the indigenous tribes. The Hindu proclivities of the chiefs appear to have early led them to encourage the settlement in their 10 THE HICHLAXDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. domains of colonies of the industrious agricultural races who had already reclaimed the soil of Northern and Western India. But no very extensive arrival of these races would seem to have occurred previous to the estab- lishment, early in the seventeenth century, of a strong Mahomedan government, under the great Akber, in the surrounding countries. The impetus given to the de- velopment and civilisation of the dark regions of India by the wise rule of that greatest of eastern adminis- trators can never be over-rated. Before the absorption into his empire of the minor Hindu and Mahomedan states, their history is one of continuous lawlessness and strife ; and the further we investigate, the more cer- tainly we perceive that political order, the supremacy of law, sound principles of taxation, a wise land system, and almost every art of civilised government, owe their birth to this enlightened ruler. His treatment of these unsettled wilds and their people was marked with the same political wisdom. While, in the surrounding countries, which had already been in a measure re- claimed by Hindu races, he everywhere broke up the feudal system, under which strong government and permanent improvement were impossible, he asked no more from the chiefs of these waste regions than nominal submission to his empire, and the preservation of the peace of the realm. Those on his borders he con- verted into a frontier police, and the rest he left to administer their country in their own fashion. Ac- knowledgment of his supremacy he insisted on, how- ever, and, in case of refusal, sent his generals and armies, who very soon convinced the barbarous chiefs of their powerlessness in his hands. The influence of his power and splendour rapidly extended itself over even INTRODUCTORY. 11 this remote region. The chiefs became courtiers, ac- cepted with pride imperial favours and titles, and, in some cases, were even converted to the fashionable faith of Islam. A vast development of the resources of these central regions followed the coming of Akber. A great high- way between Upper India and the Deccan was estab- lished through a gap in the Satpiira mountains. A vast city arose in the Tapti valley, which became the seat of government of the southern province of the empire. Armies marching to and fro, and the retinues of a great court, brought with them a demand, before unheard of, for the necessaries and the luxuries of life. The open country, under the rule of Akber, was rapidly reclaimed by Hindu immigrants, arriving simultaneously from the north and from the west. Nor were they long in extending into the fat lands of the great valleys in the territories of the Gond princes. The reclamation of the heavy lands of the Narbada valley, and the country now known as the Berars, had probably been entirely beyond the resources of the aboriginal races. The im- migrants brought with them the necessary energy and the necessary resources ; and from this time a process commenced which resulted in the wholesale deprivation of the indig;enous races of their birthright in the richest portions of their country, and the establishment therein of the arts of aoriculture and commerce. The Gonds retired to the higher plateaux and slopes of the central hills, where their hunting instincts, and rude system of raising the coarse grains on which they subsist, could still find scope ; the more extensive plateaux were also soon invaded by the aggressive race, and their level black soils covered with crops of wheat 12 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL IXDLV. and cotton. These elevated plains are surrounded by belts of rugged, unculturable country, which remained in the possession of the aborigines ; and thus, ere long, the tribes were not only surrounded but interpenetrated by large bodies of Hindus. The Brahman priest accompanied the warlike Rajput and the industrious Hindu peasant to their new country ; and brought with him the worship of the Hindu gods and the institution of caste. No separation from the holy mysteries of his faith was demanded from the immigrant. Not only was he persuaded that he was still under the protection of the old gods ; but the gods themselves, and all their belongings, were bodily borne into exile along with their votaries. New scriptures were revealed, in which the religious myths of the race were transplanted wholesale, and fitted to local names and places. The Narbada became more holy as a river than the Ganges. The mountain of Kailas, the fabled heaven of Siva beyond the snows of the Himalaya, jutted to heaven in the peaks of the Mahadeo range. Krishna and Eiima passed their miraculous boyhood, and achieved their legendary feats, in these central forests, instead of in the groves of JMathura and the Avilderness of Bindraban. Some remarks will be oflfered in another place on the social and religious influence of this contact with Hinduism of the aboriginal races who retired before the invaders. A few remained in the country occupied by the Hindus, chiefly in the position of agricultural serfs, of watchers of the villages against the inroads of their wilder brethren oi- of wild beasts, of hewers of wood, prevented only by the rules of caste from being also their drawers of water. A social status was assiorned them below that of all but the outcasts of INTRODUCTOKY. 13 the other race ; and they were compelled to segregate themselves in humble hovels, beyond the limits of the comfortable houses and homesteads of the superior castes. The semi-aboriginal principalities of Mandla Deogarh and Kherla, which included the whole of this hio-hland region, were thus permitted, by the policy of successive Mahomedan rulers, to maintain a little irksome feuda- tory position until the Manitha power began to supplant that of the Moghuls in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Then the irrepressible hordes of the Deccan, having swallowed up the more settled dominions of the Moslem, began to overrun also the country of the Gonds. Before the close of the century the three kingdoms had been entirely broken up, and are heard of no more in history. They seem to have at no time been more than a feudal airslomeration of numerous petty chiefships ; and on the ruin of their heads they resolved themselves again into the same elements. The conquest of the Marathas as- sumed little of a practical character in the interior of the hills, the mountaineers continuing to waoje agjainst them a desultory warfare from their fastnesses. The present century broke with the commencement of that " time of trouble," when the leaders of the Maratha confederacy began to quarrel over their spoil, and entered on a deadly struggle for territory and power. The financial straits of the Mariithd chiefs now led to wholesale disregard for all rights of property inconsistent with their demand of a rack-rent from every acre of the soil commanded by their troops. The hill-chiefs were now reft of the last of their possessions in the plains ; corrupt and overbearing farmers of the land-tax seizing 14 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. on the last of their accessi])le resources. Then they took to the hills with their tribes, and turned their hands against the spoiler, till the name of Gond and Bheel became synonymous with that of hill-robber. Whole tracts came to be distinguished by the title of the " country of robbers." There is not a district in all that long frontier between hill and plain where tales are not still related of the sudden downswoop of bands of hill-men on the garnered harvest of the phiius, of blood- shed, torture, and blazing villages, and of the sharp and savacre retaliation of Maratha mercenaries. A little tributary of the Tiipti river that comes down from the hills of Gavilgarh is still called the " stream of blood," from the massacre in its valley of a whole tribe of Nahals, man, woman, and child, by a body of Arabs in the service of Sin did ; and many similar tales have been related to me when travelling in the hills. Then, if not before, every pass in the hills was crowned b}'" a fortified post of the mountain men, and every inhabited village of the plains by a wall of earthwork and a central keep. Then, too, arose the organised bands of mounted plunderers who have been called Pinddris — Ishmaelites of these central regions, who, like the vulture, sallied forth from their fastnesses in some secluded wild to gorge on the prey struck down by a nobler hand. Thenceforth, for nearly twenty years, the hill-tribes, Pinddri plunderers, and lawless Marathd, soldiery, with their da^g^ers at each other's throats, were unanimous only in robbing the husbandmen of the plains, who ploughed their fields by night with swords and match- locks tied to the shafts of their ploughs, or purchased peace by heavy payments of blackmail. Vast areas of the country that had been reclaimed by their industry INTRODUCTOKY. 15 were again abandoned to the jungle and the wild beast ; and only round the walls of fortified villages, within which the people and their herds could retreat in time of need, was any tillage maintained at all. In the year 1818 this unheard-of anarchy was ter- minated by our final success against the IMarathas, and the extermination of the Pind;iri bands. But we entered on the possession of our new territories to find them almost desolated by a quarter of a century of the utter absence of government, with the hill population frenzied by the excitement of a life of plunder, and branded with the character of " savage and intractable foresters." The Sagar and Narbada territories, as the northern half of the country was then called, were ac- quired by us in full sovereignty after this war. The southern portion remained nominally the territory of the feudatory Rdja of Nagpur, but had long been under British administration when, in 1854, it too was annexed on failure of heirs. The Gavilg^arh hills, in the extreme south-west, formed part of the Nizam's territory of Berar ; but that also has for many years been under British management. With the establishment of a strong government the hill-men soon proved how greatly they were maligned when described as " savage and intractable." Since they first came under our rule there has not been an outbreak among them of the least importance ; and, on the contrary, they have long since gained the character of being a remarkably submissive and law-abiding- people. The chiefs were early secured in their feu- datory position, with the full proprietorship of such territories, both in the hills and in the plains, as they ■could establish a title to ; and for many years they were 16 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. left almost to themselves in the management of their internal affairs. Our early administrators were too fully occupied with the work of restoring prosperity in the open country to have much time to spare for the Gond and liis wildernesses ; and thus we find that the interior of their country remained an almost unexplored mystery up to a very recent period. Two and a half centuries ago the great Akber knew nothing of the Gonds but as a " people who tame lions so as to make them do anything they please, and about whom many wonderful stories are told ; " " and within the last twenty years even they have been described as o-oinsc naked, or clothed in leaves, livino- in trees, and practising cannibalism. "So lately as 1853, when the great trigonometrical survey of India had been at work for half a century, and the more detailed surveys for some thirty years, Sir Erskine Perry, addressing the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, wrote : 'At present the Gondwana highlands and jungles com- prise such a large tract of unexplored country that they form quite an oasis in our maps. Captain Blunt's interesting journey in 1795, from Benares to Eajamandri, gives us almost all the information we possess of many parts of the interior.' "t Till within a few years, " unexplored " was written across vast tracts in our best maps ; and, though lying at our very doors, un- explored in reality they were. With few exceptions, the civil officers of those days never dreamt of pene- trating the hilly portions of their charges ; and the writer is accpainted with one district containing some * Gladwin's " Ayecn Akberee," vol. ii. p. 59. t " riitroiluction to the Central Provinces Gazetteer," by Charles Grant, Esq., C.S. INTRODUCTORY. 17 3,000 square miles of forest country, and inhabited by between 30,000 and 40,000 aborigines, in which one officer held charge for eleven years without once having put foot within this enormous territory. All accounts of such tracts were filtered through Hindu or Maho- medan subordinates, whose horror of a jungle, and its unknown terrors of bad air and water, wild beasts, and general discomfort, is such, as to ensure their paintino- the country and its people in the blackest of colours. But a new era dawned on these dark regions, when the conscience of the British rulers of India was awakened to the wants of their great charge, after a rebellion which nearly ousted them from their seat. Along with many more important provinces, this secluded region felt the benefit of the impulse then given to the administration of the empire. That great civiliser of nations — the iron road — was to be driven through the heart of its valleys ; and Manchester had prophetically fixed an eye on its black soil plains as a future field for cotton. Something stronger than the divided and limited agency of the several local officers who had been sitting still over its affairs was wanted for the guidance of a country and a people who possessed all the elements of a rapid progress. Accordingly, in 1861, were constituted what have since been known as the Central Provinces, under the chief commissionership of Mr. (now Sir Richard) Temple, of the Bengal Civil Service. Then were seen strange sights in that unknown land ; when distant valleys and mountain gorges, that had heard no other sound than the woodman's axe, echoed to the horse-hoofs of the tireless Chief, and his small knot of often weary followers ; when the solitary c 18 THE HKrHLA^'US OF CENTRAL INDIA. Goncl or Byga, clearing his patch of millet on the re- mote hill-side, was astonished by the apparition, on some commanding hill-top, of that veritable " Government " (Sirkar) in the flesh, which to him and his for several generations had been an abstraction, represented, if by chance he ever visited the district head-quarters, by a " Saheb " in his shirt-sleeves, sitting in a dingy oflace smoking a cheroot ! A Chief who thus, by dint of hard riding, insisted on seeing the requirements of the country for himself, was not long in perceiving that the highland centre of the province, with its extensive forests and mineral wealth, its limitless tracts of unreclaimed waste, and scanty, half- wild population, and its great capabilities for the storage of precious water, was worthy of a principal share of attention. It had already been whispered by a. few that its forests, calculated on by the projectors of the railway lines, then being constructed through the province, for their supply of timber, were likely to prove a broken reed, having been already exhausted by a long course of mismanagement ; and one of the first steps taken was the organisation of a Forest Department, for the detailed examination and conservation of the timber- bearing tracts. An ofl&cer* who had already interested himself in the question, and had travelled extensively in these reunions, and who was admirablv fitted for the task by physical qualities, and the possession of that faculty of observation which is not to be attained by the labours of the study, was selected as superintendent of the new department. During the five succeeding years several officers, quorum imusfui, were unremittingly employed * Captain. G. F. Pearson, of the Madias Army, now Conservator in the N.W. I'rovinces. INTRODUCTORY. 19 in the exploration of the 36,000 square miles which may be taken to be the area of the central hills, besides doing much to examine an almost equally extensive tract of low-lying forest in the south of the province. In later years the regular civil officers of the district, those employed in the land revenue settlement, sur- veyors, missionaries, and many others, have traversed many j^arts of these mountains ; and a great mass of information respecting their physical character and in- habitants has been accumulated, which, although of very unequal value, is yet a mine of useful ore from which much good metal may be extracted. Much of this has already been printed in the form of official Reports ; and the cream of it has been abstracted into a Gazetteer of the Central Provinces, the Introduction to which, from the pen of Mr. Grant, late Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, is a resume of the history of the province, admirable for its conciseness and research. Good ma23s of all but the remotest tracts have also now been made available ; and statistical information of all sorts is annually prepared with much care and made public by the Government. My design, then, in thus venturing before the public, is not that of attempting to rival these most complete official documents in accuracy or extent of information, but rather to present, in a more popular and accessible form, the lighter and more picturesque aspects of a country in which an increasingly large section of our countrymen take an interest. Though most of w^hat I shall have to say is founded on, or corroborated by my own observation during many years of acquaintance with the region described, I shall not refuse to avail myself oi" well-authenticated material collected by others. 20 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. The highland region is comprehended within eleven of the nineteen districts into which the province has been subdivided for administrative purposes. A portion of most of these districts lies also in the adjacent plains, either to the north or south of the hills, a judicious arrangement, which combines in one jurisdiction the hill and the plain people who have dealings together. The total area of these districts is, in round numbers, 44,000 square miles, of which about 11,000 are under culti- vation, and the remainder waste. Where such extensive mountains are included, it will not be surprising to find that of this large unreclaimed area, about 20,000 square miles are estimated to be wholly incapable of tillage, the remaining 13,000 being probably more or less fit for im- provement. These figures are obtained by the returns of the department employed in what is called the "settle- ment of the land revenue." * Few readers will require to be told that in India the great mass of the land has always paid a tax to the Government (which is really of the nature of a rent- charge which had never been alienated by the original proprietor of all land — the State) ; and in these provinces most of the hill-chiefs even w^ere found, on the country coming into our hands, to be liable to the land tax, which in their case, however, was usually a very light one. During the times of anarchy which preceded our rule, the proper amount of this tax had become very uncertain, the assessment, in fact, having very much resolved itself into a struggle between the rulers and the ruled, "that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can." It was also by no means * The writer served for three years as settlement officer of one of these districts, and can vouch for the general accuracy of the statistics. JA'TKODUCTURY. 21 clear in many cases from whom the tax should be demanded, rights of property in land having fallen greatly into abeyance during a period when to claim the proprietorship was to invite spoliation and oppres- sion. Our strong and equable rule so greatly encouraged the arts of peace, that a population soon began to press upon the immediately available land ; and this circum- stance, together with the moderation and certainty of our land taxation, soon bestowed on property in land a value which it had never before possessed. Rival claimants then began to bring forward conflicting, and often long-dormant, claims to possession ; and the courts established for the ordinary business of the country were soon swamped by the number and complexity of these cases. It was found, too, on inquiry, that there had never really existed any clearly recognised right of property, in our sense of the term, which would give the agricultural classes a real interest in the improvement of their lands, while many classes of persons had been allowed to exercise very undefined powers over the whole of this immense area of unreclaimed land. The culturable wastes were becoming much in demand by enterprising settlers, a demand which the opening of the country by the railway promised to largely increase. Such operations were clogged by these uncertain claims, and thus the progress of the country was in danger. The forest question also became urgent, timber being required in large quantities by the railways, while a fear arose of the impending exhaustion of the whole forests of the country. Nothing could be effected in this direction either, until the question of title in these wastes should be determined. The Government then determined to appoint special ofl&cers for the settlement 22 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. of all these matters in every district of the province ; and after ten years of hard work, they have now been set at rest. Few persons can conceive the amount of personal labour, in the field and in the ofGce, involved in the settlement of one of these districts. Every village and hamlet has to be visited and every acre of land appraised and assessed ; tlie title of every claimant to any interest in the land has to be investigated from the beginning of time ; and finally a minute and accurate record of the whole f)rocess has to be drawn up, to form the sub- stantive law for the disposal of future cases in the civil and revenue courts of the district. The grand result, as afi"ecting rights and interests in the land, was, that where any title which could be converted into a right of property was established, the freehold, bearing liability to the fixed Government rent- charge, was bestowed on the claimant ; while all land to which no such private title could be established was declared to be the un- hampered property of the State. Most of the hill-chiefs were admitted to the full ownership of the whole of their enormous wastes, thouirh certain restrictions as to the destruction of the forests have here (as in all civilised countries) been imposed on these proprietors. Few parts of India present so great a range of interesting natural objects for investigation as this. Situated in the very centre of the peninsula, the ethnical, zoological, botanical, and even geological features of north and south, and of east and west, here meet and contrast themselves. As has been noticed above, two distinct streams of the so-called Indian Aryans, approaching from Northern and Western India, here meet and intermingle, difi'ering considerably in appearance, in character, and in speech. Where the INTKODUCTORY. 25 land has been suitable for their agricultural processes, the orioinal dwellers of the land have been driven out o to the central hills ; and there we find them in several tribes, which yield to the investigator points of con- nection with several branches of the human race. The total population of the tracts I have included in this sketch is about four and one-third millions, of whom about three and one-third millions are Aryans, and one million only belong to aboriginal races. The great majority of these are the Gonds, who have given their name to the country, and who are distri- buted in greater or less density over the whole of the hilly portion of the tract. The infallible test of language shows that the Gonds belong to the same family of mankind as the Tamil-speaking Dravidians of Southern India.''' In the extreme north-east of the tract are found the tribe known in the Bengal hill-tracts as Kols, a race closely allied to the Santals and other tribes of the north-east ; and in the very centre of these high- lauds, on the high plateaux of Puchmurree and Gavil- garh, surrounded and isolated by the Gonds, are found another race, called Kurs or Korkus, whose language and general type are almost identical with these Kols and Santals, though they themselves are utterly unaware of the connection. All these Kolarian tribes differ radically in language from the Dravidian Gonds ; and some connection has been traced between them and the aboriginal races of countries lying to the east of India. Further to the east again, in the Mykal range, and like * A supposed connection Ijetween the Gonds and the Brahiiis, a Mahomedan tribe on the Sindh frontier, ])ased on the correspondence of a few words in their hmguages, does not appear to bear the test of a closer examinatiim. 24 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. the Korkus imbedded among the Guilds, is found a small body of Bygas, who have not yet been traced either to the Kolarian or the Dravidian stock. They present, from many circumstances to be afterwards noticed, the most curious ethnical problem of all. Less raised above the condition of the mere huntincr savage than any, and clinging to the most secluded solitudes, they have yet entirely lost all trace of their own lan- guage, and speak instead a rude dialect of the tongue of the Aryan immigrants. They present some points of affinity to the Bheels of Western India, of whom also, in the extreme west, some 20,000 are reckoned in this cauldron of peoples. The number of the aborigines is completed by about 25,000 souls, forming the fag-ends of tribes who have lost all semblance of distinct cohe- sion, without language or territory of their own. Which of these entirely distinct families are the autochthones of the land, or which of them first settled here, may possibly never be known. None of them have any reliable tradition of • their arrival ; and no evidence bearing on the subject, beyond what has been already mentioned, has been discovered. It is not within the scope of my present purpose to attem]3t any elaborate investigation into the ethnical history or pecu- liarities of these tribes. The evidence yet recorded is too scanty to yield valuable results ; and such has been the admixture of their customs, religion, and language with those of the Hindus, that it is improbable now that much of their original distinctive peculiarity re- mains to be discovered. Yet there is much that is curious and interesting in their present condition, gradually being absorbed as they are in the vast mix- ture of races composing modern Hindiiism ; and a grave INTRODUCTORY. 25 problem remains unsolved in the question of our duty towards these races as a Government. What I have to say on these points will find a place further on. The region is also remarkable as forminof the meet- ing-ground of some forms of vegetable and animal life, which seem to be characteristic of North-eastern and South-w^estern India. The principal forest-tree of upper India is the Sal {Shorea rohusta), a tree whose habit it is to occupy, wdiere it grows at all, the whole area, almost to the exclusion of others. It thus forms vast forests in the lower Himalaya, and covers also the greater portion of the hilly region to the south of the Gangetic valley. From the latter tract it stretches along the table-land of the subdivision of Bengal called Chota Nagpiir, and thence extends into the Central Provinces in two great branches, separated by the open cleared plain of Chattisgarh. The southern branch reaches as far as the Godavari river, and the northern embraces the eastern half of the highlands I have described, both branches ceasing almost exactly at the eightieth parallel of east longitude. To the west of this the characteristic and most valuable forest-tree is the Teak [Tectona grandis), which is not found at all in Northern India, or Bengal, and but scantily in the Central Provinces to the east of 80° longitude. The Teak-tree is, however, not so exclusive in its habit of growth as the Sal, appearing rather in the form of scat- tered clumps among other forms than as the sole occu- pant of large areas. Some explanation of this peculiar disposition of these two timber trees may perhaps be found in their habits of growth and relation to various soils. The Sal is a tree possessed of a remarkable power of propagating 26 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. itself, shedding au enormous number of seeds, at a season (the commencement of the rains) when the usual jungle fires have ceased, and which sprout almost imme- diately on their reaching the ground. On the other hand, the Teak seeds after the rainy season, and the seeds themselves are covered by a hard shell, which must be decomposed by long exposure to moisture and heat before they will germinate. This necessitates their exposure throughout one hot season, when the whole of the OTass covering; the ground below is burnt in the annual conflagrations. Thus a large percentage of the seeds of the Teak never germinate at all. It is clear, then, that if these two species were growing together, on soil equally suitable for both, the Sal must possess an immense advantaoe in the " struo^e-le for life" over the Teak. And if to this natural advantage be added an adventitious one, in the fact that the Teak is much more generally useful to man — particularly to man in a primitive state — as is really the case, there seems to be a sufficient reason why the Teak should disappear before its rival in tracts where the latter has obtained a footing and is equally suitable to the soil and climate. Now an examination of the tracts on which these trees are found in Central India shows that, while the Teak does not appear to shun any particular geological formation, it thrives best on the trap soils which predominate in the south and west of the province. But the Sal, on the other hand, clearly shuns the trap formation altogether. Not only is it unknown within the great trappean area to the west of the eightieth degree of longitude, but even to the east of that line, in its own peculiar region, it does not grow where isolated areas of the trap rocks are found. Further, I believe that in no part of India I2s^TliODUCTORY. 27 where this tree grows is there any of the trap formation. With the exception only of this volcanic rock, the Sal appears to thrive on any other formation, being equally abundant within its own area, where primitive rocks, or sandstones, or lateritic beds predominate. Thus I believe that the Sal, where the soil is suitable — that is, where there are no trap rocks — has exterminated the Teak, of which it is a natural rival. In other parts of India, where the Teak does not meet with this rival, as in Malabar and Burma, it flourishes on the soils from which it is here excluded by the Sal. The general con- clusion appears irresistible, but sharp contrasts perhaps best illustrate such peculiarities. Many such might be mentioned, but two in particular are very noticeable. Within the Sal region, in the hills immediately to the east of the town of Mandla, there is a considerable area covered by Teak, to the total exclusion of the Sal. The whole of this region is composed of a trap overflow ; and all around it, as soon as the granitic and lateritic forma- tions recommence, the Sal again entirely abolishes the Teak. Again, within the area of the trap and Teak, in the valley of the Denwa river, 150 miles west of the furthest limit of the general Sal region, is found a soli- tary isolated patch of the latter, occupyiug but a few square miles. Here the Sal grows on a sandstone formation. It is surrounded on three sides by trap rocks, and there it entirely ceases, and is supplanted by the Teak as the principal timber tree. But how^ to account for this small and unimportant outlier of the great Sal belt ? To maintain our theory, some link to connect them together should be found. I think that a hypothesis, much less extravagant than many which are introduced into such arguments, will do so. Towards 28 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDL4. the fourth side of the Sell patch in the Denwa valley lies the great open plain of the Narbada, into which the sandstone formation extends, and passes on along with primitive rocks, and with little interruption from the trap, right up to the main body of the Sal forest at the head of the Narbada valley. The S;il, it is true, ceases in the open Narbada valley, but so does all forest, the country haviug been completely cleared and cultivated for many generations. It is not then a very violent assumption to suppose that the Sal forest at one time extended down the Narbada valley as far as the Denwa, and that, when the country was cleared, this little patch alone was left securely nestled under the clitfs of the Mahadeo range, in the secluded valley of the Denwa, into which there was no road until within the last few years. These are strange facts. But it would be still more strange if a corresponding distribution of animal life could also be demonstrated. Somethinu: of the kind is really almost possible. Equally with the Sdl tree, several prominent members of the Central Indian fauna belong peculiarly to the north-eastern parts of India. These are the wild buffalo (Buhcthis Ami), the twelve- tined " swamp " deer {Rucervus Duvaucellii), and the red junglc-fowi [Gall as fevrufjineus). All these are plentiful within the area of the great Sal belt, but do not occur to the west of it, excepting in tJie Sal patch of the Denwa valley, where the two latter, though not the buffalo, again recur. In the Denwd valley there is but a solitary herd of the swamp deer, I believe ; the red jungle-fowl are not so numerous as the rival species, 6'. Sonneratii, which replaces it in the west and south of India ; and it is not surprising INTRODUCTORY. 29 that tlie wild buffalo should have disappeared when his range had been reduced, by the clearance of the intermediate forest, to the narrow limits of this small valley. So large and prominent an animal requires a much larger range than deer and birds ; and there is no part of the surrounding country suitable for his habits until we reach the Sal tracts again, though very probably the extensive black soil plains of the Narbada valley were so before they were cleared. In corroboration of the probability of his formerly having extended further down the valley than at present, skulls and horns have been found in the upper gravels of the Narbadd in no way differing, except in superior size, from those of the existing species. Their greater size is not surprising, as they are not larger than the horns still occasionally met with in Assam, where also the average size is now rapidly diminishing under the attacks of sportsmen. Two other large representatives of the eastern and western faunas, the wild elephant and the Asiatic lion, also appear to have formerly extended far into this region. In modern times, however, the advance of cultivation and the persecutions of the hunter have driven them both almost out of the country I am describing. The former, in the time of Akber (as is ascertained from Abiil Fuzl's chronicles), ranged as far west as Asirgarh, but is now confined to the extreme east of the province. Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador from James I. to the Court of the Great Mogul, in the seventeenth century, speaks of the lion as being then common in the Narbada valley. It is now seldom heard of further east than Rajputana ; although a solitary specimen sometimes appears in their old haunts further 30 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. east. A lion was killed in the Sa^'ar district in 1851, and another a few }'ears ago only a few miles from the Jubbulpiir and Alahabad railway. The hoGf-deer {Axis loorcimis) I have never met with in the west of the province, nor is it very numerous even in the east, though very common in the Sal tracts of Northern India. The black partridge (Francolinus vulgaris) of Northern India does not extend into these provinces at all, its place being taken by the painted partridge {F. pictus), a very closely allied species. The great imperial pigeon of Southern India does not, I think, cross the Narbadd, to the north, thou2;h not uncommon in the hio^her forests to the south of that river. Scientific research amon^x the minor forms of animal and vec^etable life (for which I have had neither the time nor the knowledge) may possibly elicit many confirmations of tbe law of distribution I have thus roughly stated from observations that have presented themselves to me as a forester and a sportsman. I need here only indicate another matter in connec- tion with this subject. It has already been stated that a tribe called Korkiis, closely connected with what is called the Kolarian stock, which is represented by the Kols and Sdntals of Bengal, is found embedded among the Gonds of these central hills. Now the commencement of the range of this tribe precisely agrees with the isolated patch of the Sal forest in the Denwa valley ; and their nearest relatives of the same stock are the Kols of the country to the north of Mandld, where the Sd-l forest again commences. Thus we have an outlier of the human tribes of Eastern India existing along wdth an outlier of its vegetable and animal forms, and the country between the whole INTRODUCTORY. 31 three and their nearest congeners occupied by other forms. It is a most singidar coincidence ; and such must be my excuse for devoting so much of my space to what must be to many an uninteresting discussion. I have said that at the time the Central Provinces were constituted, little was accurately known regard- ing the forest resources of their vast w^aste regions. It had, indeed, been suspected that the projectors of the railways had over-calculated the possible supply ; but it was little guessed that the exhaustion had gone so far as really proved to be the case. In another place will be found an account of the system of cultiva- tion of the hill-tribes, who had for centuries devastated the forests, by the cutting and burning of their best timber to form ashes to manure their wretched fields of half-wild grain. This was itself almost sufficient to have proved the ruin of the forests, but other causes had not been absent. The most valuable timbers for the railway and other useful purposes are the Teak and the Sal ; indeed, no others have been found to be really lasting when subjected to the great and sudden variations of an Indian climate. The Teak tree is perhaps the most generally useful in the whole world. In combined strength, lightness, elasticity, and endurance there is none to compare with it. At the present day its uses cover a wider range than those of any other timber, from the handle of an axe in its native forests to the backing of an ironclad in the navy of England. But it is unfortunate also that it is the easiest of all timbers to fell, and makes better firewood and charcoal than any other. It is little wonder, then, that on it almost exclusively, where found, had fallen the weight of the people's requirements, ever since the country 32 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. was first populated by civilised tribes. I have already said that it is a most difficult tree to reproduce, the seeds being exposed to the extremities of danger before they have the opportunity to germinate. The seedlings also, with their great dried leaves like so many sheets of tinder, are more exposed to injury by fire than those of any other tree. Thus the Teak had everywhere been mercilessly cut down, and had to struggle with the most adverse circumstances to maintain a footing at all. Over great tracts, where it probably once grew, it has been utterly exterminated, giving place to a " shoddy aristocracy " of such worthless species as the Boswellia, which no one would dream of cutting, and on which nature has bestowed all the indestructible vitality of a weed. The Teak has but one rare and valuable property, by means of which it has alone continued to survive at all in many places. However much it may be cut and hacked, if the root only be left, it will continue to throw up a second growth of shoots, which grow in the course of a few years to the size of large poles. This is the sort of timber which was chiefly in demand for the small native houses before the introduction of our great public works ; and thus, perhaps, may be explained the apathy with which the native Governments witnessed the destruction of the forests of large timber. A further reference to this matter will be found further on. The Sal-tree, again, as I have explained, possesses a much stronger vitality as a species than the Teak ; though from its liability to heartshake, dry-rot, and boring by insects, as well as its want of all power (like most resinous trees) of throwing out coppice wood, the individual trees are much more perishable than the INTRODUCTORY. 33 Teak. It is also not so generally useful, particularly for minor purposes, being hard to fell, of coarse grain, and making very inferior charcoal. It, however, yields a gum-resin valuable in commerce, and this has led to a very great destruction of the Sal forests. Again, the Sal tracts were very inaccessible from the populous regions, the nearest point where any great supply could be had for the railway being about a hundred miles, by a bad land route. This distance has up to the present time proved an insurmountable obstacle to the general utilisation of the Sal timber on the railway works. The supply of this timber is almost inexhaustible ; and a stronger commentary on the commercial value of easy communications could not be found than this, that the railways have found it cheaper to import pine sleepers from Norway, and ironwood from Australia, than to carry the Sal timber growing within a hundred miles of their line.* There is somethino; wrono^ where this is the case ; and that something is the want of a good road into the Sal regions from the railway at Jubbulpiir, which road should have been made, for many other reasons besides this, long ago. So much for the Sal forests. As regards the Teak, the supply available for railway uses had already been much reduced from the causes mentioned. A good deal was, however, still left in the remoter forests, where communications were not so easy ; and the forests, if properly taken in hand, might have yielded a stead}^ supply of large timber for many years. But unfortu- nately the grave mistake was now made of announcing * I would not be understood to say that no Sal timber has been used ; but its cost as conijvared with the imported material has been greater. 34 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. that after a certain^ time the forests would be brought under Government management and strictly conserved. This was the death-blow to the remainder of the Teak throughout the northern parts of the tract. The railway contractors, and numerous speculators, foreseeing the value that timber was likely to acquire, owing to rail- way operations and the closing of the forests, then went into the jungles with bags of rupees in their hands, and spread them broadcast among the wild tribes, with instructions to slay and spare not — to fell every Teak tree larger than a sapling that they could find, and mark them with their peculiar mark. It was only too faithfully done ; and scarcely anything that was accessible escaped the axe. Now came delay in the railway works, failure of the contractors, and want of money. The cut timber was abandoned wholesale where it lay. Teak wood is full of oil, and burns readily after lying for a short time. The jungle fires occurred as usual in the long dry grass where the logs were lying, and the great majority of them were burnt ! The exact amount of the destruction can never be known. For years afterwards, when exploring in the forests, we continued to come on the charred remains of multitudes of these slaughtered innocents, most of them being quite immature and unfit for felling at any time. All that were worth anything were saved by the Forest Department in after years, and the value even of these amounted to many lacs of rupees. They were not a hundredth part of those that were cut, which should probably be reckoned by millions rather than thousands. The injury done to the forests and to the country by this most mistaken measure may never be recovered ; certainly it cannot be recovered in less than two generations of the people's life. Such was INTRODUCTOEY. 35 one of the most material results of the utter iofnorance of the administrative officers of that period regarding everything connected with the wilder portions of their charge. The mischief had been completed, and most of the timber speculators had bolted from their creditors, leaving their logs smoking in the forests, before the formation of the Central Provinces, and ere the Forest Department had entered on their labour of exploring and arranging for the protection of what was still worth looking after. Succeeding chapters will give some ac- count of such of these explorations as the writer was engaged in, and of the penalties and pleasures that accompanied the early investigations in these Central Indian forests. r> 2 CHAPTER II. THE NARBADA VALLEY. Acting ou instructions I proceeded to tbe Pucbmurree (Paclimarlii) Lills — the lofty block I have described as crowning the Sdtpura range to the south of the Narbada river. There the centre of our operations in that ex- tensive forest region was to be fixed ; a permanent forest lodge was to be built in the heart of the country of the Gonds and Korkiis, whose interests we were to endeavour to unite with our own in the preservation of the remnants of the fine forests that clothed the slopes of their hills. The country to be explored was little known ; but it was sufficiently ascertained that plenty of rough work w^as before us in overcominor the obstacles presented by the rugged nature of the land and its inhabitants. The organisation of such a camp as is admissible in such a wild country, occupies no great time. Since the return of my regiment to quarters a year or so before, I had been almost constantly out on detachment duty, or on shooting excursions ; and had added little to the modest properties I found myself possessed of at the close of some three years of camping out in the sub- Himalayan Terae, and subsequent hunting up of skulk- THE XARBADA VALLEY. 37 ing rebels over the stony wastes of Bandelkand. There are two ways of travelling in such tracts. The one is to take a full equipment of the large tents and their luxurious furnishinfifs, which render marchinor about in India, under ordinary circumstances, so little attended by hardship, or even by inconvenience ; a corresponding train of servants and baggage-animals ; and a small army of horse and foot as a protection. Such a camp will perhaps number from fifty to eighty men, and half that number of animals of sorts. An array like this may be allowable or even proper for the civil officer, who has the dignity of his office to maintain, while traversing slowly a populous and well-supplied district of the plains. But the hardship of such an infliction on scattered tribes of poor and resourceless aborigines is sometimes forcibly brought home to the invaders, by finding the country, as they advance, utterly deserted in their track. When I come to describe the extreme poverty in resource of these outlying tracts, this circumstance will perhaps be more easy to realise. In my shooting excursions I had always marched with only a single small tent, about eight feet square, of the sort called a Fell, which is composed of two or three thicknesses of common double-thread country cloth, sewn together, and thrown over a ridge-pole on two uprights, all of the hollow (female) bamboo, which combines strength with lightness in the highest possible degree. It has no doors nor windov/s, but one of the gable ends (so to speak) is slit up the middle and fitted with stout laces in case of storms. In ordinary weather this end is kept open to the breeze except at night, and such a tent really affords ample protection and accom- modation to the traveller who has no heavy indoor 38 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. business to do, unless perhaps in the extreme hot weather when no trees are available to pitch it under. It affords room enousjh for a light foldino; bedstead of bamboo, a cane stool, a small folding table, a brass basin and stand, and your portmanteau and guns, which is all the furnishing that the mere sportsman or explorer should require. All this, with a good supply of such eatables and drinkables as are not to be had in the wilderness, will go on a good camel ; and such had been the extent of my personal requirements during many a rough expedition and hunting trip before the present march. On this occasion I added another tent twelve feet square, for the servants and a few newly-entertained native foresters who were to assist in my explorations ; and we were also furnished with a somewhat larger double-roofed tent by Government, which was to be pitched on the hill as a depot while the contemplated masonry lodge was being erected. To carry these additional impedimenta I had four or five of the rough little unshod and unkempt country ponies, called tattoos — hardy little villains, whom no amount of work can tire out of immediate readiness for a daily battle royal with teeth and heels the moment they are cast loose from their loads to graze. My own tent travelled as usual upon a camel. I don't think I would have ventured to take any other camel but "Junglee" into the country I was going to visit. Though the camel is far more at home in rough and difficult country than his ungainly-looking formation would lead one to suppose, there are many passes in the Mdhadeo hills where these animals cannot carry their loads, and some where they could not proceed at THE NARBADA VALLEY. 39 all. But " Juno'lee " was a camel amongr camels. Of the low, stout, shaggy breed used by the Cabul merchants, who annually during the cold season hawk the dried fruits of their country over the plains of India, I had found and caught him running wild and ownerless among the hills along the Cane river in Bandelkand. When out shooting I was astonished to see him start out of a thicket, and flee like a deer over rocks and ravines ; and a rare chase we had — sepoys, camel-men, and camp followers — before we got him into a corner, and bound his sprawling legs and threatening jaws with tent ropes, and led him away between a couple of tame loadsters, to have his nose rebored and be starved into a peaceful return to the uses of his race. He had probably been abandoned by some party of hard- pressed rebels, long enough before I saw him to have become perfectly at home in the jungles, and to have p'ot into first-rate condition. A better beast to scramble over breakneck ground with a heavy load I never saw. Poor Junglee ! he afterwards ended his days under the paw of a tiger in the Betiil forests during one of his periodical relapses into the life of freedom he had tasted in the wilds of Bandelkand. On the 11th of January, I bade adieu to the pretty little station of Jubbulpur (Jabalpiir), and to my comrades of the gallant 25th Punjabees. I was really sorry to see the last of the jovial manly company of Sikhs who composed the regiment, one of the first of the force that rose on the ruins of the Bengal army in 1857. But soldiering in India, in time of peace, is truly one of the dreariest of occupations ; and I con- fess I was far from doleful at the prospect of quitting 40 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. the bondage of parade routine for the free life of the forest ; and to think that — No barbarous drums sliall be my wakening rude ; The jungle cock shall crow my sweet reveill6. For the first five marches (eighty-two miles), my route lay down the open and well-cultivated valley of the Narbada. In the first march I went off the highway to pay a last visit to a remarkable scene of beauty, a few miles to the south of the road. What visitor to Jubbulpiir can ever forget the Marble Rocks ! In any country a mighty river pent up into a third of its width, and for a space of two miles or more boiling along deep and sullen between two sheer walls of pure white marble, a hundred feet in height, must form a scene of rare loveliness. J3ut in a bustling, dusty, Oriental land, the charm of coolness and cpiiet belonging to these pure cold rocks, and deep and blue and yet pellucid waters, is almost entrancing. The eye never wearies of the infinite variety of effect produced by the broken and reflected sunlight, now glancing from a pinnacle of snow-white marble reared against the deep blue of the sky as from a point of silver ; touching here and there with bright lights the prominences of the middle heights ; and again losing itself in the soft bluish grays of their recesses. Still lower down, the bases of the cliffs are almost lost in a hazy shadow, so that it is hard to tell at what jooint the rocks have melted into the water, from whose dej)ths the same lights in reverse order are reflected as clear as above, but broken into a thousand quivering fragments in the swirl of the pool. Here and there the white saccharine limestone is seamed by veins of dark green or black volcanic rock ; THE NAEBADA VALLEY. 41 a contrast which only enhances, like a setting of jet, the piiritv of the surrounding marble. The visitor GORGE IX THE NARBADA. THE MARBLE ROCKS. {From a Plwtograyh.) to these Marble Rocks is poled up through the gorge in a flat-bottomed punt as far as the " fall of smoke," where the Narbada makes her first plunge into the mighty rift ; and there is no difficulty in dreaming 42 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. away the best part of a day in the contemplation of this marvellous'^ scene of beauty. The only drawback to the peaceful enjoyment of the scene is the presence of numerous colonies of bees, whose combs are to be seen attached to most of the jutting ledges of the rocks on the left bank. In cold weather these insects seem to be inoffensive ; but from about March to July, anything disturbing or irritating them is almost certain to brinof them down in swarms on the offender. Their attack is of a most determined character ; and, not long before my visit, had proved fatal to an engineer employed in sounding the river for a projected crossing of the railway. It is believed that, on this occasion, the bees were roused by some of his companions above shooting at the blue rock pigeons that build in the cliffs, on which they attacked furiously this gentleman and a friend who were together in a boat below. After a while both gentlemen sought protection by taking to the water. The one by taking long dives under water, managed to elude the angry insects and hide in one of the few accessible clefts of the rock ; but the other, although a practised swimmer, was never lost sight of by the exasperated creatures, and in the end was drowned and carried down the stream. He lies buried above the cliff, under a marble slab cut out from the rock beneath which he met his death. The species of bee that frequents these rocks is, I believe, the common Bonhrd [Apis dorsata), which attaches its large pendent combs indiscriminately to such rocks and to the boughs of forest trees. There are two * A fiend in human shape has perpetrated a pun, in the visitors' book kept at tlie little rest-house above the clitf, which will here be sufficiently obvious. THE :N"AEBADA valley. 43 other species of bees common in Central India, both much smaller than the Bonhra, and neither of them inclined to act on the otfensive. The Bonhra is of very common occurrence in many forest tracts ; and I have myself several times been attacked by them. If attacked, the only resource is to rush into the nearest thick bush, break off a leafy branch, and lay about with it wherever there is an opening. On one occasion, when marching in the Mandla district, my baggage animals and servants were attacked, and scattered in every direction. Many of the men and animals were so severely stung as to be laid up for several days ; and one of the baggage ponies, who could not get rid of his load, was killed on the spot. Our kit was Hung about all over the jungle, and was not all collected for several days. On another occasion a valuable elephant was attacked, and driven away into the jungle ; and was so panic-stricken that she could not be recovered for days. I have heard of a large force of troops in the Mutiny days being routed, horse and foot, by a swarm of these terrible insects, in the neighbourhood of Lucknow. The honey and wax of this and the other species of bee are regular articles of export from our forests. The people who engage in the business of taking them seem to possess not a little of the art of the bee-master ; but they usually resort to more forcible measures, and rob the combs after suffocating the tenants at nioht with the smoke of torches. Their richest harvests are got from cliffs like tliis on the Narbada ; and some of their slender ladders of bamboo slips may usually be seen at the Marble Rocks, hanging from the edge of the cliffs over the abyss of water. The honey is inferior in quality to that of the domesticated bee of Europe ; and is sometimes even of a poisonous 44 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. quality, owing to the bees having resorted to some noxious flower. It is easy to procure a comb by slicing it off the face of the rock with a ritle l)all ; and I once had the gratification of thus operating on the colonies at the Marble Rocks, from a safe position on the opposite bank, sending several large comb-fulls to a watery grave in the depths below. The presence of these inhospitable bees renders it a matter for congratulation that the finest impression of the Marble Rocks is to be got '' by the pale moonlight." The bees are then quite harmless ; and, if the scenery has then lost something in brilliancy of contrast in its lights and shades, it has gained perhaps more in the mysteriousness and solemnity that well befit a spot seemingly created by Deity for an everlasting temple to himself. 1 am sorry to say that, in the old Jubbulpur days, we not unfrequently used to desecrate the sanctuary by unholy moonlight picnics, in which plenty of cham- pagne, brass bands, and songs that were sometimes very much the reverse of hymns, bore the most prominent part. It was very jolly, though, like most things that are wrong, A spot so naturally remarkable as the Marble Rocks could not escape sanctification at the hands of the Bralimans. Nothing more completely refutes the ac- cusation of want of taste for natural beauty, so often made against the Hindus, than their almost invariable selection of the most picturesque sites for their religious buildings. Many of the commonest legends of Hindii mythology have, as usual, been transplanted by the local priests to this neighbourhood. The monkey legions of Haniiman here leapt across the chasm on their way to Ceylon; and the celestial elephant of Indra left a THE XARBADA A^ALLEY. 45 mighty footprint in the white rock which is still exhibited to the devout pilgrim. Several picturesque temples dedicated to Siva crown the cliff on the right bank ; and by the river's edge is a favourite ghCit for the launching of the bodies of devout Hindus into the waters of Mother Narbada. A pleasure party to the rocks is apt to be not a little marred by a collision with one of these unsavoury objects in mid-stream. In India many a fair scene has its foul belongings and fell inhabitants ; and these lovely waters are polluted by ghoul-like turtles, monstrous fishes, and repulsive crocodiles, that batten on the ghastly provender thus provided for them by the pious Hindu. I believe the common il/«r/ar of the rivers and tanks of the Central Provinces is identical with that of Upper India {Crocodilus hiporcatus). The other species of Indian crocodile [Gavialis Gangeticus), the long-nosed Gavidl, is found in these provinces only in the Mahanadi river, which falls into the Bay of Bengal. The long still reaches of the Narbada all contain a goodly comple- ment of broad-snouted magars ; but, so far as I have observed, they do not attain in our rocky-bottomed rivers nearly to the dimensions I have seen in the slimy tributaries of the Ganges and Jamna. Eight or nine feet in length I take to be here about the limit of the magar's growth. Nor have I ever heard an authentic case of an adult human being having been killed by a crocodile in our rivers. Small animals are frequently carried off, and children sometimes disappear from the ghats in a suspicious manner. A dog employed in retrievinoj wild fowl is almost certain to be sooner or later made a meal of by the saurian. The fall of a duck in his neighbourhood generally brings the reptile near 46 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. the spot ; and many a shot bird thus disappears, as if by magic, before the e5^es of the gunner. But he will prefer your plump retriever, should he see him nearing the duck as he comes up. A dear old spaniel of mine named "Quail," possessed of an uncontrollable ''craze after the deuks," had so many narrow escapes of this sort that I never taught any of the four generations of his descendants I have possessed to retrieve from water. Although our crocodiles are thus little noxious to life, and may even advance some claims to merit as scavengers, it is not in human nature to refrain from destroying so hideous a reptile when a chance occurs. There is a spot in the gorge of the Marble Rocks where such a chance is seldom wanting. A flat and slightly hollowed rock-shelf at the water's edge invites to noon- tide repose these unlovely monsters of the deep. Cold weather and a warm sun seem to be the most favourable conditions. The place is on the left bank, some quarter of a mile above the rest-house ; and is marked by the droppings of the brutes, and of the aquatic birds that invariably watch over their slumbers. If now, as mid- day approaches, you will take your rifle and cross over below the house, and get you round to where a cleft in the rocks commands the spot, and if the place has not recently been much disturbed, you will shortly perceive (if he is not there before you) the seeing and smelling apparatus of one or more of the reptiles floating slowly in from mid-stream, like two bungs out of a cask. Nothing but experience will enable you to distinguish them at this distance from the pieces of drift wood always floating down the stream, so marvellously does nature protect even the most loathsome of her pro- ductions. The crocodile approaches the projected scene THE NARBADA valley. 47 of his siestca with immense caution. Loni,^ and keenly he reconnoitres it from a distance ; and if he has any suspicious he will sink and rise again and again during his approach. If not he will descend after the first good look, and then swim right in under water ; and the next thing you will see of him will be his rugged head lying on the ledge of rock below you, and a pair of fishy eyes slowly revolving in a last survey of the neigh- bourhood. This done, he will heave his huge bulk and serrated tail sideways out of the water, and lie extended along the edge, ready to " whammle" in again on the slis^htest alarm. You will aim at him in the centre of the neck, just where it joins the head ; and if you then shoot plumb-centre, but not otherwise, he will never stir. A different shot might eventually perhaps be fatal ; but this alone will prevent his reaching the water and escaping, to float up in a day or two a sickening mass of corruption. Nothing possesses such a frightful, " ancient fish-like smell " as a crocodile that has been ■dead for even a few hours. You can seldom g:et near enough to one of these creatures in a boat to kill him wdth certainty ; and the only certain plans are to watch for them at noon as I have described, or to bait with a noisy puppy dog in the evening, at which time they appear to be most on the feed. Few things are more enjoyable than marching along during the cold season in a rich open country like the Narbada valley with a well-appointed camp, and plenty of leisure to linger over the numerous objects of interest or amusement presented by such a tract. Very little of this sort of thing fell in the way of the forest officers of those days, however. Our work lay in the depths of distant forests, or at most in the half-reclaimed frontier 48 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. belt Ivino- between the hills and the plains, where timber transactions generally took place, and the chief depots for forest produce had been established. When by chance our direct route from forest to forest led across such an open region, our movements were as rapid as man and beast could make them ; and at the earliest possible moment we hurried again from the face of civilisation, like ghosts at cock-crow, to bury ourselves again in the depths of the wilderness. In after years, when employed in revenue work in a populous district, I saw the reverse of the picture. Marching by fair roads and easy stages, with a duplicate set of canvas houses (for such our large Indian tents really are), one of which goes on over-night and is pitched ready for your arrival in the morningf, in the deep shade of some mango grove, near a populous village which supplies all your wants ; starting after the morning cup of hot coffee to ride slowly along through green fields and grassy plains ; and looking on the forest-covered hills on the blue horizon only as an agreeable vanishing point in the landscape, or as unpleasantly complicating the questions of liquor excise and police administration ! It is amazing what a difference the point of view makes. The man who has dwelt for years among the forests, and their simple wild inhabitants, will regard nearly every question that arises in a wholly different light from him whose experience has lain only among the corn fields of the plains, and their tame and settled tillers. And each of them will probably arrive at a conclusion as little comprehending the whole bearings of the question as the other. The climate of Central India in the cold season, that is, from November to March, is almost perfect for the THE NARBADA VALLEY. 49 life of combined outdoor exercise and indoor occupation which forms the healthiest sort of existence in India. The midday sun, if a little hot for hard work in the open air, is just sufficient to make the temperature under canvas delis^htful, while the morninofs and eveninofs are cool and bracinoj, and the nisfhts cold enough to make several blankets a necessity. In January, ice will generally be found on w^ater that has been exposed all night. Nothing can, in my opinion, exceed the exhilarating effect of a march at such a season, with pleasant companions, through a country teeming with interest in its scenery, its people, and its natural productions, such as is this region of the Narbada valley. The valley was not long ago — not long, that is, in the history of countries — a hunting ground of the Gonds and other wild tribes who are now chiefly con- fined to the hills which surround it. At most, it could have been but scantily patched by their rude tillage before the arrival of the Hindu races, who have cleared its forests, driven the wild elephant that roamed through them to the far east, and covered its black soil with an unbroken stretch of wheat cultivation that strikes every visitor with admiration. In less than three centuries this has been done ; and yet it is the custom to say that India is an unprogressive country, that she has been standing^ still since the besjiunino; of history ! Everything shows that this country is still in its very youth. The people, strong-limbed and healthy, rejoicing in the rude abundance that falls to the lot of energetic races tillino; an almost virsrin soil. Tillinir it roughly, it is true, getting from it nothing approaching to the quantity of produce extracted by the denser 50 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. populations of long-reclaimed tracts from much inferior soils ; but still, tilling it in the way which is the most profitable to a scanty population with a poor accumula- tion of wealth and stock. The example of all new countries with much available land, even when, as in America, all the resources of capital and machinery are available, shows that a comparatively rough culture of a large area is more remunerative than the higher tillage of a smaller area ; and this alone is the cause of the rude state of agriculture still observed in this and many other parts of India. At present, plenty for all is the rule, poverty the very rare exception. Well-built houses, well-stocked cattle yards, and a general air of comfort and happiness, cannot fail to arrest the atten- tion in Hindu villages. It is true that the people of the soil, those of the Gonds who have preferred to stay and serve a Hindu master to a retreat to the hills, are poorly clad and housed, living like outcasts beyond the limits of the Hindu quarter ; but they, too, are at least sufficiently fed ; and nothing but their own innate apathy and vice prevents them from receiving a greater share of the surrounding plenty. As the influence on the aborigines in the past, and at the present time, of their contact with these invading Hindu races will afterwards form matter of considera- tion, it is important to understand of what material these Hindu races themselves are really composed. They have generally been comprehended in the category of "Aryan," as distinguished from the "Tauranian" peoples who are believed to have preceded the fair- complexioned Aryan invaders from Upper Asia in the occupation of Hindostan, and among whom are included the remnants of wild tribes still found in the hills. THE NAKBADA valley. 51 But it needs but little observation of tliese Hindu races to perceive that they themselves have long been subjected to some influence which has greatly modified the original high Aryan type — a type which includes the noblest races of mankind ; the Caucasian of Europe, the Persian of high Asia, and the Sanscrit-speaking "fair-skinned" people who entered India from the north uncalculated ages ago. That influence cannot have been one of climate only, which would have aff"ected all their descendants equally ; whereas we see existing the greatest range of diversity, from the light- coloured, noble-featured Brahman of the extreme north- west to the black and negro-like chamar or pariah of the east and south. Everything shows that the cause has been a mino-lino- of the immio^rant race with the inferior Tauranian tribes whom they found occupying the soil before them. To judge from physical ap- pearance, few but the highest castes of Northern India can have any claim to purity of Aryan blood ; and the admixture of indigenous blood, as indicated by colour and feature, appears to be greater and greater the further we proceed from the seat of the original Aryan settlements in the north-west. It can scarcely be doubted, then, that the modern Hindus are a composite race, resulting from the absorption of a wave of Aryanism in a great ocean of peoples of a far inferior type — the type, in fact, represented by such of them as have still remained undiluted in their inaccessible hills. The force of the wave diminished as it proceeded ; and the gradations in the extent of its influence are now so subtle, that it is hard to say where the line should be drawn to denote a preponderance of the one element over the other. The difiiculty is further increased by E 2 52 THE HIGHLANDS OF CEXTKAL I^s^DlA. the circumstance that the Aryan Language, customs, and beliefs appear to have been carried far beyond any perceptible influence of the Aryan blood, so that whole races, who show little or nothing of the latter, have become thoroughly imbued with the former. Not, however, without notable modification have the Aryan language, religion, and customs thus permeated the masses of the inferior races. In lanoruagje, while the tongue of the most northern high-caste races has changed from the classical Sanscrit scarcely more than was in- evitable from the wear and tear of use throug-h such lonsj ages, that spoken by the masses of lower physical type has suffered so radical an alteration that a large proportion of its vocables, in some parts as much as half, are not traceable to Sanscrit at all ; while in Southern India, where the aboriginal type has been little modified, purely aboriginal languages, unconnected with Sanscrit, are still spoken. Still greater has been the effect on the Aryan religion of contact with these lower races. The gods of the primitive Aryans have almost disappeared from practical recognition. The backbone of the original system survives in its priesthood and ceremonial, just as the backbone of the language survives in the gram- matical forms of the invaders. But, as the vocables of the tongue have frequently been adopted from the aborigines, so probably have the popular gods of the pantheon been largely drawn from aboriginal sources. No religious system possesses such facility for prose- lytising as a polytheism ; and history shows that when two such systems meet, there is nothing to stand in the way of their coalescing but the rivalry of their priests. Here there probably was no such rivalry. To judge from those which remain, the aborimnal tribes had no THE is^ ARE AD A VALLEY". 53 regular priesthood, and no systematic mythology. They had only inchoate gods, without a history, and numerous as the natural objects whose forces they represented. And when the tribes accepted the Hindu priest and his ceremonial, the priest found no difficulty in admitting to his accommodating pantheon a sufficient number of these to satisfy the conscience of the aboriginal Pantheist. The leading deities in the existing Hindu pantheon, Siva and Vishnii, were wholly unknown to the early Aryans ; and even they themselves are at the present day scarcely worshipped at all, in their radical forms, by the great body of the people, but only in the form of mythological consorts and sons, and incarnations in many forms, most of which are probably adaptations of the gods and heroes of the races thus absorbed within the accommodating pale of Hinduism. Nor is this all. Even such secondary forms of the regular gods of the Brahmans receive but little of the real devotion of the people, which is paid rather to tribal and village deities, unheard of in recognised mythology, and to the Lares and Penates of the householder. And these, the Brah- man priest, who is paid for his services, has no scruple in recognising as orthodox. Superj&cial inquirers have quoted Hinduism as a faith which cannot admit of a proselyte ; but nothing could be more completely the reverse of the truth. Anything in the way of new gods may be brought by new worshippers within the pale of orthodoxy, provided only that they agree to accept the dominion of the Brahman priest, together with the caste rules and ceremonial by means of which he exercises his power. It was, then, with a race thus already modified, and with a social and religious system which had thus 54 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. already engulfed the great mass of the indigenous nations of India, and which was still ready to absorb in a similar manner any number more of them, that the aborigines of Central India came in contact. What has been the result will be discussed in a future portion of this work. In a new country like this, few objects of antiquarian interest attract the attention of the traveller. Allusion has already been made to the traces of isolated settle- ments of Aryans in the country, who had all been swept away again, or had been absorbed in the indigenous element surrounding them, before the true history of the country opens; and a few shapeless ruins still remain to mark the sites of some of these settlements "in the unremembered ages." Generally, however, even the religious edifices, which in the East seem to outlast all others, will be found to be of very modern date, and of little pretension to interest. They will frequently be met with standing on the embankment of some water- tank, covered with the lotus in full bloom, and shaded by great trees of mango, tamarind, and fig. Very often the camp will be pitched alongside of them, for the sake of the fine shade ; and the wild fowl and snipe that frequent the tanks will probably form an attraction, to the sportsm^an at least, superior to the allurements of such poor antiquities. Snipe and wild fowl begin to arrive in these central regions of India, voyaging from the frozen wilds of Central Asia, early in October ; and, before the end of November, every piece of water and swampy hollow afibrds its continorent to the efun. The common teal,^* and the whistling teal,t are the most numerous, as well as the first to make their appearance. The lovely blue- * Querqtiedula crecca. f Dendrocijgna mcsuree. THE :J^ARBADA valley. 55 winged teal * is scarcely less common ; and of larger ducks, the red-headed pochard,t the wigeon,| the pintail,§ and the gadwall, || are found throughout the winter on nearly every tank of tolerable size. On the main rivers, and on the larger reservoirs, such as those of Bhandara and Lachora, in Nimar, which, though owing their existence to the hand of man (the giants of past days, who knew the requirements of India better than their successors), yet approach the dignity of lakes, many other species of wild fowl will be found, including that king of ducks, the mallard,Tl the common gray goose,*'* and the black-backed goose.tt The latter species is extremely common ; the others, which are much superior for the table, are comparatively infrequent. Numerous wading birds, storks, herons, and cranes, haunt every pool and marsh. Few of these offer much temptation to the sportsman, except the Demoiselle crane,|| generally known as the Coolen, which is much sought after, and is therefore difficult to approach. Few extensive wheat or gram fields in the Narbadii valley will be found at this season without a flock of these delicious birds stalking across it, in the morning and evening, grazing on the young shoots. If encamped in the neighbourhood of a river or swamp, the traveller will probably be aroused at day- break by the quavering and sonorous call of the giant Sarus crane,§§ a bird revered by the Hindus as a type of conjugal afi'ection. They are nearly always seen in pairs, and, should one of them be shot by the ruthless * Q. circia. H Anas hosclias. t Antlda ferina. ** Anser cinereus. X Mareca xyenelope. tt A. melarionotus. § Dafila acuta. %% Antliropoides virgo. II Chandlelasmus streperus. §§ Grus antigone. 56 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. gunner, the companion bird will return again and again to the spot, to hover and lament over its slain friend in a manner that generally prevails on the hardest hearted to grant immunity to the race for ever after. A contrast to this happy union of lovers is found by the Hindu in the Braminy ducks/'' which also associate in pairs, but, by a cruel fate, are compelled to pass their nights on the opposite banks of a stream, wailing forth their unavailing love in the melancholy " chukwa, chukwi," which few travellers by the rivers of India have failed to hear in the dusk of the evenino^. Their unfitness for the table, probably more than the Hindii adage against their slaughter, protects them from the gun. Of other winged game, the gray quail — best of Indian game birds, in my opinion — will be found in good num- bers in most grain fields. I have never seen them here in such swarms as in some parts of upper India, where eighty or a hundred brace may be bagged in a day ; but the sport is none the worse for that. Twenty brace is a first-rate bag in Central India, and generally the sports- man has to be contented with much less. The common gray partridge, which closely resembles in appearance the English bird, abounds in many places. It hugs the vicinity of villages, and feeds foully. I have seen a covey of them run out of the carcase of a dead camel, and speed across the plain like so many hares. These nasty habits, and its skulking nature, much belie its appearance as a bird of game. Far diff'erent is the gallant painted partridge,t which here takes the place of the black partridge J of upper India. I have seen the latter in Bandelkand ; but I am positive that it nowhere occurs in the Central Provinces. The appearance of the two * Casarca ruhila. f Fi-ancolhms pidas, % F. vulgaris. THE NARBADA valley. 57 species is so alike, and their habits are so identical, that assertions to the contrary have no doubt arisen from mistake. No game bird could afford more perfect shooting than the painted partridge. Of handsome plumage, and excellent on the table^ his habits in the field admirably adapt him for the purposes of the gun. He frequents the outskirts of cultivation, in spots where bushes and grass-cover fringe the edge of a stream, for he seems to be very impatient of thirst. The proximity of some sort of jungle seems to be as necessary as the neighbourhood of crops. Morning and evening small coveys or pairs of them will be found out feeding in the stubble of the cut autumn crops, that latest reaped being the most likely find. On being disturbed they seldom run farther than to the edge of the nearest cover, from which, on being flushed, they rise like rockets, with a great ivhirr, straight up for twenty or thirty yards, and then sail away over the top of the cover to a distance of a few hundred yards ; this time plumping into the middle of the cover, from which it is not so easy to raise them again. This beautiful bird is most com- mon in the extreme west of the Central Provinces, and in good spots a bag of ten to fifteen brace to each gun may be made in Nimar and the Tapti valley. The most common way of shooting quail and part- ridges is by beating them out with a line of men ; but it is a poor sport compared to shooting them over dogs. I have used both pointers and spaniels in this sport. The former secure the best of shooting in the early morning and late in the evening, while the birds are out of cover and the scent good, and four hours' shooting may thus be had in the day. But a team of lusty spaniels is, I think, on the whole preferable, as they are useful also 58 THE HIGHLA^^DS OF CENTRAL INDIA. for many sorts of cover shooting where pointers could not be worked. They also keep their health better, and degenerate less in breeding than any other im- ported dog, which is probably due to their descent from a race originated in a warm climate. They make the best of all companions, and are not so liable to "come to grief " in many ways as larger dogs. Fresh imported blood is, however, required, at least once in every two generations, to keep all English sporting dogs up to their best in India. The spaniels should either be large Clumbers, or of the heavy Sussex breed, as a small dog like a cocker cannot jDcnetrate the jungle cover. The noble Clumber, otherwise faultless, has the fault for this particular purpose of giving no tongue on game ; I com- menced the breed, which I maintained for twelve years in India, with a strain of pure Clumber in the never-to- be-forgotten " Quail " — a dog that for looks and quality surpassed anything of the breed I can now discover in England. All his descendants were more or less crossed with Sussex or cocker blood ; but none of them ever gave tongue till the fourth generation, when symptoms of it began to appear. On the whole, then, I think I would prefer the heavy Sussex breed. On one occasion the whole of my spaniels were very nearly being "wiped out" by one of a class of accidents that must be looked for in India. I was shooting quail in a grain field near Jubbulj^iir, with "Quail," " Snipe," " Nell," and " Jess," when, on a sudden, they all began to jump violently about, snapping at what seemed to me to be a large rat. But coming nearer I made out that it was a huge cobra, erect on his coil, and striking right and left at the dogs. I lost no time in pelting them off with clods of earth, and then cut the brute's THE NARBADA VALLEY. 59 head off with a charge of shot ; when I fouDcl that the snake had been in the act of swallowing a rat, of which the hind-legs and tail were protruding from his jaws, so that his repeated lunges at the dogs had fortunately been harmless. All these spaniels were famous ratters, and had no doubt been attracted by the cobra's mouth- ful, for they generally had, like all dogs of any experience in India, a wholesome dread of the snake tribe. I never lost any of these dogs by an accident, though exposed to all the dangers of panthers, hyenas, wolves, suakes, and crocodiles; and all of them lived to a good age, in excellent health. As with men, English dogs keep healthy enough if properly treated in accordance with the climate. Of larger game, the principal animal met with in the settled parts is the black antelope, '^' which has probably followed the clearings made by the immigrant races. The aversion of this animal to thick uncleared jungle has made it, in the Hindii sacred literature, a type of the Aryan pale, of the land fitted for the occupation of the fair-skioned races ; and the appropriate seat of the devotee is still upon its black and white skin. It is too well known to require any minute description. Suffice it to say, that not even in Africa — the land of antelopes — is there any species which surj^asses the " black buck " in loveliness or grace. In Central India, although this antelope attains the fall size of body, the horns of the buck (the female is hornless and of a fawn colour) rarely exceed a length of 22 inches. I have shot one with horns 24^ inches, and seen a pair that measured 26 inches. The longest horns are probably attained in Giijerat, and about Bhurtpiir in Northern India. In all * Anfclnpe cervicapra. 60 THE HKxHLAXDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. the corn districts of Central India it is found in con- siderable herds, and does much damage to the young crops. I have seen herds in the fSagar country, im- mediately after the Mutiny of 1857, when they were little molested, which must have numbered a thousand or more individuals. A tolerable shot could at that time kill almost any number he chose. In most culti- vated districts, tracts of the poorer land are kept under grass for cattle-grazing, etc., and these preserves are generally the favourite midday resorts and the breeding- grounds of the antelopes. Thence in the evening they troop out in squadrons on to the cultivated lands in the vicinity ; and all the night long continue grazing on the tender wheat shoots, returning in the gray of the morn- ing to their safe retreat. Many will, however, remain in the fields the whole day, sleeping and grazing at intervals, unless driven off by the cultivators. In such places the voices of the watchers in the fields wdll be heard in the still night shouting continuously at the antelopes ; but they seldom succeed in effecting more than to move them about from field to field, doing more damage probably than if they were left alone, for a buck killed in the morning will always be found filled nearly to bursting with the green food. Although many of them are shot by the village shikaris at night, and more snared and netted by the professional hunters called Pardis (w^ho use a trained bullock in stalking round the herds to screen their movements), the resources of the natives are altogether insufficient, in a country favourable to them, to keep down the numbers of these prolific and wary creatures ; and it is a perfect godsend to them when the European sportsman hits on their neighbourhood ns a hunting-ground. THE I^AEBADA valley. 61 There are many ways of circumventing them. Living quite in the open they rely principally on the sense of sight for protection, although at times warned also by their power of smell. One way is to drive up to them in one of the bullock-carts commonly used in agriculture. The native shikari often sfets near them by creeping up behind a screen of leaves which he works before him. Where they have not been much harassed the European sportsman, in sad-coloured garments, can usually stalk in on them when passing between the grass plains and the crops. In the very early morning, if a station be taken up in their usual route, they are nearly sure to come within shot, the grunting of the bucks warning the sportsman of their approach some time before they emerge from the dark- ness. One of the most successful and interesting plans is to ride a steady shooting horse nearly up to the herd. When within say four hundred yards, slip off and walk on the off side of the horse in such a direction as will lead past the herd within shot, if possible on the down-wind side. If they have been so shot at in this way as to be shy of the horse, take a groom and pass them further off; and when a convenient bush or hillock intervenes drop behind, and let the man lead the horse on, passing well clear of the herd. They will probably be so intent on watching them out of the way, that you will generally be able to creep in on them without much difficulty. Shots at antelope in populous districts are seldom got much under 150 yards nowadays, which is, however, near enough for modern rifles to make sure W'Ork. One great advantage of employing a horse in stalking is that it will often enable you to follow and spear a wounded buck which 62 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. might otherwise escape. If you have a brace of good greyhounds in the distance ready to slip, the chances will be still better. A wounded buck often gives a beautiful run with greyhounds, which have never been known to catch an untouched and perfect antelope on fair hard ground, though under conditions unduly favourable to the dogs they have sometimes done so. A shooting horse, like several which I have possessed, who is quite steady under fire, does not need to be tied, and will come to call, is a perfect treasure for many sorts of sport in India. As in all good qualities, the Arab is the most likely to develop such a character ; but most horses are capable of being taught something of the business. Should neither horse nor hounds be at hand, a wounded buck should not be followed up too quickly. If left to himself he will probably lie down in the first cover he comes to ; and by watching the line he takes you may often follow up and secure him. In upper India they are frequently shot by ap- proaching them on a riding camel. The more bells and gay trappings he has on him the better, as the antelope on this plan fall victims to their curiosity and amazement. I brought down to Central India with me a trained camel, with which I had thus be- wildered many an antelope into rifle distance ; but after getting some dangerous tumbles, owing to the yawning cracks that form in the black soil in these provinces after the rains, I had to abandon the camel as a shooting vehicle. As a sport antelope-shooting palls upon the taste. There is too much of it, and it lacks variety. So I should think also w^ould be the case with much of the African sport we read of. THE NARBADA valley. 63 To the beginner in Indian sport, however, there is no pursuit more fascinating. The game being nearly always within sight, the excitement is maintained throughout the day's sport. Simple as it seems, it takes a grood man and a sjood rifle to make much of a bag when the antelope have been much disturbed. The old hand is apt to smile at the enthusiasm of the "griff" when he dilates on the glories of antelope- stalking ; but the time was when he too passed through the stage at which the acquisition of a particular long spiral pair of horns was more to him than the wealth of all the Indies, and when nothing impressed him so profoundly with the vanity of all human afi'airs as the miss of "a few inches" under or over, which so fre- quently terminated the weary stalk. Perhaps I may be allowed to quote a description of the pursuit of a master buck, written many years ago, when I myself was in the throes of the " buck fever." " I had frequently seen in my rambles over the antelope plains a more than ordinarily magnificent coal- black buck. I had watched him for hours through my ' Dollond,' but my most laborious attempts to reach him by stalking had as yet proved futile. His horns were perfection, of great size, well set on, twisted and knotted like the gnarled branch of an old oak-tree. As the sun glanced on his sable coat, it shone like that of a race- horse fit to run for the Two Thousand Guinea Stakes — in fact, he w^as the heau ideal of a perfect black buck. Of course, the more difficult the task appeared, the more determined was I that these superb horns should be mine, and that in future I would disregard every buck except the one. He was constantly attended by two does, to whom he confidently entrusted the duty of 64 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. watching over his personal safety — and faithful sentinels they were. They seemed to relieve each other with the precision of sentries, and clever indeed would be the stalker who could approach within many hundred paces ere the warning hiss of the watchful doe aroused the grand signior from his siesta. It was then grand to see the majestic air of the buck, as, after stretching his graceful limbs, he slowly paced towards the object of his suspicion, still too far distant to cause him any alarm. Now he stops, and, tossing his nostrils in the air, snufifs the breeze that might convey to his delicate sense the human taint. Now he lazily crops a blade or two of grass, or scientifically whisks a fly from his glossy haunch wath the tip of his horn ; anon he saunters up to one of his partners, and seems to take counsel regarding the state of affairs. Again, as some movement of the distant figure catches his eye, his sudden wheel and prolonged gaze show that, despite his careless mien, not for a moment has he lost sight of his well-known foe. But soon the does begin to take real alarm ; and after fidget- ing round their lord, as if to apprise him of the full extent of the danger, trot ofi" together tow^ards some other haunt. Now they halt a moment, and look round appealingly to the buck, and again with feigned con- sternation start off" at a gallop, every now and then taking imaginary ten-barred gates in their stride. At last the buck, after remaining behind a decent time to maintain his character for superior courage, follows them at a pace that mocks the eff'orts of every animal on the face of the earth but one — the hunting leopard. " Such was the invariable result of my best eflforts for upwards of a w^eek. I would not risk a long shot, as it might drive him for ever from that j)art of the THE NARBADA VALLEY. 65 country. His favourite haunt was a wide grassy plain, intersected here and there by dry watercourses, up which I had many a weary crawl, ventre a terre. I soon found out his usual feeding and drinking places ; and observed that to reach the latter he almost daily crossed a deepish dry nullah about the same place. This struck me as affording the means of circumventing him, so I took up my position in the nullah ; but as luck would have it, my buck took his water in some other direction for the next two days. Many other herds of antelope constantly passed within easy shot of where I was ensconced ; but not until I was almost giving up hope on the third day, and was taking a last sweep of the plain with my binocular, did the well-known form of the master buck greet my vision, as he slowly wound his way with his two inseparable companions towards the pool to which he had watched so many of his species passing and repassing in safety. "The wind was favourable, and the buck came steadily on till he arrived within a long rifle shot of where I was posted. Here he suddenly threw up his head, and, after standing at gaze for a few moments, turned sharp to the left and started off at a canter for a pass in the nullah, about a quarter of a mile from where I was. I knew he could neither have seen nor smelt me, and was at a loss to account for his sudden panic till, on turning round in disgust, there was the cause behind me, in the shape of a small parcel of does, which had evidently been returning from the water, but, having discovered my unprotected rear, were now pulled up in a body, and staring at me with an air which had tele- graphed the state of affairs to the old buck in an unmistakable manner. I felt very much inclined to 66 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDLi. sacrifice one of the inquisitive does to my just wrath, but preferred the chance of a running shot at the buck ; so off I started at a crouching run (somewhat trying to the small of the back) up the bed of the nullah, in the hopes that the buck might have pulled up ere he crossed, and would still afford me a shot. Nor was I mistaken, for, on turning a bend of the tortuous nullah, there he stood, broadside on, in all his magnificence, not eighty yards from my rifle ; but, alas ! who could shoot after a run, almost on all-fours, of some 500 yards or so? When I attempted to bring the fine sight to bear on his shoulder, my hand trembled like an aspen leaf, and the sight described figures of eight all over his body. There was no help for it, however ; he was moving away, and I mio^ht never have such another chance. So, almost in despair, I fired. I was not surprised to see the ball raise the dust a hundred yards or so on his further side, and with a tremendous bound of, I fear to say how many yards, straight in the air, away went the buck like an arrow from the bow. In for a penny, in for a pound ! Once fired at, I might as well have the other shot ; so stepping from my cramped position, I held my breath as I tried to cover his fleeting figure with the second barreL He had gained at least 150 yards ere I touched the trigger, but the ball sped true, and over rolled the buck in a cloud of dust. Short was my triumph, how- ever, for ere I had well taken the rifle from my shoulder he had regained his feet, and was ofl" with hardly diminished speed. It is very rarely that an antelojDe thus suddenly rolled over does not succeed in regaining his legs. Their vital power is immense, and nothing but a brain shot or broken spine will tumble them over for good on the spot. When shot in the heart they gene- THE N ARE ADA VALLEY. 67 rally run some fifty yards and then fall dead, and I much prefer to see an antelope go off thus, with the peculiar gait well known to experienced shots as the forerunner of a speedy dissolution, than to see even the prettiest somersault follow the striking of the ball. " In the present instance I watched the antelope almost to the verge of the horizon. Now and then he slackened his pace for a few seconds, and looked round at his wounded flanks, and then, as if remembering that he had not yet put sufficient distance between him and the fatal spot, he would again start forward with renewed, energy. The two does, as is generally the case when the buck is wounded, had gone off in a dif- ferent direction ; and were now standing on the plain, a few hundred paces from where I stood, gazing wist- fully from me to their wounded lord. Such are the scenes that touch the heart of even the hardest deer- stalker, and for a moment I almost wished my right hand had been cut off ere I pulled trigger on this the loveliest of God's creatures. " When he dwindled before the naked eye till he seemed as a black speck on the far horizon, I still con- tinued to watch him through my glass, in the hope that he mio;ht lie down when he thouo;ht himself concealed, in which case I might steal in and end his troubles by another shot. Suddenly I saw him swerve from his course, and start off in another direction at full speed. Almost at the same instant a puff of smoke issued from a small bush on the plain — the buck staggered and fell, and, many seconds afterwards, the faint report of a gun- shot reached my ears." The person who came to my aid in so timely a fashion was a native sportsman, whom I then saw for F 2 G8 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. the first time. He was more like the professional hunter of the American backwoods than any other native of India I have ever met. His short trousers and hunting- shirt of Mhowa green displayed sinewy limbs and throat of a clear red brown, little darker than the colour of a sun-burnt European. An upright carriage and light springy step marked him out as a roamer of the forests from youth upwards ; and the English double-barrelled gun, and workmanlike appointments of yellow sambar leather, looked like the genuine sportsman I soon found him to be. Many a glorious day did I afterwards pass with him in the pursuit of nobler game than black bucks. The chikdrd, or Indian gazelle,^ is another antelope very common in Central India. It is called often the " ravine deer " by sportsmen ; and, as regards the first part of the name, is so far well denoted. Its favourite haunts are the banks of the shallow ravines that often intersect the plain country in the neighbourhood of rivers, and seam the slopes of the higher eminences rising out of the great central table-land. These are generally thinly clothed with low thorny bushes, on the young shoots and pods of which it browses like the domestic goat. Of course it is wrong to call it a *' deer," which term properly belongs only to the solid- horned Cervidce. Considerably smaller than the black antelope, the gazelle also diff'ers much from it in habits. It prefers low jungle to the open plain ; and trusts more to its watchfulness and activity than to speed, which, however, it also possesses in a high degree. It is very rare to catch a gazelle, or still more a herd of them, ofi" their guard ; and it is surprising how, on the least * Gazella Benneitii. THE NAEBADA VALLEY. 69 alarm, the little creatures manage to disappear as if by magic. They have probably just hopped into the bottom of a ravine, sped along it like lightning for about a hundred yards, and are regarding you, intent and mo- tionless, from behind the straggling bushes on the next rising ground. Should you follow them up, they will probably repeat the same manoeuvre, but this time putting three or four ravines between you and them instead of one. They also resort to the cultivation to feed, though not so regularly as the black antelope ; and their numbers are not sufficient to do any notable damage. In the morning they may often be found picking their way back to the network of ravines, where they stay during the day. Should you disturb them at this time, they will most likely seek their cover at top speed ; and what that amounts to wall amaze you if you let slip a greyhound at them. Chikdrd have not yet learned the range of the modern " Express " rifle ; and consequently they still often let one get almost within the killing distance of the old weapon, and are easily knocked over with the " Express." The depth of their slender bodies is so small that a bullet must be planted in a space little wider than a hand's-breadth to make sure of stopping them. Shots are generally got at a distance of from 100 to 150 yards ; and the difficulty of such fine shooting at uncertain distances, together with their peculiar " dodginess " in keeping out of sight, makes the stalking of them a more difficult, and I think more interesting, sport than the pursuit of the larger antelope. Their art has little variety in it, however ; and there is something to the experienced eye in the features of the ground which will almost infallibly tell whereabouts one is likely to have stopped after his first 70 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. disapjDearance. Unless they have been seen to go clean away, they should always be followed up on the chance of beiusf found asfain. The last of the antelopes met with in the open country is the Nilgae,* the male of which, called a "blue bull," will stand about 131 hands high at the shoulder. The female is a good deal smaller, and of a fawn colour. Their habitat is on the lower hills that border and intersect the plains, and also on the plains themselves wherever grass and bushes afford sufficient cover. The old sites of deserted villages and cultiva- tion, unfortunately so common, which are usually covered with long grass and a low bushy growth of Palas and Jujube trees,t are seldom without a herd of nilgae. They are never found very far from cultivation, which they visit regularly every night. AVhen little fired at, the blue bull is very easily approached and shot. It is very poor eating, and affords no trophy worth taking away, so that it is not much sought after by the sportsman. The beginner, however, who is steadying his nerves, or the inventor who wants a sub- stantial target for a new projectile, will find them very accessible and convenient. The blue bull is an awkward ^ lumbering, stupid brute ; and it is highly ludicrous to observe the air of self-satisfaction with which a block- head of a bull, who has allowed you to walk up within fifty yards of him, will blunder off to the other side of a nala, then turn round and stand still within easy range of your rifle, and look as if he thought himself a very clever fellow indeed for so thoroughly outwitting you. He is a favourite quarry with the unenterprising Mahomedan gentleman. The antelope his style of dress * Fortax pidus. f Butea frondo^a, Zi::ij2>hus Jujuha. THE NAEBADA VALLEV. 71 and powers of locomotion do not allow liini to approach ; tlie rugged ground and thorny underwood prohibit his succeeding; with the forest deer ; the ti^^er he likes not the look of, and the -pig he may not touch ; so he gets him into a bullock-cart, and is driven within a few paces of an unsuspecting blue bull, whose carcase, when shot and duly cut in the throat after the rules of his faith, makes for him the beef which his soul loveth. Awkward and inactive as he looks, however, the blue bull, when fairly pushed to his speed, will give a good horse as much as he can do to overhaul him. It is in vain to attempt it in or near the jungle ; but if you can succeed in getting at him when he has a mile or two to go across the open plain, a real good run may be had with the spear. I have never heard of a blue bull attempting to charge when brought to bay, in which respect, therefore, the sport of riding them is inferior to pig-sticking. Such are the principal animals which form the objects of the sportsman's pursuit in the open country. As, however, in a state of nature, there never are herbivorous creatures without their attendant carnivora to form a check and counterbalance to them, so we find various natural enemies attendant on the herds of antelope and nilgae, whose acquaintance the sportsman will occasionally make. The nilgae is a favourite prey of the tiger and the panther. But it is in the low hills where he retires during the day, rather than in the plains where he feeds at night, that he meets these relentless foes ; and the chief carnivorous creatures of the open country are the hunting leopard,'^' the wolf,t and the jackal .| * F. juhata. t C- pallvpes. | C. aureus. 72 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. I have several times come across and shot the hunting leopard when after antelope ; but they cannot be called common in this part of India. They live mostly in the low, isolated rocky eminences called Torias, that rise here and there like islets in the middle of the plains, and on the central plateau, and which are frequently surrounded by grassy plains where they hunt their prey. They are of a retiring and inoffensive disposition, never coming near dwellings, or attacking domesticated animals, like the leopard and panther ; and I never heard of their showing any sport when pursued. Their manner of catching the antelope, by a union of cat-like stealth of approach and unparalleled velocity of attack, has often been described. A few are kept tame by the wealthier natives, but more, I think, for show than real use in hunting. The common jackal, always ready for food of any description, seldom fails to make a meal of any wounded animal, and I have seen a small gang of them pursue a wounded antelope I had just fired at. The fawns of the antelope and gazelle frecjuently become their victims. The wolf is extremely common in the northern parts of the province ; frequenting the same sort of ground as the antelope and chikdra. I have very seldom met with them in forest tracts ; and I think that in India they are clearly a plain-loving species. They unite in parties of five or six to hunt ; the latter being the largest number I have ever seen together. More generally they are found singly or in couples. I have several times observed them in the act of hunting the antelope ; their method being to steal in on all sides of a detached party of does and fawns, and trust to a united rush to capture one or more of them before they attain their THE NARBADA VALLEY. 73 speed. Fast as tlie wolf is (as you will learn if you try to ride him down), I do not believe be is capable of running down an antelope in a fair bunt, tbougb doubtless old or injured animals are thus killed by him. When game is not to be had, the wolf seldom fails to get a meal in the neighbourhood of villages, in the shape of a dog or a goat. They are deadly foes to the former; and will stand outside a village or the traveller's camp at night, and howl until some inex- perienced cur sallies forth to reply, when the lot of that cur will probably be to return no more. Unfortunately, the wolf of Central India does not always confine himself to such substitutes for legitimate game ; and the loss of human life from these hideous brutes has recently been ascertained to be so great that a heavy reward is now offered for their destruction. Though not generally venturing beyond children of ten or twelve years old, yet, when confirmed in the habit of man-eating, they do not hesitate to attack, at an advantage, full-grown women and even adult men. A good many instances occurred, during the construction of the railway through the low jungles north of Jubbulpiir, of labourers on the works being so attacked, and sometimes killed and eaten. The attack was commonly made by a pair of wolves, one of which seized the victim by the neck from behind, preventing outcry, while the other, coming swiftly up, tore out the entrails in front. These confirmed man-eaters are described as having been exceedingly wary, and fully able to discriminate between a helpless victim and an armed man. My own experience of wolves does not record an instance of their attacking an adult human being ; but 74 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. I have known many places where children were regularly carried off by them. Superstition frequently prevents the natives from protecting themselves or retaliating on the brutes. I was once marchinof throusfh a small village on the borders of the Damoh district, and accidentally heard that for months past a pair of wolves had carried off a child every few days, from the centre of the village and in broad daylight. No attempt what- ever had been made to kill them, though their haunts were perfectly well known, and lay not a quarter of a mile from the village. A shapeless stone representing the goddess Devi, under a neighbouring tree, had instead been daubed with vermilion, and liberally projDitiated with cocoa-nuts and rice ! Their plan of attack was uniform and simple. The village stood on the slope of a hill, at the foot of which ran the bed of a stream thickly fringed with grass and bushes. The main street of the village, where children were always at play, ran down the slope of the hill ; and while one of the wolves, which was smaller than the other, would ensconce itself among some low bushes between the village and the bottom of the hill, the other would go round to the top, and, watching an opportunity, race down through the street, picking up a child by the way, and making off with it to the thick cover in the nala. At first the people used to pursue, and sometimes made the marauder drop his prey ; but, as they said, finding that in that case the companion wolf usually succeeded in carrying off another of the children in the confusion, while the first was usually so injured as to be beyond re- covery, they ended, like phlegmatic Hindus as they were, by just letting them take as many of their offspring as they \vanted ! An infant of a few years old had thus been THE NARBADA VALLEY. 75 carried off the morning of my arrival. It is scarcely credible that I could not at first obtain sufficient beaters to drive the cover where these two atrocious brutes were gorging on their unholy meal. At last a few of the outcaste helots who act as village drudges in those parts were induced to take sticks and accompany my horse- keeper with a hog-spear, and my Sikh orderly with his sword, through the belt of grass, while I posted myself behind a tree with a double rifle at the other end. In about five minutes the pair walked leisurely out into an open space within twenty paces of me. They were evidently mother and son ; the latter about three- quarters grown, with a reddish-yellow well-farred coat, and plump appearance ; the mother a lean and grizzled hag, with hideous pendent dugs, and slaver dropping from her disgusting jaws. I gave her the benefit of the first barrel, and dropped her with a shot through both her shoulders. The whelp started off, but the second barrel arrested him also with a bullet in the neck ; and I watched with satisfaction the struggles of the mother till my man came up with the hog-spear, which I defiled by finishing her. In the cover they had come through, my men said that their lairs in the grass were numerous, and filled with fragments of bones ; so that there was little doubt that the brutes thus so happily disposed of, had long been perfectly at home in the neighbourhood of these miserable superstitious villagers. Dogs that are in the way of hunting jackals will readily pursue a wolf, so long as he runs away. But the wolf generally tries the effect of his bared teeth on his pursuers before running very far, and only the most resolute hounds can be brought to face them. I have several times had my dogs chased back close 76 THE HIGHLANDS OF CE^^TEAL INDIA. up to my horse by a wolf they had encountered when out coursing foxes and jackals ; and onl}^ once saw the dogs get the better of one without assistance from the gun. On that occasion I had out a couple of young greyhounds, crossed between the deerhound and the Kampore breed ; and along with them was a very large and powerful English bull-mastiff, rejoicing in the name of ''Tinker," whose exceedingly plebeian looks in no woy belied his name. He was an old hand at fighting before ever he left the purlieus of his native Manchester ; and in India had been victor in many a bloody tussle with jackal, jungle cat, and pariah dog. His massive head and well-armed jaws combined in a high degree the qualities of a battering-ram and heavy artillery ; and his courage was in full propor- tion to his means of offence. On the present occasion the three dogs espied the enemy sitting coolly on his haunches on the top of a rising ground, and the young dogs, taking him no doubt for a jackal, went at him full speed, Tinker as usual lumbering along in the rear. Soon, however, the hounds returned in a panic, with their tails well down, and closely pursued by the wolf, a large dark-gray fellow, snappiug and snarling at their heels. The greyhounds fled past Tinker, who steadily advanced, dropping into the crouching sort of run he always adopted in his attack. No doubt Master Wolf thought he too would turn from his gleaming rows of teeth and erected hair, as all his canine assailants had done before. But he never was more mistaken, for the game old dog, as soon as a pace or two only remained betwixt him and the enemy, suddenly sprang to his full height, and, with a bound, buried his bullet head in his advancing chest. I saw THE NARBADA VALLEY. 77 the two roll over and over together, and then the gallant Tinker rose on the top of the wolf, his vice- like jaws firmly fastened on his throat. At this point of a combat he usually overpowered his antagonist utterly, by using his immense weight and power of limb to force him prostrate on the earth, the while riving at the throat with a force that often scooped a hollow in the earth under the scene of action. His efforts were now directed to effect this favourite manoeuvre ; but the wolf was too strong for him, and repeatedly foiled the attempt. But the young hounds, who were not at all without pluck, soon returned to his assistance, and seizing the wolf by different hind-legs, made such a spread-eagle of him, that Tinker had no difficulty in holding him down while I dismounted and battered in his skull with the hammer-head of my hunting- whip. None of the three dogs had been bitten, Tinker having got his jaws in chancery from the very first. I am sure that the three, or even Tinker alone, would have killed him in time without my assistance ; for Tinker never let go a grip he had once secured, and though not so large, was not much inferior to him in strength. The catalogue of amusements offered to the sports- man in the open plain would be incomplete without a mention of the " mighty boar." He is to be found almost everywhere — in the low jungle on the edge of cultivation, and sometimes in the sugar-cane and other tall crops ; and with a liberal expenditure of self and horse may be ridden and speared in a good many places. Generally, however, the country is highly unfavourable to riding, the black soil of the plains being split up into yawning cracks many feet in depth, or covered 78 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. witli rolling trap boulders, both sorts of country being equally productive of dangerous croppers. The neighbourhood of Ncigpiir affords the best ground ; and there there is a regular " tent club," which gives a Qjood account of numerous hoo;s in the course of the year. The sport has been so voluminously described that I believe nothing remains to be said about it. The hogs that reside in the open plains are not much inferior in size to those of other parts of India ; but those met with in the hills are generally much smaller, and far more active. A brown-coloured variety has sometimes been noticed among them. The common village pig of the country shows every sign of having been derived from the wild race originally. My march down the Narbada valley led along the tortuous and rugged cart track, through the deep black loam of the surrounding fields, which, before the construction of the railway, was the only means of communication through these fertile districts. Broken carts strewed the roadside, and clumps of thorny acacias overgrew the path. These were justly called the "cotton thief" by the people, their branches being laden with bunches of the fibre dear to Manchester, torn by their thorns from the unpressed bales, as they lumbered along on antediluvian bufi'alo carts towards the distant coast. Large gangs of aboriginal Gouds from the nearer hill tracts were labouring on thfe railway works. The really wild tribes of the interior of the hills were not yet attracted by the labour market in the plains, preferring a dinner of jungle herbs and their squalid freedom to plenty earned by steady toil under the eye of the foreign taskmaster. But the semi-Hindii tribes of the border -land, who are now the most THE NAEBADA VALLEY. 79 numerous of the race, and whom long contact with the people of the plains has imbued with wants and tendencies strange to their wilder brethren, have reaped a rich harvest from this sudden demand for labour arisinoj at their doors. How far it has been to them an unmixed advantas^e will be discussed further on. As labourers, their innate distaste to steady toil, born of long years of a semi-nomadic existence, renders them inferior to the regular Maratha navvy of the Deccan, who is also their superior in muscular power, and can double the wages of any Gond at this sort of work. On the 25th of January I quitted the main road down the valley, near the little civil station of Narsiugpur, and struck off nearly at right angles to the south, marchinor direct for the hills that bounded the horizon in that direction. About half-way through the march of fifteen miles, the level deep black soil of the valley began to give place to a red gravelly tract of undulating conformation ; and numerous fine Mhoiva trees, forming groups that at a little distance much resembled oaks, and half-cleared fields, gave indications of the approach of the border belt of half-reclaimed land which inter- venes between the open plain and the forest-covered hills. The Mhowa [Bassia latifolia) is one of the most useful wild trees in this part of India. It is not cut down like other forest trees in clearing the land for tillage, its value being at first greater than that of the area rendered unproductive by its shade and roots. As the country gets more thickly peopled, however, the case is reversed, and it generally dis- appears in long-settled tracts. As a singular instance of the influence sometimes exerted by social customs on the physical character of a country, I may mention 80 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. an exception to this rule in the case of the district of Nimar, which, even in its fully cultivated parts^ is still thickly dotted with Mhowa trees. The reason of this I believe to be that, during the " times of trouble " referred to in my first chapter, the majority of the small proprietors of the land were ousted from possession of their fields ; but the custom having been established that possession of the fruit-trees growing on it did not necessarily pass with the land, they mostly retained the proprietorship of these trees. Thus it has happened that the land is often owned by one party and the trees by another. The rent is paid only by the landholder ; and thus, though it would pay him to clear oS" the trees, it would not pay the tree- man ; and so they have remained, doubtless to the very great advantage, and certainly to the beauty, of the district. The value of the Mhowa consists in the fleshy corolla of its flower, and in its seeds. The flower is highly deciduous, ripening and falling in the months of March and April. It possesses considerable sub- stance, and a sweet but sickly taste and smell. It is a favourite article of food with all the wild tribes, and the lower classes of Hindus ; but its main use is in the distillation of ardent spirits, most of what is consumed being made from Mhowa. The spirit, when well made and mellowed by age, is by no means of despicable quality, resembling in some degree Irish whisky. The luscious flowers are no less a favourite food of the brute creation than of man. Every vegetable-eating animal and bird incessantly endeavours to fill itself with Mhowa durinof its flowerino^ season. Sambar, nilgae, and bears appear to lose their natural THE NARBADA VALLEY^. 81 apprehensions of danger in some degree during the Mhowa season ; and the most favourable chances of shooting them are then obtained. The trees have to be watched night and day if the crop is to be saved ; and the wilder races, who fear neither wild beast nor evil spirit, are generally engaged to do this for a wage of one-half the j)roduce. The yield of flowers from a sinole tree is about 130 lbs., worth five shillinsrs in the market ; and the nuts, which form in bunches after the dropping of the flowers, yield a thick oil, much resembling tallow in appearance and properties. It is used for burning, for the manufacture of soap, and in adulterating the clarified butter so largely con- sumed by all natives. A demand for it has lately sprung up in the Bombay market ; and a good deal has been exported since the opening of the railway. The supply must be immense ; and probably this new demand wdll be the means of greatly increasing the value of the trees. I encamped at the end of this march at a j)hace called Mohpani, the scene of the works of the "Ner- budda Coal and Iron Company." Most of the miners employed at that time were Gonds, whose courage in diving into the bowels of the earth was found to be superior to that of other races. The universal pantheism of the Gond stands him in good stead on such occasions. From his cradle he has looked on every rock, stream, and cavern as tenanted by its peculiar spirit, whom it is only needful to propitiate in a simple fashion to make all safe. So he just touches with vermilion the rock he is about to blow into a thousand fragments with a keg of powder, lays before it a handful of rice and a nutshell full 82 THE HIGHLAI^DS OF CENTRAL IXDIA. of Mliowa spirit, and lo ! the god of tlie coal-mine is sufficiently satisfied to permit liis simple worshipper to hew away as he pleases at his residence. If utility is, as some have thought, a good quality in religions, surely we have it in perfection in a pliable belief like this. Near Mohpaui is one of the best smidejheds in the province. I went out to it in the afternoon with one of the gentlemen connected with the w^orks, who surely never could have seen a snipe before. We took opposite sides of the long swamp, which swarmed with the long- bills ; and when we met at the end I liad got twenty- seven and a half couples, while my friend had collected a miscellaneous bag of snippets, plovers, paddy-birds, and minas, and not one snipe among them. My next march lay under the northern face of the main range of the Satpiiras, which here form a blufi" headland rising some 500 feet above the plain, crowned by an old fortress called Chaoragarh. This is one of the many extensive fortifications constructed by the chiefs of the country to the south of the Narbada, at the time when the resistless tide of Mahomedan conquest, after engulfing the Hindu kingdoms of upper India and the Deccan, was rolling against the principalities of these central regjions. The works of these forts generally enclose a considerable space on the summit of a naturally inaccessible hill, having been designed for the retreat of large bodies of the inhabitants, and of armies, in times of successful invasion. The flat- topped and scarp-sided hills of the trap formation are the most suitable for such strongholds, and there are consequently more of them in the trap country than elsewhere. Such additional works as are necessary are THE NAEBADA VALLEY. 83 composed of massive blocks of rock, roughly squared and laid without masonry. Inside tanks have generally been excavated in the rock to hold a plentiful supply of water, natural hollows being always taken advantage of to avoid labour as much as possible. Before the days of artillery such places must have possessed great strength ; but we rarely hear of their being vigorously defended by their possessors, and they were generally surrendered after a short investment. Doubtless the chief cause was usually want of provisions, masses of people being suddenly huddled into the place, and being unable to carry with them the scanty provender afforded by a poor country in the face of danger. In 1564 the great Akber sent his lieutenant to reduce the Gond chieftain of Mandla. The Gond troops, led by the heroic Diirgawati, the Eajpiit widow of the last chief, made a noble resistance to the invader near Jubbulpiir ; but, the battle at last going against them, their leader stabbed herself rather than suffer the dis- grace of defeat ; and this fort of Chaoragarh immediately afterwards fell into the hands of the Moslem, too^ether with property and treasure valued in the chronicles at an altosfether fabulous amount. The summits of these old forts usually contain a little water in the old tanks ; and being generally covered with thick jungle are favourite resorts of the tiger and other animals in the hot weather. From my camp at Chaolpani a single peak of the Puchmurree hills w^as visible. It had not a very imposing appearance, however, as I find it recorded as " like half an egg sticking out of an immense egg- cup ! " A couple of bears came close up to the camp at night and commenced to fight, making a fearful G 2 84 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. noise, it seemed to me, as I awoke, inside the tent ropes. The horses were tearing at their pickets, and all the camp in a hubbub. I started out with a gun, but the people said they had just passed through the camp, rolling over each other and growling ; and it was so pitch dark that I could not see any distance before me, and had to come back. The next march was fourteen miles to Jhilpa, the last village before the ascent of the hills begins. The view of Puchmurree was lost during this march from our being too close under the intervening range of hills. On the way I shot a young Sambar stag ; and after arriving in camp a messenger from the village I had left in the morning came in breathless to say that a tiger had killed a bullock in the morning within half a mile of my camp. At that time of year, when the jungle is very green and thick, and tigers always on the move, it was not worth while to go back, even if I had had the time. This day's march was through a much more jungly country than I had yet met. It could not be called a forest ; for the trees were all of the secondary growth, which marks land repeatedly cleared and abandoned again : and the cultivation, such as it was, was still carried on with the regular bullock-plough, after the manner of the plains. In many places there was a thick growth of teak poles from old stumps of trees ; and many of the fields had been hewn out of these coppices, the poles being burnt on the ground as manure, in the manner to be hereafter described. The clear and pretty stream of the Denwa, which comes down from Puchmurree, was crossed several times by the track we followed, and contained on its sandy banks TJIE NARBADA VALLEY. 85 many footprints of tigers. Tliere Wcas evidently a good deal of forest game about. The valley is one of those tracts on the border between open plain and dense jungle, where much of the nocturnal life of the forest creatures is passed. In such a tract the traveller will often be astonished at the quantity of signs of animals he will see in the morning all about his night's camp, while not a wild creature of any sort will he find in the neighbourhood if he goes to look for them after the sun is up. The fact is that deer, bears, pigs, etc., travel such long distances at night to their feeding grounds, and depart again to the remoter hills so early in the morning, that unless a very early start be made, nothing but the tracks they have left behind will ever be seen. The tigers and panthers, again, which prey on them, although not usually retreating so far, yet seek the most secluded thickets and ravines of the neighbourhood at an equally early hour, and in the cold weather are so much on the alert, and can so easily hide in the thick vegetation, that the chances with them, except by sitting up over a bait at night, are equally poor. The native shikari, watching by night, kills a great deal of game at this season. But it is very slow and cold, as well as rather poaching work, and few Europeans are cat-like enough to succeed in it. Now, as most Europeans who attempt shooting at all in India (and who does not at first ?) only go out during the cold season, and never go deeper into the forest than this semi-cleared belt, the reason of much of the want of success complained of is not far to seek. To ensure success the animals must be followed up into the deeper jungles. CHAPTER III. THE mAhADEO hills. In the eyes of the Hindu inhabitants of the neigh- bouring plains, the whole of the range of hills which culminated in the Puchmurree plateau is sacred to their deity Siva, called Mahadeo, or the Great God ; and the hills themselves are called by his name, the Mahadeos. A conception of awe and mystery had always been associated with their lofty peaks, embosomed among which lies one of the most sacred shrines of the god, to which at least one pilgrimage was a necessity in the life of every devout Hindii. But excepting at the appointed season for this pilgrimage, no dweller of the plains would venture, at the time of which I am writing, to set his foot on the holy soil of Mahadeo's hills ; and, as we approached its neighbourhood, gloomy looks began to gather on the faces of my followers, whose fears had been acted on by the conversation of the people they had met. The road to the top was repre- sented as impassable from natural difiSculties ; and guarded by wild beasts, goblins, and fell disease. I halted a day at Jhilpa, the last village on the plains, to make arrangements for the ascent, and procure guides ; and on the 22nd packed my small tent THE MAIIADEO HILLS. 87 and a few necessaries on a pony, and with two atten- dants started up the hill on foot. For the first ten miles or so the pathway led up an easy and regular ascent over shelving rocks and scanty soil, whereon grew a thin forest of the commoner sorts of trees, Salei CAMP AT ruCIIMURHEE. BUDDHIST CAVES IN THE BACKGROUND. {Bosivellia thurifera), Dhiiora {Conocarpus latifolia), and Saj [Pentapteva glabra), being the most numerous species ; the grass and vegetation on these slopes had begun already to assume the yellow tinge of the dry season. Such a prospect as this, which is typical of vast tracts in the jungles of Central India, is sadly disappointing to him who looks for the luxuriant 88 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. tropical forest of low-lying equatorial regions. Forests like those of Southern Africa and the littoral countries of Asia, with their close array of giant trunks, dense canopy of vegetation, impenetrable underwood, gorgeous flowers, and mighty tangled creepers — From branch to branch close wreaths of bondage throwing. are unknown in these central regions of India ; and their character is rarely approached save in some occasional low moist valley, where the axe of the woodcutter has not penetrated, and the stagnation of some stream has united with the heat of a close valley in giving to the vegetation a more truly tropical character. Indeed, but for the preponderance of yellows where rich reds and browns should be, and the rare appearance of a palm or other eastern form, most of these low forest tracts migrht be taken after December O for a late autumn scene in a temperate climate. Nothing is more striking than the absence of brilliant flowers, which, contrary to popular idea, are far more characteristic of temperate than of tropical regions. The Palas (Butea superha) is almost the only tree in our forests which possesses really bright colouring. When an elevation of about 2,000 feet (above the sea) had been attained, the character of the scenery began to change. Vertical scarps of the red sandstone which forms the higher plateau began to rise into view at every turn of the path, which now plunged into narrow and gloomy glens, following the boulder-strewn bed of a small stream. The dried and yellow grasses and naked tree stems of the loyver . slope gave place to a green vegetation thickly covering the soil, and in places almost meeting overhead. The moist banks of THE MAHADEO HILLS. 89 the stream were covered with ferns and mosses, and the clear sparkle of the little brooks appeared singularly refreshing after our long walk up-hill in the heat of a sultry and lowering day. The baggage-pony found considerable difficulty in scrambling over the boulders that now began to block the road ; and we relieved him by putting about half of his load on the two guides. After scrambling thus along the sides and bottoms of ravines for some miles, steadily rising at the same time, we suddenly emerged through a narrow pass, and from under the spreading aisle of a large banyan tree (from which this pass gets its name of the Bur-ghat), on to an open glade, covered with short green grass, and studded with magnificent trees, which I found was the com- mencement of the plateau of Puchmurree. Heavy masses of cloud had now gathered overhead, and large drops of rain began to fall, betokening, as it proved, the coming of one of the short but severe storms to which these hills are liable at this season. The village of Puchmurree was still some miles distant, and we hurried along over the now almost level plateau to get shelter as soon as possible, as we had already walked about seventeen miles, and the sun was almost set. The road now lay over a hard and gently undulating sandy soil, crossed by many small streams running swiftly in their rocky beds. Immense trees of the dark green Harra [Terminalia Chehida), the arboreous Jaman [Eugenia Jamholana), and the common Mango dotted the plain in fine clumps ; and altogether the aspect of the plateau was much more that of a fine English park than of any scene I had before come across in India. By-and-by, through the vistas of the trees, three great isolated peaks began to appear, glowing red and fiery in 90 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL l^DLA. the setting sun against the purple background of a cloud-bank. The centre one of the three, right ahead of us, was the peak of Mahadeo, deep in the bowels of which lies the shrine of the god himself ; to the left, like the bastion of some giant's hold, rose the square and abrupt form of Chaunideo ; while to the right, and further off than the others, frowned the sheer scarp of Dhiipgarh, the highest point of these Central Indian highlands. We had little leisure to enjoy this splendid view, however, for a blinding rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, now came on ; and some distance still intervened from the village when we were compelled to seek shelter in a grove of trees. Fortunately there was among them a large hollow banyan tree, within which we all found shelter, including " Quail " and " Snipe," who I forgot to say were of the party, and had revelled in spur fowl all the way up. I sent on the two guides to the village to procure us some firewood and water ; for I determined to en- camp here, rather than go further, and probably fare worse, among the unknown disagreeables of a Korkii village. A swampy hollow lay betwixt us and the village, and after we heard the guides go splashing through this and disappear in the darkness it was full two hours before we heard them floundering back again with three or four Korkiis carrying bundles of sticks, grass, pots of water, and the various natural productions which have always to be procured from the village where camp is pitched. Meanwhile we sat in our tree and smoked, and very cold and dis- agreeable it was, though tolerably dry. With the help of the Korkus the little tent was soon pitched, THE MAHADEO HILLS. 91 and I transferred myself and dogs to its shelter, while a fire was lit in the hollow of the banyan, and the natives were soon crouching over it as jolly as sand- boys ; while my servant plucked and grilled over its embers one of the spur fowl I had shot as a " spatch- cock." About midnight the rain ceased, and the sky cleared. It was an excessively cold night ; and when I got up shivering in the morning I found my men had stayed up the greater part of the night by the fire for the sake of the warmth. The morning broke fine and bright, however, and I started ofi" for a ramble over the plateau. In passing through the swamp below the tent, the dogs put up, and I shot several couples of snipe, and among them a fine specimen of the solitary or wood snipe.* This fine snipe is of rare occurrence in Central India, and in fact I have only met with it on one other occasion, in the Mandla district. I suspect this is the bird that has stood for the woodcock in the stories told of the latter's occurrence in the Central Provinces ; for though I have hunted every likely spot in the hills for the latter bird, I never found a single one of them. There were two small settlements of Korkiis on the plateau : one at Puchmurree itself, and another about a mile to the north of it. The former was the larger of the two, consisting of about thirty houses, and, besides the Thakiir, a few families of traders from the plains lived in it. The functions exercised by these Hindii dealers in the rural economy of the aborigines will form the subject of some remarks further on. A brother of the Thakiir of Puchmurree accom- panied me in my ramble, a fine, athletic, intelligent * Gallinatjo nemoricola. 92 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL IXDLi. young fellow of eighteen or twenty, and an ardent sportsman, who was afterwards my guide over the whole of this wonderful mass of mountains. AYe were out nearly all day, the succession of fine views from the different heights and bluffs luring me on and on, till what was meant for a stroll ended in a pretty hard day's work. I found that the plateau had something of a cup-like shape, draining in every direction from the edges into the centre, where two considerable brooks receive its waters and carry them over the edge in fine cascades. The general elevation of this central valley is about 3,400 feet, the ridge surrounding it being a few hundred feet higher, and here and there shooting into abrupt peaks, of which the three I had seen the evening before attain a height of 4,500 feet. The area of the plateau is altogether about twelve square miles, some six of which, in the centre, resemble the jDortion I had before passed through, and consist of fine culturable, though light, soils. Everywhere the massive groups of trees and park-like scenery strike the eye ; and the greenery of the glades, and various wild flowers unseen at lower elevations, maintain the illusion that the scene is a bit out of our own temperate zone rather than of the tropics. Though the ascent on the side I had come up was generally gradual, 1 found that in all other direc- tions the drop from the plateau was sudden and pre- cipitous. There are three other pathways by which a man can easily, and an unladen animal with difiiculty, ascend and descend, (Subsequently we took lightly laden elephants (which, when there is room for them, are the most sure-footed of all creatures) up and down both of the passes leading to the south ; but the eastern THE MAHADEO HILLS. 93 pass (Kanji Ghat) has never, I believe, been traversed by any baggage animal. The view from the edge of the plateau, in almost any direction, is singularly fine ; and a still more extensive sweep is commanded from the top of the higher peaks. To the south, as far as the eye can see, lie range upon range of forest-covered hills, tumbled in wild confusion. To the east a long line of rampart-like cliifs marks the southern face of the Mahadeo range, the deep red of their sandstone formation contrasting finely with the intense green of the bamboo vegetation, out of which they rise. Here and there they shoot into peaks of bare red rock, many of which have a peculiar and almost fantastic appearance, owing to the irregular weatherino^ of their material — beds of coarse sandstone horizontally streaked by darker bands of hard vitrified ferruoinous earth. Lookino; across this wall of rock, to the north-east, a long perspective of forest-covered hills is seen, the nearer ones seeming to be part of the Puch- murree plateau, though really separated from it by an enormous rift in the rock, the further ranges sinking gradually in elevation, till, faint and blue in the far distance, gleams the level plain of the Narbada valley. Standing on the eastern edge of the plateau, again, the observer hangs over a sheer descent of 2,000 feet of rock, leading beyond, in long green slopes, down to a flat and forest-covered valley. Its width may be six or seven miles, and beyond it is seen another range of hills rising in a long yellow grass-covered slope, dotted with the black boulders, and ending in the scarped tops that mark the trap formation. That is the plateau of Motiir (Mohtoor), with which the general continuation of the Satpiira range again commences, after the break 94 THE 111GHLA.XDS OF CEXTRAL INDIA. in it occasioned by the Miihadeo group. On this side, the forest that clothes the valley and the nearer slopes presents a very dark green and yet brilliant colouring, which will be noted as difierino- from the veo-etation in any other direction. This is the Sal forest, wdiich I have mentioned before (p. 27), as forming so singular an outlier far to the west of the line which otherwise limits the rauQ-e of that tree in Central India. It fills this valley of the Denwa, almost to the exclusion of other vegetation, and, creeping up the ravines, has occupied also the south-eastern portion of the plateau itself. A remarkable feature in the configuration of the plateau is the vast and unexpected ravines or rather clefts in the solid rock, which seam the edges of the scarp, some of them reaching in sheer descent almost to the level of the plains. You come on them during a ramble in almost any direction, opening suddenly at your feet in the middle of some grassy glade. The most remarkable is the Andeh-K6h, which begins about a mile to the east of the villao-e, and runs risjht down into the Denwa valley. Looking over its edge, the vision loses itself in the vast profundity. A few dark indigo-coloured specks at the bottom represent wild mango trees of sixty or eighty feet in height. A faint sound of running water rises on the sough of the wind from the abyss. The only sign of life is an occasional llight of blue pigeons swinging out from the face of cither cliff, and circling round on suspended pinion, again to disappear under the crags. If a gun is fired, the echoes roll round the hollow in continually increasing confusion, till the accumulated volume seems to bellow forth at the mouth of the ravine into the plain THE MAHADEO HILLS. 90 below. If tradition be believed, no mortal foot has ever trodden the dark interior of tlie Andeh-K()lh I myself never found an entrance to it, though, with the aid of ropes, I got once at the easiest place within a few hundred feet of the bottom. I may say, however, for the benefit of adventurous explorers, that a way in may probably be found by going round behind the Mjih.adeo peak, and following down the bed of the stream which issues from the cave of the shrine I am about to describe, and which, I think, eventually falls into the Koh under the scarp of Chauradeo. Legend has made the Andeh-K6h the retreat of a monstrous serpent, which formally inhabited a lake on the plateau, and vexed the w^orshippers of Mahadeo till the god dried up the serpent's lake, and imprisoned the snake himself in this rift, formed by a stroke of his trident in the solid rock. It needs no very ingenious interpreter of legend to see in this wild story an allusion to the former settlements of Biiddhists (referred to as snakes in Brahrainical writings) on the Puchmurree hill, and their extinction on the revival of Brahmanism in the sixth or seventh century. Certain it is that there once was a considerable lake in the centre of the plateau, formed by a dam thrown across a narrow gorge, and that on its banks are still found numbers of the large flat bricks used in ancient buildings, while in the overhanging rocks are cut five caves (whence the name of Puchmurree), of the character usually attributed to the Biiddhists. Beneath the lower end of the lake lies a considerable stretch of almost level land, on which are still traceable the signs of ancient tillage, in the form of embankments and water-courses. Lookinsf from the portico of the rock-cut caves, it is not difficult for the 96 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. imagination to travel back to the time when the lower margin of the lake was surrounded by the dwellings of a small, perhaps an exiled and persecuted, colony of Biiddhists, practising for their subsistence the art, strange in these wilds, of civilised cultivation of the earth, and to hear aoaiu the sound of the eveninof bell in their little monastery floating away up the placid surface of the windino- lake. Another very striking ravine, called Jambo-Dwip, lies on the opposite side of the plateau from the Andeh- Koh. About a thousand feet of steep descent, down a track worn by the feet of pilgrims, leads to the entrance of a gorge, whose aspect is singularly adapted to impress the imagination of the pilgrim to these sacred hills. A dense canopy of the wild mango tree, overlaid and interlaced by the tree-like limbs of the giant creeper,* almost shuts out the sun ; strange shapes of tree ferns and thickets of dank and rotting vegetation cumber the path ; a chalybeate stream, covered by a film of metallic scum, reddens the ooze through which it slowly per- colates ; a gloom like twilight shrouds the bottom of the valley, from out of which rises on either hand a towering crag of deep red colour, from the summit of which stretch the ghostly arms of the white and naked Sferculia urens, a tree that looks as if the megatherium might have climbed its uncouth and ghastly branches at the birth of the world. Further on, the gorge narrows to a mere cleft between the high cliffs, wholly destitute of veo-etation, and strewn with o;reat boulders. Climbino; over these, and wading through the waters of a shallow stream, the pilgrim at length reaches a cavern in the rock, the sides and bottom of which have been, by some * Bauldnia scandens. THE MAHADEO HILLS. 97 peculiar water action, worn into the semblance of gigantic matted locks of hair ; while deep below the floor of the cavern, in the bowels of the rock, is heard the labouring of imprisoned waters shaking the cave. It is small wonder that such a natural marvel as this should be a chosen dwelling-place for the god to whom all these mountains are sacred, and that it forms one of the most holy and indispensable points in the circuit which the devout pilgrim must perform. The place has also a slight historical interest. Durinsj the last of our struo^sjles with the Marathas, Appa Saheb Bhonsla, Raja of Nagpur, on his way to an exile justly earned by repeated acts of treachery, escaped and fled to the fastnesses of the Mahadeo hills ; and it was in this secluded ravine, if tradition speaks the truth, that he was concealed by the fidelity of his aboriginal subjects till he finally made liis escape, while detachments of British troops were hunting for him in every other nook and recess in the mountains. Beyond the Jambo-Dwip, or " great ravine " as we called it, and between it and the valley of the Sonbhadra, lies another group of wild hills, a little lower than the Puchmurree block in elevation, and with few level plateaux of any extent. One or two poor hamlets of Korkiis occupy its most sheltered nooks ; but the soil is everywhere extremely thin, and there is a great absence of water in this section of the Mahadeo range, so that it is almost uninhabited. The Sonbhadra valley itself can only be entered Vvdiere it leaves the southern face of the hills, by a difficult pathway along the edges of the rapid stream ; but the scene is well deserving of the scramble of eight or ten miles on foot by which it is reached. It is utterly untenanted even 98 TlIK HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. by animals, save a few melancholy bears, and its steep precipices, and long slopes of gray and naked rock, interspersed with scanty moor-like vegetation, are singularly suggestive of a comparison with the well- known valley of Glencoe. These deep and gloomy dells that seam the Puch- murree block are the home of a splendid squirrel [Sciurus maximus), measuring two and a half to three feet in length, and of a rich, deep claret colour, with a blue metallic lustre on the upper parts of the body, the lower parts being rufous yellow. They dwell in the upper branches of the wild mango trees, making nests of the leaves, generally iu the very top. They live chiefly on the mango fruit, lavishly squandering the supply while the fresh mangoes are attainable, and afterw^irds crack- ing the discarded stones for their kernels. They seem to be of a retired and melancholy nature, appropriate to the sunless ravines they reside in ; and they are not very numerous either here or at Amarkantak, which is the only other part of the hills where I have met the species. They are easily captured in the nests when young, but make most foolish and uninteresting pets, having a singularly vacant expression of countenance, and nothing of the light-hearted vivacity of the other members of the squirrel family. If an exquisite fur for a lady's mufi' or a sporran is an object, some pretty shooting may be had in knocking them off the tops of the high trees with a small rifle. Numerous vultures and birds of the rapacious order build on the ledges of the clifis. Among them is the grand imperial eagle {A. imperialis), whose wings measure eight feet from tij) to tip, and whose soaring flight and harsh scream forms a errand feature in the scenery of this range of mountains. THE MAHADEO HILLS. 99 On my return to the tent I had an interview with the Thakiir, or chief, of Puchmurree. This potentate is the proprietor of a considerable tract of hill and forest in the Alahadeo range, and the valleys at its base. He is the representative of one of the families already referred to as having been established in the ea,rly days of Aryan colonisation, by an intermixture of the blood of the adventurous Rajpiit with that of the aboriginal (in this case Korkii) occupants of the soil. In personal appearance and habits the family exactly correspond to their descent. Taller and fairer by far than the undiluted Korkiis about them, they still possess the thick lips and prominent jaw of the aborigines. With all the love of tinsel and sounding form of the vain Eajpiit, they unite much of the apathy and unthrift of the savage. In religion they are (like all converts) ultra Hindu, worshipping Siva, looking on the slaughter of a cow with horror (though they will kill the nearly related bison of their hills), wearing the holy thread of the twice-born castes, and keeping a family Brahman to do their household worship for them. The Puchmurree Thakiir was a well-grown young- man of about twenty -five, but awkward in manner and incapable of any sort of conversation. I subsequently found that he was, like most of these petty chiefs, a confirmed opium-eater. By his side, however, stood the Brahman "Dewan," or minister of state (!), whose glibness of tongue was fully sufficient for both. Behind them came four or five tatterdemalion retainers, in quilted garments of many hues, girded as to their loins with broad embroidered belts of Sambar leather, in which were stuck, or suspended, swords, daggers, and the cumbrous appointments of a mntchlock-man, the 100 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. matchlock itself being borne, with smoking match, over the shoulder of each. These were mostly of the same breed as the Thakur, being his poor relations in fact. This descri])tion would serve sufficiently well for the great majority of these petty semi-aboriginal chiefs, who are so numerous in the hills of Central India. Though the breed between the Edjpiit and the aborigine produces the best of all shikaris and foresters, in a somewhat higher sphere they are chiefly remarkable for debauchery, and a vain and silly pride which leads them into expenditure beyond their means, and ruinous debt. They all call themselves "Rajas," and keep up minute standing armies of these ragamuffin retainers, as well as one or two Brahman bloodsuckers to manage their holy and clerkly affairs. As they are always seeking for brides for their sons in families with higher claims to Rajput descent than their own, they have to pay enormous sums for marriage expenses, and this is probably the chief cause of their generally hopeless poverty. I found I was likely to have a good deal of trouble in getting the wild hill people to help in building our lodge. The Thakur made all sorts of excuses for with- holding from us his influence with his "subjects." There was great scarcity among them, owing to a failure of their precarious crops ; they had nearly all left the hills to seek service in the plains ; they w^ere engaged in preparing the land for their crops ; they hated work they had not been accustomed to ; they w^ould be afraid to help in making a house on Mahadeo's hill — and so on. Truth was, I saw the chief himself and his advisers hated our intrusion. With some truth they feared we were come to break up their much-beloved seclusion, and un- THE MAHADEO HILLS. 101 trammelled barbarism ; their rich liaivest from the taxation of pilgrims to Mahadeo's shrine they thought was in danger ; and they would have none of us. They promised, however, to send me a gang of men to start wood and grass cutting next morning. Of course they did not come ; and the Thakiir I found had gone off to a village he had below the hill, and quite out of reach of my camp; and he did not return to Puchmurree, except when I sent for him, all the time I was there. Luckily I had a friend in council in the shape of the younger brother, who had shown me the lions of the place. Not being a chief he had little to live on, and was, in fact, scarcely to be distinguished in position or worldly wealth from the common Korkiis about. He promised to use his influence to get them to come and work for me, and went off on a visit to the neighbour- ing hamlets, partly with this object, and partly to look for traces of any bison or other larger game there might be on the hills, as I contemplated a grand hunting party at which I hoped to overcome the shy- ness of the jungle population. They were really in great distress owing to the failure of the previous harvest, on which great part of their subsistence for the year depends. The system of cultivation of all the wild tribes of these provinces is much the same, and is, in fact, almost identical with the method followed by all the unreclaimed aboriginal races throughout India. Though large tracts of splendid level land lie untilled on the Puchmurree plateau, and in the valleys below, the Korkii has no cattle or ploughs with which to break it up. He has nothing in the way of implements but his axe. This is enough, how- ever, for his wants. He selects a bill-side where there LIBRARY 102 THE HIGHLANDS OF CE:NTRAL INDIA. is a little soil, and a plentiful growth of grass, timber, and bamboos. He prefers a place where young straight teak poles grow thick and strong, as they are easiest to cut, and produce most ashes when burnt. He cuts every stick that stands on the selected plot, except the largest trunks, which he lops of their branches and girdles so that they may shortly die. This he does early in the dry season (January to March), and leaves the timber thickly piled on the ground to dry in the torrid sun of the hot season. By the end of May it will be just like tinder, and he then sets fire to it and burns it as nearly as he can to ashes. With all his labour, however (and he works hard at this spasmodic sort of toil), he will not be able to work all the logs into position to get burnt ; and at the end of a week he will rest from his labour, and contemplate with satisfaction the three or four acres of valuable teak forest he has reduced to a heap of ashes, strewn with the charred remains of the Jarger limbs and trunks. He now rakes his ashes evenly over the field and waits for rain, which in due season generally comes. He then takes a few handfuls of the coarse ejrain he subsists on and tiings them into the ashes, broadcast if the ground be tolerably level ; if steep, then in a line at the top, so as to be washed down by the rain. The principal grains are Kodon [Paspalwn), Kiitki {Panicum), and coarse rice. But nearly all the ordinary crops raised in the plains during the autumn season are also grown more or less in these dlnja clear- ings, as they are called, though usually from greatly degenerate seed, the produce of which is often scarcely recognisable as the same species. A few pumpkins and creeping beans are usually grown about the houses in TllK MAHADEO HILLS. 103 addition to the dhya crop. Such is the fertilising power of the ashes that the crop is generally a very productive one, though the individual grains are far smaller than the same species as cultivated in the plains. A fence against wild animals is made round the clearing by cutting trees so as to fall over and interlace with each other, the whole being strongly bound with split bamboos and thorny bushes. The second year the dead trees and half-burnt branches are again ignited, and fresh wood is cut and brought from the adjoining jungle, and the same process is repeated. The third year the clearing is usually abandoned for a fresh one. Sometimes the owner of a dhya will watch at night on a platform in the middle of the field and endeavour to save it from wild animals, but oftener he does not think it worth the labour, and lets it take its chance till ripe, while he earns his livelihood in some other way. The dhya clearings are of course favourite resorts for all the animals of the neighbourhood. The smaller species of these — peafowl, partridges, hares, etc. — are often trapped in ingenious "deadfall" traps set in runs left open on purpose ; and the larger are frequently shot by the sportsmen of the community. None of the Gonds of the Central Hills now use the bow and arrow ; but few villages are without their professional hunter, who is generally a capital shot with his long heavy matchlock, and as patient as a cat in watching for game. He usually takes it in turn to sit up at night in all the dhya clearings of the village, getting as remuneration all that he kills, and a basket of grain at harvest time besides. The skins of sambar are of considerable value in the market for making 104 THE HIGHLANDS OF CEXTKAL IXDIA. the well-known soft yellow leather — the best of all materials for sporting leggings and other accoutrements. The abandoned dhya clearings are speedily covered again with jungle. The second growth is, however, very dififerent from the virgin forest destroyed by the first clearing ; being composed of a variety of low and very densely-growing bamboo, and of certain thorny bushes, which together form in a year or two a cover almost impenetrable to ^man or beast. I have often been obliged to turn back from such a jungle after vainly endeavouring to force through it a powerful elephant accustomed to work his way through difficult cover. In such a thicket no timber tree can ever force its way into daylight ; and a second growth of timber on such land can never be expected if left to nature. The scrub itself does not furnish fuel enousfh for a sufiicient coating of ashes to please the dhya cutter ; and so the latter never ag^ain returns to an old cleariuG^ while untouched forest land is to be had. Now, if it be considered that, for untold ages, the aboriginal in- habitants have been thus devastating the forests, the cause of the problem that has puzzled railway engineers — name]}^ ^'hy, in a country w4th so vast an ex^^anse of forest-covered land, they should yet have to send to England, or Australia, or Norway for their sleepers — will not be far to seek. Stand on any hill-top on the Puchmurree or other high range, and look over the valleys below you — the dhya clearings can be easily distinguished from tree jungle — and you will see that for one acre left of the latter, thousands have been levelled by the axe of the Gond and Korkii. In fact I can say, from an experience reaching over every teak tract in these hills, that, excepting a few preserved by < THE MAHADEO HILLS. 105 private proprietors, no teak forest ever escaped this treatment, unless so situated in ravines or on precipitous hill-sides as to make it unprofitable to make dhya clearings on its site. The system of cultivation thus adopted by the wild tribes, which seems to be a natural consequence of their want of agricultural stock, necessitates a more or less nomadic habit of life. The larger villages, where the chief of a sept, and the Hindu traders who efi'ect their small exchanges, reside, is usually the only stable settle- ment in a whole tract ; the rest of the people spreading themselves about in small hamlets of five or six families, at such interv^als as will o-ive each a sufiicient rano-e of jungle for several years of dhya cutting. Their huts are of the most temporary character, and made from materials found on the spot — a fevv upright posts, inter- laced with split bamboos, plastered with mud, and thatched with the broad leaves of the teak, and an upper layer of grass. It costs them but the work of a day or two to shift such a settlement as this in ac- cordance with the changes of their dhya sites. The system of cultivation, if it can be so termed, I have thus described is of course of the most precarious character. The holding off of rain for a few weeks after the seed is sown, or when the ear is forming, will ruin the whole, and then the owner may be compelled to subsist entirely on what always largely supplements his diet — the wild fruits and products of the forest. Nature has been very bountiful in these forests in her supply of food for their wild human denizens. Many species of tree and bush ripen a wholesome and palatable fruit in their season ; and the earth supplements the supply by many nourishing roots. The Mhowa flower 106 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL iXDlA. before referred to (p. 80), tlie plum of tlie ebony tree {Diospyros melmioxylon), and the fruit of the wild mango, are the staples in these hills. The berries of the Chironji [Buchanania latlfoUa), and the Ber {Zizy- lohus jiijuha), the seeds of the Stil {Shorea rohusta), the bean of the giant Bauhinia creeper, and many other products of trees, are also eaten in different parts of the hills. A s^DCcies of wild arrowroot (Curcuma), and a sort of wild yam, are also dug out of the earth and consumed. The rare occurrence of the ofeneral seeding; of the bamboo forests, is a 2;od3end to the aborio;inal tribes. A certain number of bamboos seed every year, but a general seeding is said to occur only once in about thirty years. Then every single bamboo over a vast tract of country will drop its leaves, and form at the end a large panicle of flowers, to be followed by the formation and shedding of myriads of seeds which are hardly to be distinguished from grains of rice. This done, the parent bamboo itself immediately dies, while a fresh and vigorous crop at once begins to spring from the seed. For some years the scarcity of so useful an article as the bamboo may be severely felt, though it is not often that all the sources of supply are at once cut off; but in the meantime an abundant supply of wholesome grain is afforded, not only to the wild tribes but to multitudes of the poorer inhabitants of the open country, and the cities around, who crowd to the spot to obtain their share of the heaven-sent provender. There is a proverb that this occurrence portends a failure of the common food staples of the country ; but like many such it has not been verified by ex- perience. It would probaljly be in vain to guess the THE MAHADEO HILLS. 107 cause of this sudden renewal at lono; intervals of the whole crop of bamboo. This diet of herbs is varied and improved by the flesh of wild animals, procured by extensive drives in which the whole population of a tract will unite ; and many small fish are also captured in the mountain streams, chiefly by poisoning the pools with various vegetable substances, of which I am acquainted only with the leaves and fruit of the species of stryclmos that grow wild in these hills. Those of the wild men who live in the neiMibourhood of the plains, and have got accustomed to contact with their inhabitants, add considerably to their means of subsistence by trooping out in large numbers, after they have cut their own dhyas, to the reaping of the wheat harvest of the plains in the month of March, much after the fashion of the gangs of Irishmen who cross the Channel about harvest time. But the genuine hill-man of the far interior cannot yet bring himself to this, and is often put to severe straits by the failure of his scanty crop. Such was now the case with the Gonds and Korkus in and about the Puchmurree hills ; and I soon saw that to make anything of them I must appeal to their bellies. I accordingly sent down to the nearest large market in the plains, and purchased a mighty store of wheat and millet — about twenty-five bullock luads, I think — and had it sent up by the agency of some of the Banjara"^'' * These liaiijaras are a curious race of nomads Avho are found everywhere in Central India, acting as carriers with herds of pack bullocks. Their name means " Forest Wanderer," and they appear to be perfectly distinct both from Hindus and from the known aboriginal tribes. It has been conjectured with some probability that they are gipsies. They are a line, stalwart, light-coloured people. 108 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. carriers, who are in the habit of penetratiog the remotest tracts of these hills with loads of salt, and taking back forest produce in return. In the meantime I got up the remainder of my cam]^, pitched the large tent, and erected a hut of wattle and daub as a storehouse for the grain and tools, and made myself comfortable. At the same time I arranged for a few artificers, carpenters, and masons, being sent up from the plains ; but it was long before any of them could be induced to venture into the dreaded region. Though the geological surveyor of the Narbada valley had given no hope of limestone being found in these hills, I discovered an excellent supply of it in one of the deep glens a little below the scarp of the plateau. After searching long and wearily for it in vain, and receiving on all hands assurances that such a thing had never been heard of, I was directed to the place by a Korku whom I incidentally saw in the unwonted occu- pation of chewing paun, in the composition of which lime has a place. I found a huge block of pure white crystal- line limestone jammed in the bottom of this ravine ; and it is curious to conjecture by what fortunate geological process this immense boulder of an article without which ready for anj' adventure, and of dauntless courage. With the aid of their splendid dogs they do not scruple to attack and s])car tlie wild boar, the bear, and even the tiger ; and they are at all times ardent and indefatigable sportsmen. I'>acli tanda, as their camps are called, is commanded by a chief called the naik, whom all obey, and who, in council with the elders, disposes of intertribal offenders, even to the extent of capital jDunishment, it is believed. The old men and many of the women and children remain encamped at some favourite grazing spot during the expeditions, where all return to pass the rainy season and recruit their cattle. Though eminent in the art and practice of highway robbery, the Banjiiras are scrupulously faithful in the execution of trusts, and are constantly employed in tlie interchange of commodities between the open country and the forest tracts. THE MAHADEO HILLS. 109 building would be impossible at Puclimurree, could have been brought and so conveniently deposited at an elevation of at least 2,000 feet above the nearest formation of the kind. Though I believe I have at one time or other been in almost every other ravine in these hills, I never found another piece of limestone but one — a smaller boulder of the same sort, similarly situated, but at a rather lower elevation. The young Thakur came back in a day or two, with about half-a-dozen Korkiis from the neighbouring hills, and news of a herd of bison in the Banganga Valley, behind and below the high peak of Dhupgarh ; so I determined to have our grand hunt in that place. Invitations were sent to all the Gond and Korkii chiefs in the neighbourhood, with their followers, and every available man in the hills was sent for to beat. A store of grain enough to feed them all was sent down to the little hamlet at the bottom of the Rorighat pass, where the beat was expected to end ; and one of the Puch- murree grog-shops was taken bodily down to the same place to supply the drinkables. In after days I spent many a long day in the chase of the bison on these splendid hills ; and have also made the acquaintance of the mountain bull in many other parts of the province. Some account of his habits may, therefore, not be out of place here, particularly as they are frequently a good deal misrepresented. And first as to his name. The latest scientific name for him is Gavceus Gaurus, but what he is to be called in English is not so easily settled. Sportsmen have unanimously agreed to call him the " Indian bison," which naturalists ■object to, as he does not properly belong to the same group of bovines as the bisons of Europe and America. IIU TUE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. They would have us call him the Oaur, which appears to be his vernacular name in the Nepalese forests. I would, however, put in a plea for the retention, by sportsmen at least, of the name "Indian Bison." In the first place it fully accomplishes the object of all names in distinctly denoting the animal meant. Ever since he became known to Europeans he has been so called, and no other animal has ever shared the name. Then his structural distinction from the true bisontine group appears to consist chiefly, if not solely, in his having thirteen instead of fourteen or fifteen pairs of ribs, and somewhat flattened instead of cylindrical horns (Jerdon). Lastly, there is no vernacular name uni- versally applicable to him, " Gaur " being unknown in Central India ; while his occasional Central Indian name of Bliinsa (with Bun or " wild " prefixed to it) is almost identical in sound with " bison," and is no doubt derived from the same root. If you ask for " bison " in these forests where he is known (and speak a little through your nose at the same time), you will certainly be shown Gavceus Gaums and no other animal. The respective ranges of this animal and the wild bufialo {Buhrdus) have sometimes been defined by sportsmen in the saying that the bison is not found north, nor the buffalo south, of the Narbada river. Like most apophthegms, however, this contains little more than a flavour of the truth. Not only does the bison inhabit many parts of the Vindhya Mountains, directly to the north of the Narbarla, but ho also stretches round the source of that river and penetrates into the hills of Chota-Nagpiir and Midnapiir, and crosses over to the Nepalese Terae, and the hilly regions in the east of Bengal. The wild bufialo also covers the whole of the THE mAiiadeo hills. hi eastern part of the Central Provinces far to tlie soutli of the latitude of the Narbada, and also the plateau of Mandla and the Gochivari forests, directly to the south of that river. In fact, the bison appears to inhabit every part of India where he can find suitable conditions. These appear to be, firstly, the close proximity of hills, for though he is sometimes found on level ground, he is essentially a lover of hills, and always retreats to them when disturbed ; extensive ranges of forest little dis- turbed by man or tame cattle, for, unlike the buffalo, he cannot tolerate the proximity of man and his works ; a plentiful supply of water and green herbage ; and lastly, so far as I have observed, the presence of the bamboo, on which he constantly browses. In the Central Provinces of India all these conditions are unfortunately still present over enormous tracts of country. Thousands of square miles in the Central range, much of which will one day be reclaimed to the uses of the plough, are now the very perfection of a preserve for the bison. Perhaps he is nowhere more completely at home than in the Mahadeo hills. There, as a general rule, he will be found to frequent at any season the highest elevation at which he can then find food and water. During the cold season succeeding the monsoon, they remain much about the higher plateaux, at an elevation of 2,000 to 3,000 feet, where they graze all night on the bamboos that clothe their sides, and on the short, succulent grasses fringing the springs and streams usually found in the intervening hollows. They generally pass the day on the tops of the plateaux, lying down in secure positions under the shade of small trees, where they chew the cud and sleep. Their object 112 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. in lying under trees seem more the concealment thus afforded to their large and dark-coloured bodies than shelter from the sun, as the shade is seldom dense, and a secure windy position is always secured irrespective of the sun. I have observed that single animals always lie looking down wind, leaving the up wind direction to be guarded by their keen sense of smell ; and, in my experience, it is far easier to baffle their sense of vision in a direct approach, than to stalk them down wind, however carefully the approach may be covered. It is extraordinary how difficult it often is to distinguish so strongly coloured an object as a bull bison when thus lying down in the flickering shadow of a tree. The colour of the cows is a light chestnut brown in the cold weather, becoming darker as the season advances. The young bulls are a deeper tint of the same colour, becoming, however, much darker as they advance in aQ;e, the mature bull beins; almost black on the back and sides, and showing a rich chestnut shade only on the lower parts of the body and inside of the thierhs. The colour of both bulls and cows varies a G;ood deal in difierent localities. The lightest coloured are those of the open grass jungles in the west, the darkest those of the deep bamboo forests of Puchmurree and the oast. The white stockin2;s, which are so characteristic a marking of this species, also change with advancing age, assuming a much dingier colour in the old bulls. A singular change also occurs in the growth of the horns, which w^ill be well illustrated by the accompanying plate of a photographed series belonging to bulls of different ages shot in the same locality (Nimiir). No. 1 belonged to a young chestnut-coloured bull of about five years old. Its shape, it will be seen, approximates to THE MAHADEO HILLS. 11;} that of the cows (No. 5), being, like them, slender and much recurved at the points. No. 2 pertained to a very dark, but not black, bull, evidently a year or two older than the first, but not quite mature. The horns have considerably increased in girth at the base, and have assumed a more outward sweep, with less incurva- ture at the points. No. 3 are still thicker and more horizontal, with some signs of wear at the tips, and were taken from a full-grown, jet-black bull, the lord of a herd. No. 4 adorned a very old and solitary bull, and are, it will be seen, extremely rugged and massive, with scarcely any curve, and are considerably worn and blunted at the points. They measure thirty- seven and a half inches across the sweep, and seventeen round the thickest part. No. 3 are the longest round the curve of the horn, each measuring twenty-five and a half inches, the extreme girth being only fifteen and a half inches. The largest of these bulls measured exactly seventeen and a quarter hands (five feet nine inches) at the shoulder, measuring fairly the right line between two pegs held in the line of the fore-leg. I once measured a bull in the Puchmurree hills which was two inches taller than this, and I am convinced that this is about the extreme height attained by them in this part of India. I strongly suspect that the much greater heights often given have been taken from unfair measurements. A common way is to take an oblique line from the forefoot to the top of the dorsal ridge, and follow the curvatures of the body besides. In this way twenty-two hands may doubtless be made out, but we might as well measure the distance from nose to tail for the height as this. At this season of the year (the winter months), the 114 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. bison are rutting, and they will be found collected in herds numbering ten or twelve cows, with one bull in the prime of life, and a few immature males, the re- maining old bulls being expelled to wander in pairs, or as solitary bachelors, in sullen and disappointed mood. Very old bulls with worn horns are almost always found alone, never, apparently, rejoining the herd after being once beaten by a younger rival. These solitary gentle- men wander about a great deal ; while the herd, if undisturbed, will constantly be found in the same neighbourhood. Each herd appears to possess a tract of country tabooed to other herds ; and in this are always included more than one stronghold, where the density of the cover renders pursuit of them hopeless. When frequently disturbed in and about one of these, they make ofif at once to one of the others. As the hot season advances, and the springs in the higher ranges dry up, the bison come lower down the hills ; and may even, if compelled by want of water, come out into the forest on the plains, drinking from the large rivers like other animals at that season. But they are always ready to retreat to their mountain fastnesses when much disturbed ; and as soon as the fall of the rains has renewed the supply of water, and freshened the grass in the higher hills, they retire again to their favourite plateaux. At this season the cows begin to calve, and separate a good deal, remaining for two or three months secluded in some spot where grazing and water are plentiful. The bulls and young cows are then often found together in herds of six to ten, the oldest bulls, however, always remaining alone. During the lulls in the monsoon, a species of gadfly appears in the jungles, which is exceedingly troublesome 116 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. to all animals. At such times tlie bison seek the high, open tops of the mountains ; and I have then seen a solitary bull standing for hours like a statue on the top of the highest peak in the Puchmurree range. Though at first sight a clumsy-looking animal, which is chiefly due to his immensely massive dorsal ridge, the bison is one of the best rock climbers among animals. His short legs, and small, game-like hoofs, the enormous power of the muscles of the shoulder, with their high dorsal attachment, and the preponderance of weight in the fore part of the body, all eminently qualify him for the ascent of steep and rocky hills. For rapid descent, however, they are not so well adapted ; and I have known cases of their breaking a leg when pushed to take rapidly a steep declivity ; a bull with one fore-leg broken is at once brought to a standstill. Terrible tales are told of the relentless ferocity of the bison by the class of writers who aim rather at sensa- tional description than at sober truth. I have myself always found them to be extremely timid, and have never been charged by a bison, though frequently in a position where any animal at all ferocious would certainly have done so. In all my experience, I have only heard of one or two cases of charging which I consider fully authentic, and in these the animal had previously been attacked and wounded. Captain Pearson was once treed by a wounded bull in the Puchmurree hills, which charged and upset his gun-bearer ; and an officer was killed by one some years ago near Asirgarh. Often the blind rush of an animal bent on escape is put down by excited sportsmen as a deliberate charge. Much, too, of the romance attached to the animal must be attributed to his formidable appearance ; for the sullen THE MAHADEO HILLS. 117 air of a mighty bull just roused is very impressive ; and much to the wild tales of the people in whose neighbour- hood they live, who always dilate on their general ferocity, but can seldom point to an instance of its effects, and who are, moreover, frequently from religious prejudice, desirous of withholding the sportsman from their pursuit. Still there is sufficient evidence on record of the occasional fierce retaliation of the bull bison when w^ounded and closely followed up, in some resulting even in the death of the sportsman, to invest their pursuit with the flavour of danger so attractive to many persons, and to render caution in attacking them highly advisable. The ground on which they are usually met is fortunately favourable for escape if the sportsman be attacked, trees and large rocks being seldom far distant. Although a closely -allied bovine, the Gayal of trans- Brahmapiitra India, has for ages been domesticated and used to till the land, all attempts to do so with the subject of my remarks, or even to raise them to maturity in a state of captivity, have failed. After a certain point the wild and retiring nature of the forest race asserts itself, and the young bison pines and dies. It has always struck me as curious why the most difiicult of all animals to reclaim from a wild state are precisely those whose congeners have been already domesticated. The so-called wild horses, and the wild asses, are almost untamable ; so also with the wild sheep and goat, the wild dog and the jungle-fowl. A young tiger or hyena is infinitely easier to bring up and tame than any of these. This unconquerable antipathy of the Indian bison to the propinquity of man is slowly but surely contracting 118 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. its range, and probably diminishing its numbers. Gradually cultivation is extending into the valleys that everywhere penetrate these hills ; and the grazing of cattle, which extends far ahead of the regularly settled tracts, is pushing the wild bull before it into the remotest depths of the hills. I have, in a comparatively brief ac- quaintance with these hills, myself known considerable areas where bison used to be plentiful almost entirely cleared of these animals. Other wild beasts retire more slowly before the incursions of man, partly subsisting as they do on the products of his labour. The tiger who finds himself suddenly in the middle of herds of cattle merely changes his diet to meet the situation, and preys on cattle instead of wild pigs and deer. Even deer seldom live entirely in the deep forest, but hang on the out- skirts of cultivation, and, mainly subsisting on it, need not materiallv decrease in numbers so lono- as there remain uncleared tracts to furnish a retreat when pressed. But the bison admits of no compromise. I have never heard of his visiting fields even when he lives within reach ; he never interbreeds with tame cattle ; and the axe of the clearer and the low of domestic cattle are a sign to him, as to the traditional backwoodsman, to move "further West." On the day appointed for our grand hunt I started early, with the young Th;ikiir and a few of the Korkiis, by a way that led right over the top of Dhiipgarh. After walking along the open plateau for about three miles we commenced the ascent of the hill, which is close on 1,000 feet above the plateau. The zigzag track was hardly distinguishable among the grass and bamboos that clothe the hill ; and every here and there a road had to be cleared with the axe, no one having passed THE mAhAdEO hills. Ill) that way since the preceding rainy season, when all vestiges of paths in these hills become obliterated. We were amply rewarded, however, for the climb by the magnificent prospect that awaited us when we gained the summit — the finest by far in all this range of hills. The further slope of Dhupgarh was not nearly so pre- cipitous as that we had come up, but fell, by steps as it were, to the bottom of a deep and extensive glen, which was the one we were about to beat. Beyond this again rose the mural cliff that buttresses the whole of this block to the south ; and far past this, to the left, stretched out below us the wilderness of forest-clad hills, that reaches with scarcely a break to the Tapti river — a distance, as the crow files, of sixty or seventy miles. All this immense waste is the chosen home of the bison ; and beyond it, on either side of the Tapti, on the elevated Chikalda range, and in the wild hills of Kalibhit, lies another tract of equally wide extent, where, too, the mountain bull roams, as yet scarcely troubled with the presence of man or cattle. This is the region of the Teak tree ^9ar excellence in this central range of moun- tains, to which I will have the pleasure of conducting the reader in a future chapter. Tracks of bison and sambar were numerous on the top of the hill, which is covered with bamboo clumps and with a low thicket of the bastard date.* I have frequently, on other occasions, found both bison and sambar on the very top of Dhiipgarh in the early morning. The descent of the farther side of the hill, over long slopes of crumbled sandstone, and the curious vitrified pipes of ironstone that exfoliate from the decomposed surface of these hills, was fully more tire- * Pluenix sijlvestris. 120 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL IXDIA. some than tlie ascent. Many a time after this did I tread the same path to reach this valley, where bison were nearly always to be found, and many an effort did I make to discover a shorter and less precipitous road. But all in vain ; for the sheer ravines that everywhere else hem in the flanks of the Dhiipgarh mountain render a passage round it a matter of infinitely greater time and toil than the way over the top. At the bottom of the valley, below a shady grove of wild mango trees, where the stream that drains the large valley has formed a considerable pool in a rocky basin, I found assembled three or four of the Eaj-Gond chiefs whose possessions lie in the hills to the south of Puchmurree. They differed not at all from him of Puchmurree, unless that they were somewhat more intelligent and polished in manner. Each had brought his small retinue of match- lock men, and a large gang of common Gonds and Korkiis to beat ; so that altogether we mustered some twenty guns, and between two and three hundred- beaters. The people were well acquainted with all the beats and passes, having always several great hunts of this sort during the year ; and everything had been arranged before I came. The bulk of the beaters had gone on hours before to surround the valley, and, as we were a little later than was expected, it was likely that they would already have commenced to beat. We lost no time, therefore, in taking up our posts, which stretched in a lone^ line risjht across the lower end of the valley. First, however, I had to furnish powder to load the whole of the matchlocks of my native friends ; and had I not guessed that such would be the case, as usual, I would certainly not have had sufticient in my flask. Six fingers deep is the rule for these weapons, and it is THE MAHADEO HILLS. 121 of no avail to point out the superior strength of our powder. They will have six fingers of Hall's No. '2, whatever the consequence. As they put generally two bullets, a leaden and an iron one, on the top of this charge, and wad with a handful of dry leaves, the result often is the bursting of the barrel, and always consider- able contusion of the user's shoulder. This was to be a silent beat ; that is, the people were to advance without noise, beyond the rapping of their axes aofainst the trees, as there was another dense cover lower down which usually held bison, and sometimes a tiger, and which was to be beaten also in the afternoon. I had sat an hour at least behind the screen of leaves that had been put up for me when the first sign of the beat appeared, and for another half-hour nothing was heard but the occasional knock of an axe-handle on a tree. Presently a shot rang from the extreme flank of the line of guns, then another, and a clatter of hoofs inside showed that a herd of something had been repulsed in an attempt to escape. As the beat advanced more shots were heard on either side, and the galloping about of the imprisoned animals, now and then met by a shout from behind when they attempted to break back, became productive of considerable excitement on my part. At last a rush of animals advanced down the side of the stream where I was posted, and eight or ten sambar clattered past within half a stone's throw. I had just fired both barrels of my rifle at a couple of the stags, dropping one of them in his tracks, and had advanced a few paces towards it, when I heard a shot on my im- mediate right, and a fine bull bison, with two cows and a small calf, trotted past almost in the same line as the sambar had taken. Those were not the days of breech- 122 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. loaders, and tliougli I liad another rifle it was a little behind, leaning against the tree, and before I could get hold of it nothing but the sterns of the " beeves " (as a friend used to call them) were to be seen. When I got it I favoured the bull with both barrels a posteriori, but there was no result. The young Thakiir, who occupied the post on my right, had been more success- ful ; and when the beaters came up immediately after- wards I found a fine four-year-old bull lyiug dead, with two of his bullets throus^h the centre of his neck. All the gans now came dropping in, and gathered in a group round the slain bison. One had seen a bear, another a couple of sambar, and so on. All had fired, and of course hit hard, but the net result was the Thakiir's beeve, my sambar, and two little "jungle sheep," as they are called, the proper name being the four-horned antelope.'^ I had never seen a bison before, and though this was only a young chestnut-coloured bull with small horns, I was much struck with the bulk and expression of power belonging to the animal. Such was the wddth of the chest that when .lying on the side, the upper fore- leg projected stiff and straight out from the body, without any tendency towards the ground. The head in particular has a fine highbred and withal solemn appearance, which is still more noticeable in old bulls. From the eye of a newly slain bison, turned up to the sunlight, comes such a wonderful beam of emerald light as I have seen in the eye of no other animal ; and the skin emits a faint, sweet odour as of herbs. We tracked the wounded s;imbar and bison a little way down the valley, the former showing signs of being * Titraceroa qiiadriroynis. THE MAIIADEO HILLS. 123 hard Lit, and a little blood was found also on tlic track of the bull. We left a few of the best trackers to follow up their trail with the next beat, and went round to take up our places about a mile further down, and close to my camp at Korighat. The same process was repeated here, and this time with much shoutiner and hammerinfi: of drums, as a tiger was usually somewhere in this part of the valley, and his tracks had been seen in the morning. I did not o-et a shot on this occasion. One of the Gond Thakurs shot another sambar ; and my wounded stag was found and killed with their axes by the Gonds. The wounded bull was in the beat, and broke near one of the Thdkiir's retainers, who was too astonished to fire. The rest of the bison, or another herd, broke through the side of the beat, and plunged down a very steep and rocky descent, which the people said they had never attempted but once before, when one of them had broken a leg. Certainly I should not have thought that any animal so large as a bison could go down that place and live. Nothing had been seen of the tiger, and had J. known him as well as I afterwards did, I would not have been surprised. I knew that tiger intimately for many months after this, and yet I never once saw him. He was a very large animal indeed, but entirely a jungle tiger, that is, preying solely on wild animals, and keeping during the day to the most inaccessible ravines and thickets. He frequented the bison ground round Dhupgarh, and hung on the trac^es of the herds, ap- parently with an eye to the young beeves. I never came across evidence of his killing any of them, though I once saw a place on the plateau where the whole night long he had evidently baited an unfortunate cow with a 124 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL li^DIA. calf. Within a space of some twenty yards in diameter the grass had been closely trampled down and paddled into the moist ground by their feet, the footprints of the calf being in the centre, while the tiger's mighty paw went round outside, and the poor cow had evidently circled round and round between the monster and her little one, I am glad to say that I tracked the tiger off in one direction, and the courageous mother and her calf safe in another. The tiger cannot, I believe, kill even a cow bison, unless taken at a disadvantage ; and with a bull he could have no chance whatever. I seldom went out without meeting the tracks of this tiger ; and often followed him throuQ-h his whole nio-ht's wanderings, which were laid out as on a map in the clean sand of the stream beds ; but I always lost him in the end, though I believe he often let me pass within a few yards of him. He came at rare intervals, like the bison, on to the plateau ; but his regular beat was round the bottom of Dhupgarh, a thousand feet lower down. Once, long ago, a tiger took up his post on the plateau, and became a man-eater, almost stopping the pilgrimage to Mahadeo, till he was shot by the uncle of the Thakiir. I followed the wounded bison bull for about a mile from where he was last seen ; but he was moving fast, and the blood had ceased to drop. He would never stop, the people said, till he got to a stronghold of the bison of these hills, about five miles off, a hill called the Biiri-Ma (Old Mother) ; and so I reluctantly gave up the pursuit. When I returned all the beaters were assembled ; and a more wild and uncouth set it never before had been my lot to see. Entirely naked, with the exception of a very dingy and often terribly scanty strip of cloth round the middle, there was no difficulty THE MAIIADEO HILLS. 125 in detecting the points that mark the aborigine. They were all of low stature, the Korkiis perhaps averaging an inch or two higher than the Gonds, who seldom exceed five feet two inches ; the colour generally a very dark brown, almost black in many individuals, though never reaching the sooty blackness of the negro. Among the Gonds a lighter-brown tint was not uncommon. In features both races are almost identical, the face being flat, forehead low, nose flat on the bridge, with open protuberant nostrils ; lips heavy and large, but the jaw usually well formed and not prominent like that of the negro ; the hair on the face generally very scanty, but made up for by a bushy shock of straight black hair. In form they are generally well made, muscular about the shoulders and thighs, with lean, sinewy forearm and lower leg. The ex^Dression of face is rather stolid, though good-humoured. Some of the younger men might almost be called handsome after their pattern ; but the elders have generally a coarse, weather- beaten aspect which is not attractive. All the men present carried the little axe, without which they never stir into the forest, and many had spears besides. During the beat they had killed a good many peafowl and hares, and one little deer, by throwing their axes at them, in which they are very expert. The Korkiis, I found, were prevented by prejudice acquired from the Hindus from eating the flesh of the slain bison ; so the Gonds from Almod, and a number of a tribe called Bharyas, who had come from the Motiir hills, had him all to themselves, while the Korkiis set to work on the sambar with their sharp little axes, which are all that is wanted for skinning and cutting up the carcase of the largest animal. My servant secured 126 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. the tongues and marrow-bones, and a steak out of tlie undercut of the bison — all delicacies of the first water for the table of the forest sportsman ; and the remainder of the flesh was given up to the hungry multitude. As night fell, they lit fires where the bison had fallen, and near the village where they had brought the deer ; and for hours after continued carrying about gobbets of the raw meat, which they hungup on the surrounding trees, broil- incf and swallowino^ the titbits durinc: leisure moments. This was only the joreliminary to the great feast, however — the dozen of oysters to whet the appetite for turtle and venison. Soon the trees were fully decorated with bloody festoons, and the savages set to work in earnest to goroe themselves with the half-cooked meat. The entrails were evidently the great delicacies, and were eaten in long lengths, as Italians do macaroni. The o-orging seemed to be endless, and I sat outside my little tent for hours looking on in wonder at the bloody orgie. The bonfires they had lighted threw a ruddy glow over the open glade, and on the crimson junks of flesh hanging on the trees, bringing the dusky forms of the revellers into every variety of picturesque relief, and forming a wild and Eembrandt-like picture which I shall not soon forget. Till a late hour many new arrivals continued to add to their numbers, winding down the steep path that leads over the Rorighat, with lighted torches and loud shouts to show the way and scare wild beasts. All were welcome to a raw steak and a pull at the pot of Mhowa spirit that stood beside every group. Ere long they began to slug, and then to dance to a shrill music piped from half-a-dozen bamboo flutes. The scene was getting uproarious as I turned in ; and my slumber was broken through the greater part of the THE MAHADEO HILLS. 127 night by the noise and the glare of the great fires through the thin canvas of my tent. Next morning I was roused by the crow of the red jungle-fowl, which swarm in the bamboo cover of this little valley, and by the unremitting " hammer, hammer " of the little " coppersmith " barbet,* of which there seemed to be more in this valley of Rorigh;it than in all the rest of the country. I found the revellers lying like logs just where they had been sitting ; and it was no small labour to rouse and get them together. A couple of days' supply of flour was served out to each, as remuneration for their labour in the drive ; and plenty more was promised if they would come and help to build the lods^e at Puchmurree. I also ratified the chiefs by presenting them with sundry canisters of powder and all my spare bullets ; and we parted, I believe, mutually pleased with each other, and with promises of plenty more hunting-meets of the same sort. I had had enough of that sort of sport, however ; and, excepting once with the Thakiir of Almod, never again drove the hills for game. It is poor sport in my opinion, and is seldom very successful even in making a bag. Two days after this, parties of my aboriginal friends began to drop in at the bungalow work ; and, as a few masons and brickmakers had also arrived from the plains, our prospects looked cheerful. The wild people brought their women and children along with them, and in half a day erected huts of boughs suflicient for their accommodation. They were all told off in parties to cut and bring in Sdl poles for rafters, and bamboos and grass for thatching, to break and carry up lime from the ravine, to puddle earth for brick-making, etc. The * Xantholcema indica. 128 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. wood-cutting part of the work they were well accustomed to ; but those to whose lot fell the lime and earth business were much disgusted, and were with difficulty kept to their work. All payments were made in kind, the convoy of Baujara bullocks being now unremittingly employed in carrying grain from the plains. The work rapidly progressed, and was but slightly interrupted by the abscondinsf after a while of all our masons and brickmakers, who had very unwillingly come up from the plains. Their places were at once taken by the Gonds who had been employed under them, and whom I had selected to learn these branches of the work, with a view to such a contingency. An old foreman carpenter, who stuck by us and superintended the work, had fortunately some knowledge of bricklaying, and with his help we soon began to get the Gonds to turn out very respectable work indeed. Nobody knew how to turn an arch, however ; and I had to evolve the idea of one out of my own consciousness, and build the first over the fireplace myself. The Gonds were immensely amused at the idea of the Koitor, or " men," as they call themselves, dabbling in bricks and mortar, and laughed and joked over it from morning till night. Kegular industry, however, was not to be got from these un- reclaimed savages ; and there were seldom half of those on the muster-roll actually present. Every now and then, too, they would walk off in a body, and have a big drink somewhere for a couple of days, returning and setting to work the next morning without appearing to think a word of explanation necessary. The height of absurdity was reached when I imported a plough and a pair of bullocks from below, and sent a Korku to work with them to plough up a piece of land for a garden. THE MAHADEO HILLS. 129 He really made a sad buDglc of it at first, having no conception of tlie business ; and I had to set one of my peons, who had followed the plough before he donned the badge of office, to help him. In a little while, however, several of the Korkiis became quite au fait at ploughing ; and an acre or so of fine soil in the old bed of the tank was soon fenced in, deeply ploughed, and prepared for gardening operations at the commencement of the rainv season. For the next few weeks, my spare time was pleasantly passed in exploring the neighbourhood of the hills and their productions. I visited the Sal forest in the Deldkdri valley to the east of Puchmurree. It was one of the few forests in this part of the country which had till then escaped destruction at the hands of the timber-speculator or the dhya-cutting aborigine, being inaccessible to the former from want of roads, and unsuited from its level character and the size of the trees to the operations of the latter. It, however, afi'ords an example of one of the great difficulties of growing large timber in the dry upland regions of Central India. Though the trees bore every appearance of being fully mature, their size was by no means first-rate, the largest averaofins" no more than six or eiQ:ht feet in stirth, while most of them, when subsequently cut down, Avere found to be almost useless from heart-shake and dry-rot. It belonged to the Thakiir of Puchmurree and another chief ; and I soon after concluded a lease of it for Government w^ith them, and laid out a road connecting it with the open country. The view looking upwards to the Puchmurree heights from the Denwa valley, or across from the opposite Motiir hills, is exceedingly fine, the rich reds of the sandstone scarp mellowing into 130 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. an indescribable variety of delicate shades of purple and violet in tlie evening sun, while broad belts of shadow thrown across the green slopes at the foot, and gathering in the recesses of the ravines, seem to project the glowing summits of the rocks to an unnatural height in the soft orange-tinted sky. Here I ascertained the existence of the Bara-Singha, or twelve-tined deer [Rucervus Duvaucellii), an animal which, like the Sal forest in which it lives, had been supposed not to extend to the west of the Sal belt in the Mandla district. I was not so fortunate as to shoot a stag myself in this place ; but I shot two does, and saw a frontlet of the male in the possession of a native shikari, with the unmistakable antlers attached. Since then, too, I have heard of a fine stag being shot there by a railway Engineer. I believe they are not very numerous here ; inded, the Sal forest, to which I believe their range is confined, covers an area of only a few square miles. 1 also found that the red jungle-fowl of North- eastern India {G. ferrugineus) inhabits this Sal forest and the hills around it, although, so far as I am aware, it is not found anywhere else in these hills further west than the great Sal belt of Mandla. The other species of jungle-fowl, which properly belongs to Western and Southern India {G. Sonneratii), is also to be met with on the Puchmurree hills ; and I have shot both species in the same day in the ravine where the Mahadeo Cave is situated. The red fowl could hardly be dis- tinguished from many a specimen of the domesticated race either in appearance or voice, while the gray fowl does not crow like a cock, and is, I think, a much handsomer bird than the red. His peculiar hackles. THE MAHADEO HILLS. 131 each feather tipped as with a drop of yellow sealing-wax, are much valued for fly-dressing. Jungle-fovvl shooting with spaniels in these hills is capital fun. The cover they frequent is very thick, and they take a good hustling before they fly up and perch on the trees. When you approach they generally fly off, and are very clever at putting a thick cover between themselves and the gun, making the shooting by no means so easy as it looks, so that a couple of brace are a good bag for a morning's sport. I never saw reason to suppose that the two species interbred, nor that either of them crosses with the domestic fowl of these hills. I have already remarked on the singularity of thus finding a patch of the forest peculiar to Eastern India, together with its most characteristic mammals and birds, isolated amonsf the veo^etation and fauna of the west, at a distance of about one hundred and thirty miles from the nearest point of the main forest to which thej^ belong. Two species of spur-fowl are pretty common on the hills. The one is the common little red bird,* which, but for its size, might easily be mistaken for the red jungle-fowl, being very like a small bantam cock. The other species is, I think, the same as the painted spur-fow],t an exceedingly handsome bird, with a long double spur on each leg. The latter species is gene- rally found on the edges of the ravines, down which it drops, when flushed, like a stone, and can seldom be found again. The red bird I found chiefly on the little broken hills that surround the plateau, and in the same places as the jungle-fowl ; and very pretty sport it gives with spaniels. * Gallojperdix spadiceus. f G. lumulosu?, Jerdon. K 2 132 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. The common Chihdrd gazelle of the plains inhabits the undulating part of the plateau ; and the little four- horned antelope, already referred to, is not uncommon in the thicker parts. The black antelope is quite unknown, though on the similar plateau of Toran Mai, in the western Satpiiras, it is said to be common. Hares are very numerous. The Korkiis have a curious way of killing them at night. I discovered it by observing a strange will-o'-the-wisp-like light flitting about the edges of the little eminences across the valley below my tent, accompanied by a faint jingle as of bells. It is very simple. One man carries a pole across his shoulders, from the fore end of which is slung an earthen pan full of blazing faggots of the torch-wood tree,^ arranged so as to throw the light ahead. The pan is made out of one of their ordinary earthen water-vessels, by knocking out the side. It is balanced at the other end by a basket of spare faggots. Another man carries a long iron rod, with a number of sliding rings, that jingle as he walks. Three or four lusty fellows follow, carrying bamboos fifteen or twenty feet in length ; and the party proceed to move about the edge of the thickets, where unsuspecting hares come out to feed after nightfall. As soon as one appears in the streak of bright light thrown across the ground by the fire-pan, the whole party rush towards her, jingling frantically at the bells, and keeping her terror-stricken form in the circle of light. Poor puss seldom attempts to escape, but sits stupefied by the glare and noise, till a bamboo brought down on her back ends her existence. A party generally gets five or six hares in this way in a few hours. They sometimes come across small deer, and kill them in the same way ; and * CocMospermuvi gossypinm. THE MAHADEO KILLS. 133 I have heard stories of panthers and even tigers being met with, and turning the tables on the fire-hunters in an unexpected fashion. I once took a gun out with one of these parties ; but found that it spoiled the whole affair, all the hares in the neighbourhood retreating to the cover at the first shot. I have already said that tigers rarely come on to the plateau. Bears are equally scarce ; in fact, I don't think I ever saw the track of one above the passes, and very few below. The opposite range of Motiir, however, as well as the Mahadeo hills further west, are full of them. The panther, on the other hand, is pretty common in Puchmurree. The first night my camp came up, one of a small flock of sheep I had brought, in case of provisions running short, was killed by a panther close to my tent. He dropped from an overhanging branch into an enclosure of prickly bushes that had been put up round the sheep ; and his attempts to drag it through the fence created such a disturbance among the people that he left it and leaped out in the confusion. The next night he seized one of my Clumber spaniels at the door of my tent; but a big greyhound named " Jack " flew to the rescue, and little " Nell " escaped with a few scratches and a great fright. The same panther became afterwards very troublesome on the hill when the work- men at the bungalow had left, attacking my dogs, sheep, and goats nearly every night, and coming boldly through the very rooms of the house. He was a toothless old brute, however, to which circumstance the dogs owed several escapes out of his very jaws ; and though so daring at night in attacking our animals he would never face the men. Several times my horsekeepers and dog- boys sent him skulking oS" sideways, like a crab, from 134 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. the vigour of their applications of long bamboos across his back. I never could kill him, though I tried every conceivable plan. One night I might have shot him as he passed along below the raised plinth of the house in the moonlight ; but of course I had seized the only unloaded gun in the rack in the hurry, and the locks snapped harmlessly within a foot of his back. He was shot by a shikari after I had left the hill. Coursing foxes was another great amusement. A colony of the pretty little fox of the plains * inhabited a small open glade a little to the west of my camp. They had a great many burrows almost in the centre of the plain, all of which appeared to run into each other. I never failed to unearth one or more foxes here by the aid of " Pincher," a minute black - and - tan English terrier, with the spirit of a lion, who could get into any of the holes, and would die rather than not get out his fox. Often he showed signs of severe subterranean combats ; and once I thought he was done for, when the greyhounds ran a fox into the very hole he had gone in at. We had to get picks and spades and dig down to him, and we found him lying with one fox before him pinned up in the end of a blind hole, which he had already half killed, and another blocking the way out behind him. Poor gallant little Pincher ! He died of a sunstroke some three months later, from being dragged through a long eighteen-mile march in the hot sun by a brutal dog-boy, without getting a single drop of water. I had two brace of capital greyhounds at that time ; one couple crossed between the English and Kampur breeds, and the other bred from a Scotch deerhouud out of a Buujara bitch. The Indian fox is not above half * Vulpes Bengalensis. f:^' RAJ-GO¥D FROM mTRSIMG-PORE. THE MAHADEO HILLS. 135 the size of English Eeynard, but he has an astonishing turn of speed, and doubles with wonderful agility. These dogs had, however, the speed of them, and the run was generally much in a circle ; so that though the ground was well suited for riding, I generally went on foot, along with some of the workpeople who greatly enjoyed the sport, and some of whom (Bharyas) eat the foxes afterwards. It was capital training for bison- shooting, which severely tries the wind, and in which I also spent a day or two now and then. Stalking the bison in these hills is very severe work indeed. At times they may be found pretty near at hand, but more generally the Dhiipgarh hill, or the great ravine, has to be crossed first, and either implies a good many miles of stiff work before the sport really begins. The bison, though they seem to move slowly, are often really going very fast ; and, as scarcely a yard of the country they live in is anything like level, what is apparently nothing to them is really a very hard pull for their pursuer. The bottoms of the valleys are also very hot even at this time of year ; and at all times exercise under an Indian sun is much more fatiguino^ than in a cold climate. A wounded bison never stops going while he can, short of nightfall, and must be pursued while a ray of hope remains. Thus hill after hill, and ravine after ravine, are put between one and home in the excitement of the chase, till suddenly you pull up and realise what an immense distance you have come, and that you cannot possibly get back before the middle of the night. If you have anything to eat, the best course under such circumstances is to sleep where you are. I often used to bivouac thus when out after bison ; and seldom found it much of a hardship. A 136 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. good fire can always be lit in a few minutes, dry wood being never far off in an Indian jungle. An elevated place, at the same time sheltered from the wind, should be chosen for the purpose, as the valleys are more malarious at night. A shelter of boughs should always be knocked up, which your wild men will do hand- somely in five minutes. I learned more of the simple nature of the forest people during the few hours' chat by the fire on these occasions than I believe I would have done otherwise in as many years. I think they got attached to me a good deal ; and, though they are not very demonstrative at any time, I was often touched by some simple act of thoughtfulness one would hardly have expected from their untutored natures. About the hardest day I had was after a couple of bulls I had seen grazing on the very top of Dhiipgarh, looming against the sky-line like two young elephants in the red sunlight. It was evening when I found them, and, as the spot was inaccessible by stalking, I sent round a couple of Korkus to move them, while I posted myself on the road they would be most likely to take down the hill. They went, however, by a pass a few hundred yards further on ; and though I ran over the intervening bare and slippery rocks as hard as I could to get a shot, I was only in time to see them fioundering down the hill-side like two great rocks, and they never pulled up till far down in the blue haze that hung over the bottom of the valley they looked scarcely bigger than a couple of crows. As they had not been alarmed by shooting, and would probably be found in the valley next day, I went home and prepared for a long hunt. We took the road round by the great THE MAHAdEO hills. 137 ravine, instead of going over Dhupgarh, because it was rather shorter when the bottom of the valley had to be made for, and also because we expected to find another herd on the way. AVe were disappointed, however, in this, seeing nothing till we got to the valley except a bear with her cub, the former of which I shot. Arriving in the valley, we spread about in all directions to look for bison-tracks. The young Thakiir of Puch- murree, the best hunter and tracker in the hills, was unfortunately laid up with a sprain he had got the pre- ceding day ; but we picked up two capital bison- trackers out of a lot of Korkiis from a village across the great ravine, whom we found cutting a dhya on one of the hill-sides as we passed. I had found the footprints of the Dhupgarh. tiger in the bed of the stream, and was following them up with one of the Korkijs, when I was recalled by a whistle to a place where the tracks of the two bulls had been discovered. They were making for a high plateau covered with thick bamboo jungle at the top of the valley, and we at once started on the trail. It was clear everywhere, and the men ran it at a sharp walk nearly to the top of the hill. Here, however, a sheet of rock intervened, and above it was a mass of large boulders intermixed with heavy clumps of bamboo. We were a long time puzzling the track through here, as the bulls had stopped and fed about on the young bamboo shoots. At last, however, one of the men we had picked up took a long cast over the top of the hill, and returned with the news that the bulls had separated, one going off to the south, apparently in the direction of a well-known haunt in the Bori teak forest, while his companion had gone off up the hill in the opposite direction. We decided to follow the latter, 138 THE FIIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. as it led more nearly in the direction of home. The wilderness of bamboo-covered hills and deep intervening rocky-bottomed or swampy dells, over and through which we carried that trail till the sun was gettinor low, is beyond description. Every now and then we thought we were just upon him, freshly-cropped bamboos and droppings showing that he was not far in front. But he had never stopped for long. This restlessness I afterwards found to be the habit of bison which have recently been disturbed. He was evidently making off steadily for some distant retreat. We started several herds of sambar and solitary stags, and once a bear bustled out of a nala we were crossinof, and bundled off down the hill-side ; but we were bent on nobler game and durst not fire at them. By evening we had got right to the further side of the great ravine beyond Jambo-Dwip, and the peak of Dhiipgarh glowed pink and distant in the rays of the declining sun. We were descending a long slope among thin trees and high yellow grass, and I was a little ahead of the rest, when I suddenly saw the head and horns of a bison looking at me over a low thicket, and was putting up my rifle to fire when, with a loud snort, the owner wheeled round, and plunging noisily down the hill disappeared. This snort, which sounds like a strong expulsion of air through the nostrils, is very commonly uttered by bison when suddenly disturbed, and is the only sound I ever heard from them, except a low menacing moan, which I have heard a bull utter when suspicious of approaching danger, and the quivering bellow which they sometimes emit in common with most other animals when in articulo. I ran to the edge of what proved to be a deepish ravine full of bamboos, and was THE MAHADEO HILLS. 139 just in time to see a small herd of six or seven cows and calves disappearing over a low shoulder on the opposite side. But behind them slowly stalked one bull — a majestic fellow nearly jet-black, and towering like a young elephant in the rapidly-closing gloom of the evening. As he reached the top of the rise he paused and turned broadside on, his solemn-looking visage facing in our direction. He was about ninety yards from where I sat, with the heavy 8 -bore rifle I had wearily dragged after him all day rested on my knee ; and, forbidding though he looked, I sighted him just behind the elbow and fired, fully expecting him to subside on the receipt of two ounces of lead driven by six drachms of powder. But there was no result whatever, save a dull thud as the bullet plunged into his side ; and he slowly walked on over the brow as if nothing had happened. My other barrel caught him in the flank, and then I seized the spare rifle that was thrust into my hand, and sped across the intervening ravine. I was toiling up the other side, very hot and much out of breath, when a heavy crash beyond fell upon my delighted ear. I had been in agony lest I had missed the mighty target after all ; but it was not so. There he lay as he had fallen, and rolled over down the hill until stopped by a clump of bamboos. A mighty mass of beef, truly, secured at last. But we were six or seven miles from Puchmurree, and there was no more than half an hour of daylight left. The road I knew was frightful, with hundreds of ravines besides the great one to cross, and it was not to be thought of at night. After due consideration we determined to go and sleep at a recently cut dhya that was known by the people, about a mile from where we were ; so, leaving 140 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. the fallen bull to the shadows of night, we went and made ourselves sufficiently comfortable for the night, under a cauopy of the newly-cut branches, on couches spread deeply with the springy shoots of the bamboo. We had walked at least twenty miles in the course of the day, and that over fearful ground. I was very tired, but happy, and never slept sounder in my life. On the whole I think stalking the mountain bull among the splendid scenery of these elevated regions, possesses more of the elements of true sport than almost any other pursuit in this part of India. liEAU OF BULL BISON. CHAPTER IV. THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. Something has already been said regarding the inter- mixture of Hindu blood, manners, and religion, that has taken place among the aboriginal races of Central India. Were this an isolated event in the ethnical history of the country it would possess a comparatively feeble interest. Its high importance lies in its furnishing us with a living example of a process which has, as already suggested, played an important part in the development of the races which compose the mass of modern Hinduism. It is the uppermost and most accessible stratum of a geological series of untold antiquity ; and, as the geologist interprets ancient formations by the analogy of the processes he sees still going on around him, so it may be that some light may be thrown on the construction of modern Hinduism by the process of transformation which is here going on before our eyes. It is difficult to say hovv' far the actual admixture of blood has taken place. There is small room for doubt that the so-called Gond Eajas of pre-Mahomedan times were nearly, or quite, pure Hindu Rajputs, exercising a feudal authority over numerous petty chiefs of mixed U2 TlIK TITGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. descent. The former have been nearly swept away, their only remaining representative being the pensioned Gond Raja of Nagpur; the latter remain in their descendants, and, almost to a man, show the clearest signs of possessing a mixture of the Hindu and aborio^inal blood. The Hindu element in such cases has not been the debased article current amonor the masses of the labouring population, but the purer strain derived from the aristocratic families of Rajputana. It is as it were the Jirst cross in the mixed breed, and thus, as might be expected, shows the characteristics of both sides clearly developed. In other cases, among the lower races of aborigines, crosses also appear to have taken place ; but in such cases it appears to have been the already debased Hindu of the lower orders that has furnished the foreign element, and the result has been a breed which little approaches the high Aryan character, and is, in fact, only a slight advance on the purely aboriginal type. Among the chiefs the cross appears to have taken place with all the different tribes of indigenes. Towards the east the mixed breed call themselves Gond- Rajputs, or shortly Raj-Gonds, and are the direct result of the alliance betw^een the Rajpiit adventurer and the Gond. In the Korkii country the same thing seems to have occurred between the Rajputs and the Korkus. In this case, however, the tribe being an influential one, the descendants are only known as Korkiis. But they differ in many respects from pure Korkus, being tall and fair-complexioned, ultra-Hindu in their observances, and marrying only among their several families, or into purer houses — never among the undiluted aborigines. In the extreme west a distinct race called BhilaLas has originated from the cross between the Rajpiit and the THE ABORIGINAL TRlBEwS. 143 Bheel. The Bheels were for a much longer period in close contact with Hindus than any other tribe, and that during a period of Indian history when the restrictions of caste were almost entirely in abeyance. Buddhism, and its offspring Jainism, were the ruling faiths in that part of the country up to the eleventh or twelfth century ; and thus it is probable that a much greater admixture of the races occurred there than in countries where the Brahminical forms prevailed. The Bhilalas are now very numerous, occupying large tracts as almost the sole population, but still there is a marked distinction between these and the land-holding chiefs of the same descent. The distinction is, in fact, identical with that between the Raj-Gond and Korkii chiefs and the numerous commoner classes of the same tribes who are nominally pure aborigines, but are really half Hindii. As is the case with the divers peoples now included among modern Hindus, it would be wholly impossible now to gauge the extent to which the infusion of the Aryan element has taken place among these aboriginal races. The facility for amalgamation between them — the chemical affinity, so to speak, between the races — seems to be so great, that in a very few generations the points denoting the predominance of one or the other become obliterated. And yet the traveller among them will come on stratum after stratum showing in the clearest manner the intermediate stages between the two races. And, as a rule, variation of physical type will be found to be accompanied in almost equal ratio by divergence from aboriginal manners and religious ideas in the direction of Hinduism. It is probable that the further commixture of blood, excepting through the 144 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. occasional immorality of the races, has in recent times ceased as regards the masses, though the chiefs are still unremitting in their endeavours to purify their families by alliance with more blue-blooded Eajpiit houses than their own. Blue blood being a market- able commodity here as in other countries, the chiefs have to pay highly for such privileges ; and nothing has so much tended to pauperise these families as these constant bribes for the ennoblement of their race, and the equally heavy cost of conciliating the priestly arbitrators of their quality. For it is through this chink that the influence of Brahmanism has mainly succeeded in penetrating to the very core of these indigenous tribes. The test of purity of caste among races of uncertain descent is much more the extent of their observance of the Hindii code of purity and ceremonial than actual proof of lineage. The Brahmans form a sort of Heralds' College, to be inscribed on the rolls of which for a few genera- tions entitles an aspirant to ally himself with families who have already attained a higher status than himself. Strict reverence for the Brahmans, and adherence to ceremonial purity, are necessary to secure this ; and thus it is that all these semi-Hindii chiefs spend the greater part of their time and means in striving to attain the utmost rigour of attention to Hindu religious and social rule. To this end they have abandoned the gods of their fathers for the deities of the Brahmans. They have retained Brahmans as their councillors and to conduct the worship of the gods. They eat nothing unsanctioned by the Brahminical law ; and some even employ Brahmans to cook their food, sprinkling the faggots employed for the purpose with holy water. THE ABOKIGINAL TEIBES. 145 Thus tliey have gradually separated themselves from the mass of their aboriginal subjects, and formed a separate caste of their own, either inter-marrying amono- families similarly situated, or if possible seeking brides, as I have said, in houses superior to themselves. Some of them have thus succeeded in almost eradicatino- the aboriginal taint ; and by continued reversion to the purer stocks have attained to an equality of physical type with the higher races. Their social status has come to be acknowledged as that of the Rdjpiit rather than the aborigine ; and many have assumed the sacred thread, the wearing of which denotes membership of one of the twice-born castes. Most of them, however, whether from motives of policy or of superstition, still concede something to their semi-aboriginal descent ; worshipping perhaps in secret the tribal deities, and, in cases, placing at certain festivals the flesh of cows, abhorred of Hinduism, to their lips, wrapped in a thin covering of cloth. Many of them also require to be installed on their succession to the chiefship by a ceremon}^ which includes the touching of their fore- heads with a drop of blood drawn from the body of a pure aborigine of the tribe they belong to. Such an example on the part of their influential chiefs was certain to be followed by large sections of their subjects ; and in particular by such of them as were themselves in some degree of mixed descent. Accordingly we find the tribes much subdivided into clans, or castes, distinguished from each other by a more or less close adoption of Hindii customs and relio-ious forms. A theory has arisen that the Gonds are divided into twelve and a half formal castes accordino- to the number of the gods they worship, after the pattern of the 146 THE HIGHLANDS OF CKXTRAL TXDIA. Hindus ; but, as in the case of the hitter such a division is purely nominal, the actual number of Hindu castes being; almost infinite, so also amons^ the Gonds this distinction accords with nothing to be seen in practice ; and their subdivisions differ in almost every district, being founded partly perhaps on tribal descent, but chiefly on imported distinctions arising from the extent of their approximation to Hinduism. Some of these castes have already succeeded, like their chiefs, in at- taining to the status of Rajputs ; and the process is still going on before our eyes in places where the sacred thread is openly sold to aspirants by the chiefs and their obsequious Brahmans. As might be expected, the Gonds have gone further in the adoption of these Hindii sentiments than the other tribes. They are far more numerous ; they occupy large tracts of low country intermixed with the Hindus ; their semi-Hindii chiefs possessed the ruling power of the country for many generations ; and possibly they belong to a branch of the human race more susceptible of modification than the others. Their Tamulian con- geners in Southern India, while losing little of their aboriginal physical type, have conformed en 7nasse to the cu.-toms and religion of Hinduism ; while the Kolarian stock, wherever found, has obstinately resisted inter- mixture with the Hindii. In the next cliapter I propose to give a sample of the legends current among the Goods, which indicate their own consciousness of the importance of the change that has been wrought among them by their acceptance of Hindii ideas ; and in the meantime will proceed to some description of the aboriginal beliefs and insti- tutions, which still lie, in the most advanced of their MALE AND F'^MALE GOND, THE ABORIGIXAL TRIBES. 147 sections, but a little way below the surface, and which, among the undiluted denizens of the wilder regions, are yet found in their primitive purity. It is not an easy matter for the inquirer among such tribes really to ascertain the peculiarities of their language, religion, or ideas, Like all savages there is a child-like vagueness about their conceptions which it is very difficult to get the better of, and to this is added a suspiciousness which frequently leads them to deliberately withhold information the object of which they are unable to comprehend. In the case of these particular tribes, moreover, the admixture of Hinduism has proceeded so far that one has to be constantly on his guard against admitting as belonging to them what is in fact of foreign origin. An intimate acquaintance with Hindu beliefs and peculiarities is therefore the first essential quality of him who attempts to ascertain the distinctive features of these races ; and from the want of this great mistakes have constantly been made in describing them. The poverty of their languages is another great obstacle to the inquirer. In the aboriginal tongues there seem to be no expressions for abstract ideas, the few such which they possess being derived from the Hindi. In fact, the aboriginal roots are really almost confined to the exjDression of the barest necessities of savage existence. The names even of most of their personal deities, the nomenclature of religious ceremony, of moral qualities, and of nearly all the arts of life they possess, are all Hindi. The form, and particularly the termination, of these imported words is, however, frequently a good deal modified, the pronunciation being as a rule broadened ; and thus an imperfect acquaintance with the dialects of Hindi L 2 148 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDLV. frequently leads to tlie acceptance of such phrases as purely aboriginah The greatest diflQculty, however, is their vagueness of conception, and their want of abstract ideas. Thus, for instance, in all the recorded vocabu- laries it will be found that the term for " sky " is nothino- but the Hindi name for "clouds," or "sun," or "moon," or some specific object in the sky, not for the sky generally, for which they do not seem to possess a name. It is only in the remotest wilds that either Gonds or Korkiis are now found who do not know sufficient Hindi to carry on a simple conver- sation, although they generally employ their own tongue in talking among themselves. The tribes bordering on the plains, who visit some bazaar town once a week for purposes of exchange, and who arer constantly in contact with the people of the plains, have in many cases lost all knowledge of their own language, and speak the Hindi of the plains. There is nothing that is worth preserving in these rudimentary indigenous tongues ; and their inevitable absorption in the more copious lingua franca of the plains is not at all to be regretted. In religion the Gond tribes have passed through all the earlier stages of belief, and are now entering on that of idolatry pure and simple — the last in which relie^ion is still altos^ether dissevered from ideas of morality. As has been generally observed, however, the objects of worship of each new stage of development here form additions to those formerly reverenced, rather than supplant them. The foundation of their creed appears to be a vague pantheism, in which all nature is looked upon as pervaded by spiritual powers, the most prominent THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 149 and powerful of wliicli are personified and propitiated by simple oflferings. Every prominent mountain top is the residence of the Spirit of the Hill, who must be satisfied by an ofi'eritig before a dhya can be cut on its slopes. The forest is peopled by wood- land sprites, for whom a grove of typical trees is commonly left standing as a refuge in clearing away the jungle. When the field is sown, the god of rice-fields (Khodo Pen) has to be satisfied, and again when the €rop is reaped. The malignant powers receive regular propitiation. The Tiger God has a hut built for him in the wilderness that he may not come near their dwellings. The goddess of small-pox and of cholera receives offerings chiefly when her ravages are threatened. Among such elementary powers must be reckoned the ghosts of the deceased, which have to be laid by certain ceremonies. These consist in conjuring the ghost into something tangible, in one case into the body of a fish caught in the nearest water, in another, into a fowl <ihosen by omen. The object, whatever it is, is then brought to the house of the deceased, and propitiated for a certain time, after which it is formally consigned to rest by burial, or in one case by pouring it (in solution) over the representation of the village god. The spirits of persons killed by wild animals are believed to be especially malignant, and are "laid" with much care and ceremony. To this practice has been superadded by some the rite of periodical propitiation of deceased ancestors by sacrifice, implying their continued existence in another world, an entirely difi"erent thing it may be observed from the rite already described, which implies only a restless and spiteful existence in this world of a ghost which may be made an end of by a ceremony. 150 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. I believe the superior belief to be entirely derived from the Hindus, with whom it is a prime article of faith. None of these powers of nature are represented by idols, nor have they any particular forms or ceremonies of worship. They are merely localised by some vague symbol ; the mountain god by a daub of vermilion on some prominent rock ; the tree god by a pile of stones thrown round the stem of a tree — and so on. At these the simple savage pays his devotion, almost furtively, as he passes in the gray of the morning to his day's labour, by a simple prostration, or perhaps by the offering of a handful of rice or an onion ! More elaborate acts of worship are engaged in by the community at certain seasons, and then these primitive powders may be joined with the more personal deities derived from their neighbours in the general act of worship. In the next stage the tribes have added certain Fetishes to the list of powers. The principal of these is an iron spear-head called Pharsa Pen, and he is sup- ported by the Bell god, the Chain god, a god composed of some copper money hung up in a pot, shapeless stones, and many other objects, the power attributed to which is purely arbitrary, and unconnected with any natural agency. To this stage appears to belong the medicine man and dealer in witchcraft, who still possesses considerable power among the tribes. These medicine men can scarcely be called priests, and are not an hereditary caste. Their business is to exorcise evil spirits, to interpret the wishes of the fetish, to compel rain, and so on. Some of them seem to have acquired the power of throwing themselves into a sort of trance in which they are visited by the deity ; but in this THE ABORIGINAL TEIBES. 151 respect they are far behind the sorcerers of the Byga race further to the east, who will be subsequently alluded to. In a still more advanced stage, the Gonds have resorted to hero worship ; but it is curious that all the deified heroes they reverence are of purely Hindii derivation. The chief are Bhima, one of the fi.ve Pandu brethren, who is represented by his mythical club either in stone or wood ; Hardy al, a Eajpiit hero of much later date ; Dulha Deo, the apotheosis of a bridegroom, and many others. Lastly come the recognised divinities of the Hindii pantheon. Amongst a race whose blessings are few and hardships many it is not surprising that the malevolent members of the Hindii pantheon should have found more acceptance than the benevolent deities. Vishnii is scarcely recognised by them, except in his one terrible development of Narsingha or the Man-Tiger ; while Siva the Destroyer, with his formidable consort Kali, and son Bhairava, are the favourite objects of reverence amonof the more advanced of the tribes. These are represented by rude idols, Siva himself in his usual Phallic form ; and a Brahman in many cases officiates at their shrines. Here for the first time we find my- thology— the science of priests — at work. In their earlier stages the tribes had no priests, no hierarchy of gods, and consequently no mythology. Now legends are invented to connect the tribes, and their earlier gods, with the great web of Hindii fiction, and bring them within the dominion of caste and priestdom. In the succeeding chapter w411 be found a version of one of these frasjments. Their art is of the rudest character, often outraging the requirements of Hindii orthodoxy — ir.2 'llli: IIICIIl.ANDS OF (JKNTRAI. INDIA. Huilcil, ill r,M-l, t'l tin' lliciil;il ciIiImi' of ;i jtcopic Hf.'U-CcIy yet ('jncrL!,iii;^ IVoiii iinrc, Id isliisin, jM.'iiin- li.ivc (U)iijc(ttiin(l tli.il tlic worsliij) ol" Si'vi'i and ]\'\H inylliii- coniiiMiiioiis, wliidi litims ko iii(',()n<^ruous .'in iiilniHion into the iiiiMcr Lull: of IIk- Aryan Ilindi'is, li;iH hccii, III lacl, (Icnvrd Iroiii iJif ;i,l)on!^nii;i,l r;i.ccs of India. As rc;^Mr<ls Si'vii. liiinsclf in Jiis I'liallic loi-m there Hccnis to be little loundation foi* .sucli iin liypotheslH. Tin; omMcm Iimh nowhere, I lidicvc;, Ix-en Fouinl as an olijcct of ;i(loiatioii .•iiiionL'; tin; iii(liL!,cnous races wlu^re iirahminism has not |K;n('.trati!(l, whereas it was a very ancient (01111 (d" woishi[) ainon*^ tlie i)eoj)I('s of Western Asia, and wascvcii jin-vah'nt in lieathen iiomemore tlian sixteen liiiiidred y(!ars ago. It was, as in Jmlia, so in tiie countries ot Western Asia., connected witli human sacri- fices. It is true that this forin of tlie Jlindi'i religion is chielly [uevahiit in I lie wihh-r ])arts ol" the country, wiierc I he ahoii^iiiai elcnii'iil ]ir(!Vails, many of its chiefest shrines beiu'j; in I'aet, sil uated in se(diided wilder- ni'ss(!S, and [^uard(!<l by aboii^^iiial, or semi-altoriL^inal, cus- todians. It may \h\, then, that tin; |)er,--oniiied forms (jf this deity were adaptations from tlie cultus of some; of the aboriginal races that hav(! been absorbed in llindiiism; but I lliiid< we must ;_;(» liiillici- back in the history of this moveiiieiil lo liiid the oriL!;inals of K;ili' and l)haira\;i than to an\l liin;^ we know (d t lie. indigenes as tliey now exiht. i\Iay it not have been in ihe earliest days of nraliminical revival, wheji coin{»elitors for the adherence of the ])(M)|de in the great struggle with ]>i'nl(lhisni had to b(! sought lor among the ]»oj)ular deities— when \ ishnii was transformed into the popular deniigod.s I Jama and Krishna, into the 'Jortoise, and the Fibh, and the Alan-Tiger, to suit the tastes of a variety THE ABORrOlNAL TIMDKS. 153 of lialf-Hindiiised races — tliat tlion Si'va was also im- ported from tlic West, and allied with the sterner objects of worship of the wilder races, to draw them into tlie great net of the priests, as the incarnations of Vishnu in their popular heroes and totems were employed to draw the more civilised classes of the people ? Were these deities really indigenous amongst the Conds we should certainly see their worship a matter of more widespread and heartfelt devotion than it is. It is in truth still almost confined to the chiefs and their half-Hindu dependants, and to a few of the most advanced, and probably half-blooded, sections of the tribes. In the great periodical acts of public propitiation of the gods they arc cither not admitted, or if so, frequently have to sit under one of the fetishes or nature-gods of the primitive faith. The chief of these ceremonies occur at the marked periods of their agricultural season — when the crops are sown or reaped, and at the flowering of the valuable Mhoiua tree — also when severe pestilence threatens the community. On such occasions a row of small stones, taken from the nearest hill-side, are set up in a row and daubed with vermilion, to represent the presence of all the gods that are to be included in the propitiation. Sometimes small pieces of iron hung up in a pot are used instead. A bit^jTrer stone or bit of iron represents the " liara P(*n," or Great God of the occasion, who is usually the one supposed to want most attention at the time. Cocks and goats, and libations of mhowa spirit, are then offered with much ceremony, dancing, and music ; and the affair, like most of their great occasions, usually winds up by the whole of them getting abomin- ably drunk. Such is still the real religion of these peoples, 154 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDL4. notwithstcandiDg the lacquer of Hinduism many of them have received ; and such I may add is not very different from that of the vast mass of the so-called Hindus of the plains, who look on Vishnu and Siva as little nearer to them than do these savages, and pay their real de- votion to the village gods, to the gods of the threshing- floor, and to their lares and joenates — all unrecognised by the orthodox priest. In both cases their religious belief is wholly unconnected with any idea of morality. A moral deity, demanding morality from his creatures, is a religious conception far beyond the present capacity cither of the aborigine or the ordinary Hindii. The idea of a Great Spirit, above and beyond all personal gods, and whom they call Bhagwan, is, how- ever, accepted by all Hindus, and has been borrowed from them by the Gonds. He is the great First Cause of all things, but himself endowed v.dth neither form nor moral qualities. He is unrepresented, and receives no adoration. A Hindii will accurately describe all the gods of his pantheon ; but of Bhagwan he has no idea, except that he is the great Creator. He is, in fact, that " Unknown God " w^hom humanity has never yet learned to approach save through the medium of some human or anthroj)omorphous substitute. I have not yet touched on the religion of the Korkiis. It is, I think, purer than that of the Gonds. The powers of nature are equally adored, such as the Tiger God, the Bison God, the Hill God, the Deities of Small- pox and Cholera. But these are all secondary to the Sun and the Moon, which, among this branch of the Kolarian stock as among the Kols in the far East, are the principal objects of adoration. I have seen nothing resembling Fetishism among them ; and if, as some con- THE ABOKIGINAL TRIBES. 155 sider, that is the earliest form in which the religion of savages develo2:)s itself, the Korkiis would seem in this respect to have advanced a stage beyond the Gonds. The sun and the figure of a horse (a Scythian emblem of the sun) are carved on wooden posts, and receive sacrifices. They also sacrifice to the manes of their dead, but only for a certain period, to " lay " them. Belief in sorcery and witchcraft is not so prevalent among them as with the Gonds and Bygas. Their semi-Hindii chiefs have accepted Siva and his companions; but the common Korkiis seem to care little about them, excepting in the immediate neighbourhood of his great shrine in the Mahadeo hills. A few glorified heroes receive attention, but not to nearly so great an extent as among the Gonds. In disposing of the dead, the aboriginal tribes all appear to have formerly practised burial ; but those who have been much Hinduised resort by preference to cremation. The process being an expensive one, how- ever, it is not lavished on all alike, women and children being still mostly buried, while adult males are burnt. Also during the rainy season, when burning is incon- venient, burial is often adopted for all alike. Most of the tribes erect some sort of a memorial to the dead ; the Gonds generally in the shape of little mounds, covered by slabs of stone ; while the Korkiis carve ela- borate pillars of teak- wood, w^ith emblems of the sun and the crescent moon, and of the deceased party mounted on a horse, which they erect under a tree appropriated to the purpose near each of their villages. A very populous cemetery of this sort may be seen close to the village of Puchmurree. I have already described the personal appearance of the men of the Gond and Korkii tribes. Their women,. 156 THE lirGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. I think, differ among themselves more than do the men of these races. Those of the Gonds are generally some- what lighter in colour and less fleshy than the Korkus. Eut the Gcmd women of different parts of the country vary greatly in appearance, many of them in the opener parts near the plains being great robust creatures — finer animals by far than the men ; and here Hindii blood may be fairly suspected. In the interior, again, bevies of Gond women may be seen who are liker monkeys than human beings. The features of all are generally strongly marked and coarse. The young girls occasion- ally possess such comeliness as attaches to general plumpness and a good-humoured expression of face ; but when their short youth is over, all pass at once into a hideous age. Their hard lives, sharing as they do all the labours of the men except that of hunting, suffice to ■account for this. They dress decently enough, in a short petticoat, often dyed blue, tucked in between the legs so as to leave them naked to the thigh, and a mantle of white cotton covering the upper part of the body, with a fold thrown over the head. The most eastern section of the Korkiis (hence called Pothrias) add a bodice, as do some of the Hindiiised Gonds. The Gond women have the legs as far as they are suffered to be seen tattooed in a variety of fantastic patterns, done in indigo or gunpowder blue. The Pardhans are the great artists in this line, and the figures they design are almost the only ornamental art attempted by these tribes. It is done when the girl becomes marriageable ; and the traveller will sometimes hear dreadful screeches issuing from their villages, which will be attributed to some young G('>ndin being operated upon with the tattooing-needlc. Like all barbarians, TILE ABOEIGINAL TRIBES. 157 both races deck themselves with an inordinate amount of what they consider ornaments. Quantity rather than quality is aimed at ; and both arms and legs are usually loaded with tiers of heavy rings — in silver among the more wealthy, but, rather than not at ail, then in brass, iron, or coloured glass. Ear and nose rings and bulky necklaces of coins or beads are also common ; and their ambrosial locks are intertwined on state occasions with the hair of goats and other animals. In marriage customs they differ from the Hindus chiefly in the contract and performance both taking place when the parties are of full age. Polygamy is not forbidden ; but, women being costly chattels, it is rarely practised. The father of the bride is always paid a consideration for the loss of her services, as is usually the case among poor races where the females bear a large share in the burden of life. The Biblical usao-e of the bridegroom, when too poor to pay this considera- tion in cash, serving in the house of his future father-in- law for a certain time, is universal among the tribes. The youth is then called a lamjan ; and it frequently happens that he gets tired of waiting, and induces his fair one to make a moonlight flitting of it. The morality of both sexes before marriage is open to comment ; and some of the tribes adopt the precaution of shutting up all the marriageable young men at nio-ht in a bothy by themselves. Infidelity in the married state is, however, said to be very rare ; and when it does occur is one of the few occasions when the stolid aborigine is roused to the extremity of passion, frequently revenging himself on the guilty pair by cutting off his wife's nose, and knocking out the brains of her paramour with his axe. 158 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL IXDIA. The marriage ceremony is very elaborate and childish, and is generally borrowed in great part from the Hindus. The bride is in some tribes selected from among first cousins by preference. More usually, however, connection is souo'ht amoufr another tribe. Usually an understanding is come to privately before the formal "asking" takes place, so that a "refusal" is scarcely known. The Pardhan is the ambassador, and arranojes the articles of the "marriao-e settlement." In contradistinction to the Hindii practice, it is at the bridegroom's house that the ceremony takes place, so that the whole of the expense may full upon him. Hindiiised tribes, however, practise the reverse. The actual ceremonies consist, first, of an omen to discover the propitious day, on which commences a series of repeated carryings to and fro, anointings and sprinklings with various substances, eating together, tying the garments together, dancing together round a pole, being half drowned together by a douche of water, and the interchange of rings — all of which may be supposed to symbolise the union of the parties. The bridegroom sometimes places his foot on the bride's back to indicate her subjection; and a feigned forcible abduction of the bride is often a part of the ceremony — the usual relic of olden times of the strong' hand. Sacrifice to the gods, and unlimited gorging and sj)irit- drinking, are usually the wind - up of the affair. Widows are not precluded from re-marriage ; and among the Gonds it is even the duty of a younger brother to take to wife the widow of an elder. The converse is not, however, permitted. A widow's re- marriage is accompanied by little ceremony. There is little in any of these customs, it will be THE ABOKIGINAL TRIBES. 159 seen, to clistinsfuish these tribes from other races of savages ; and it would be unprofitable to devote further space to a record of their details. They may nearly all be found repeated among large masses of the so-called Hindii population of the plains ; and, in fact, so far as religious and other customs are concerned, I believe that, were the Gonds not associated with hills and forests into which the Hindus have not penetrated very far, they would long since have come to be looked on merely as another caste in the vast social fabric of Hinduism. The Korkiis are more peculiar, and, I think, a far superior race in most respects ; and the Bygas or Bhiimias of the eastern hills are still more worthy of observation by the ethnologist. Something will be said of them in future chapters. It is more important, as regards the Gonds and Korkiis of the central and western hills, to inquire into their present economical position and their probable future. Their methods of subsistence in the interior of the hills have already been described ; and their life has been shown to be one of great hardship and toil. Although so far inured to malaria as to be able to exist, and in some measure continue the race, in the heart of jungles which are at some seasons deadly to other constitutions, the effect of the climate and a poor diet is seen in impoverishment of the constitution, constant attacks of fever and bowel diseases, and often chronic enlargement of the spleen. Imported diseases like cholera and small-pox also commit dreadful ravages among^ them. The life of labour which both sexes undergo, and their low physical vigour, result in very small families, of whom moreover a large percentage never attain maturity. There has been no accurate 160 THE HIGHLANDS OF CEXTKAL IXDIA. enumeratiou of the bill tribes at intervals, from wbicb to judge wbetber tbey are increasing or the reverse. I suspect tbe latter as regards tbose in tbe interior,, tliougb tbe better fed and less exposed tribes in and near tbe plains may probably be increasing. Until lately, babits of unrestrained drunkenness have aggravated the natural obstacles to their im- DO provement. The labour of their peculiar sj'steni of cultivation, though severe, is of a fitful character, a few weeks of great toil being succeeded by an interval of idleness, broken only by aimless wanderings in the jungle or hunting expeditions. Periods of rude plenty, when the rains have been propitious to the crops, the hunt successful, and the crop of mhowa abundant, have been succeeded by times of scarcity or even of want. Such a thing as providing for a rainy day has never been thought of. The necessity for constantly shifting the sites of their clearings and habitations has created a want of local attachment, and a disposition to any- thing rather than steadiness of occupation. Occasional periods of hardship are sure to be followed, in such a character, by outbursts of excess ; and thus the life of tbe Gond has usually consisted of intervals of severe toil succeeded by periods of unrestrained dissipation, in which anything he may have earned has been squandered on drink. It is this unfortunate want of steadiness that has led to most of the misfortunes of the race, to the loss of their heritage in the land, and in a great many cases practically even of their personal liberty. Inferior races give way before superior whenever they meet ; ami whether, as here and in America, the instrument selected be "fire-water," or as in New Zealand, it be our THE ABORIGINAL TEIBES. 161 own favourite recipe of powder and lead, the result is the same. The case of the Goad has hitherto little differed, whether he has preferred to cling to his rugged hills and struggle with nature, or has remained on the edge of civilisation and toiled for the superior races. Every- where the aboriginal is the pioneer of the more settled races in their advance against the wilderness. His capacity for toil that would break the heart of a Hindii, his endurance of malaria, and his fearlessness of the jungle, eminently qualify him for this function ; and his thriftlessness and hatred of being long settled in a locality as certainly ensure the fruits of his labour reverting as a permanency to the settled races of the plains. The process is everywhere much the same. The frontier villages in the possession of Hindu landholders, or of the Gond Thakiirs, or chiefs, usually comprehend large areas of culturable but uncleared land, and there are alwavs numbers of the aborio;ines floatinof about such frontiers, earning a precarious livelihood by wood-cutting and occasional jobs, or working as farm-servants, who can be induced to break it up. They have, of course, no capital, and seldom any security to offer ; and the risk of loss must therefore be borne by the landholder. He either lends money himself for the purchase of a plough and pair of bullocks, and the other small farm-stock required to commence with, or becomes security for such a loan borrowed from the banker who is found in every circle of villages, with money always ready to be lent on any such speculation. The interest charged on such a money loan is never less than twenty-four per cent, per annum. Seed grain has also to be borrowed ; and 1G2 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. this, as well as sufficient food to last the cultivator till his crop is ready, is generally borrowed in kind, the arrangement being that double the quantity borrowed shall be repaid at harvest time. As grain is cheaper at harvest than at seed time, this does not quite represent a hundred per cent, interest ! Such rates of interest seem high, but the risk of such speculations is very great, the principal being not seldom lost altogether. The short-sighted policy long followed by our legislature, which rendered the recovery of such debts a matter of the greatest difficulty and uncertainty, greatly aided in maintaining these rates of interest. This policy is not even yet extinct, there being, in the Central Provinces at least, a rule which prohibits procedure against the farm-stock of a debtor, although it may all have been purchased with the borrowed money to recover which execution is souo-ht. It is obvious that transactions of this nature are really of the nature of a partnership between the labourer and the capitalist, the former furnishing nothing but his personal labour and supervision. Some- times the partnership takes a more explicit form, when the man of money furnishes the oxen against the manual labour of the cultivator. All the other ex- penses, including the wages of the cultivator's family, if he has any, are deducted from the gross produce of the farm, with interest to the capitalist if he has advanced any part of such expenditure, and the balance is then divided equally between the owner of the oxen and the cultivator. In either case the result usually is that all the profit, beyond the bare wages his labour would fetch in the market, is absorbed by the man that supplies the money and takes the risk. But the culti- THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 163 vator is far better off also than if be bad been working for bire, for tben be would not bave laboured balf so steadily as bis interest in tbe result of tbe crop induces bim to do. Until recently, tbe babits of debaucbery I bave mentioned, together witb tbe low value of agricultural produce, usually prohibited tbe advance of the ab- original cultivator from this stage. The harvest reaped, any grain that might fall to his share was at once taken to the spirit-dealer (who usually combined grain-dealing with his more pernicious trade), and converted into mhowa spirit — gangs of Gonds at this season being constantly to be seen rolling about in a perpetual state of drunkenness, or sitting, blear-eyed, at the door of the bothy, until the last of their earnings had been dissi- pated. This effected, they had no resource but to work during tbe rest of tbe season, until sowing-time should again arrive, at occasional jobs of wood-cutting or road- making, or anything that might turn up, always getting drunk whenever opportunity served. Great numbers of them, when once they had re- sorted to the grog-shop, never again became their own masters, remaining practically the bond slaves of the spirit-dealer ever after. And this introduces one of the most pernicious evils with which we had to contend in the early days of forest conservation. A very great amount of timber, bamboos, grass, and other forest produce is annually required by the people of the plains for house-building and repairing, fencing their fields, and other agricultural purposes. The timber- bearing tracts in the neighbourhood of the cultivated plains having long since been cleared, all this has to be brought down from the interior of the hills ; and such work can only be done by the bold and hardy ab- 164 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. orioines. Almost the whole of this trade had sjot into the hands of the Kulars, or spirit-dealers, by means of the power they had obtained over the tribes by tlieir devotion to strong potations. Badly off as the poor Gond was in the hands of the agricultural money-lender, he was at least paid in wholesome grain or hard coin ; but here the universal practice was to pay him in liquor, all except the pittance necessary to keep body and soul together in the way of food and raiment. Often the Kulars united the three trades, making the Gond cultivate an autumn crop of grain for his own subsistence and the trader's profit at a season when forest operations were impossible, exchanging his surplus grain for liquor immediately after, until he had him deep in his books ao"ain, and then sending him out to the forests to cut wood to repay him, and to purchase back some of his own orain for subsistence. He was clean done and cheated at every turn, having to labour like a horse, and getting out of it nothing but a scanty subsistence, and as much vile liquor as he could swallow without interfering too much with his working power. This trade had become enormously profitable. The numbers of the caste of Kulars, who alone can legitimately deal in spirits, were limited ; and they soon were rolling in w^ealth. A dissolute flaunting set by nature, they did no good with the money they thus earned, spending it chiefly in gambling and debauchery, and in loading themselves and their women with massive golden ornaments. The evils of the system were incalculable. In his wild state the G6nd or Korkii has been recognised to be truthful and honest, occasionally breaking out into passion which might lead to violent crime, but free from tendency to mean or habitual criminality. Now he became a thief THE ABORIGINAL TEIBES. 165 and a scoundrel. His craving for drink made him a ready tool in the hands of every designing knave ; and to the dangerous temper of the drunken savage he soon began to add the viciousness of a debased and desperate character. To the forests the injury was scarcely less. Having no implements but their little axes, and their employers being wholly indifferent to economical processes, these woodcutters procured their material in the most wasteful way possible. To produce a post for a cattle-pen a straight young teak sapling of ten or fifteen years' growth would be felled, and a piece six feet long taken from its middle, all the rest being left to perish. To procure a plank for a door a mature tree would be cut down, and hewn away to the requisite thickness with the axe. Timber was then doubtless cheap because nothing but the labour of these down- trodden races was expended in procuring it, and as many of them as they desired could be procured by the spirit- dealers for a wage which to the latter was almost nothing. In those days, the excise arrangements being very lax, the duty levied on spirits was very low ; and enough liquor could be brewed to make a Gond drunk for about a penny of our money. No forests could stand such a drain as this ; and this wasteful system of working them was one of the main causes of their impending exhaustion. It is fortunate that, under an improved administra- tion, means were found at once to put a stop to this wholesale waste, and to greatly ameliorate the condition of the aboriginal labourer. The first step in this direction was the introduction of a new excise law, under which the formerly unrestricted power of estab- lishing spirit-stills and grog-shops among the aborigines 1G6 Tin-: }I1G1ILAXI)8 OF CENTRAL INDIA. was withdrawn. Liquor was allowed to be distilled only at certain central places, and on payment of a fixed and considerable still-head duty. A certain number of retail shops only were allowed, sufficient in number and position to supply all the proper requirements of the people, and capable of being regulated by the police, without forcing temptation in the way of the less provident classes. The licenses for this restricted number of shops were let by public auction. Now came a just retribution on the whole race of Kulars. There were far more of them engaged in the liquor-trade than were required to man these shops ; all were wealthy and reckless ; and also jealous of each other ; and so a strong competition for the licenses set in among them. Fabulous sums were bid at the auctions -in many cases ; and everywhere the price of liquor was so forced up by this and the heavy still-head duty that the poorer classes could no lons^er afford to drink it in excessive quantity. Sales thus diminished, while the expenses of a shop were largely increased ; and the result was the almost universal ruin of the Kulars, and the complete breaking up of their system of traffic. The gold orna- ments they had flaunted to the world gradually disappeared, and many of them ended in utter bankruptcy. It may, perhaps, be regretted that a less sudden and seemingly oppressive method of curing the canker that was eating into the frontier society did not suggest itself ; but it is difficult to pity so vicious and unscrupulous a tribe as these Kulars. Though the consumption of liquor has fallen off immensely, the state revenue has not suffered, the avowed object of getting "the maximum of revenue with the minimum of consumption " being fully attained. THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 167 The complement to this overhauling of the excise law was the introduction of our system of forest conser- vation. So large a subject, regarding which so little knowledge existed, could not be expected to be dealt with in an entirely satisfactory manner all at once. Some mistakes were made, the chief of such being to attempt too much on a sudden, and with insufficient means. The manao-ement of all our immense tracts of waste was thrown upon one or two officers, who had not yet even explored the country, and had nothing besides to guide them, and who were expected to administer a code of rules in detail, throughout this area, which was afterwards found to be much too strict, and to bear very hardly on the people. It could not be done ; and things came, ere long, to a dead lock, till solved by the rules themselves passing into a dead letter. Presently the proper remedy was applied, by reserving the most promising forests to be directly managed by the special Forest Department, while the greater portion was left to be looked after by the ordinary civil officers. Improved experience has still further improved the system ; but the main features of it were struck out as early as 1864. Restrictions on the method of felling timber were imposed, and a fixed timber-duty levied. These measures, if in some cases not unopen to exception, at least had the effect of inducing a more economical system of working the forests. The aborigines still furnish the labour in the forests, and, being paid in coin at the regular market value of their work, are enabled to profit by whatever they can earn. For some time the breaking up of the Kular system left a want of private agency in the timber trade ; and the Forest Department itself had to step in 168 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. and arrange for the supply of the country. At the time this was beneficial in many respects, enabling us to utilise most of the fully ripe standing trees, and the logs lying in the forest, by enhancing the price until it became remunerative to take these out. Now, however, this has ceased to be necessary, and there are sufficient legitimate dealers in the trade to supply all wants. It was some time before we ventured to interfere with the devastation caused by the wild tribes in their system of tillage by axe and fire which has been described. Having acquired the reputation of " savage and intractable foresters," it was with considerable hesitation that the first steps were adopted. The most promising forests were encircled by boundary lines, marked by terror-inspiring masonry pillars, within which the formation of dhya clearings was prohibited. The people obeyed with scarcely a murmur ; and presently the rules were extended to the great mass of the wastes, in so far that the cutting of valuable timber for clearings was forbidden, except under such arrangements as afforded a prospect of the reclamation of the land being permanent. To the wildest of the tribes certain areas were assigned, sufficient to afford room for a rotation of sites for their dhya-fields. It cannot be said that these comprehensive restrictions have been everywhere en- forced to the letter, nor was it to be expected. But the general efiect has been very marked : the " intract- able foresters " have shown a ready acquiescence in arrangements, the object and necessity of which were carefully shown to them ; and year by year the influence of law is more fully acknowledged and felt in the forest regions. The habits of the aborigines are now greatly changed <; ->' 4S/ THE ABOEIGIXAL TRIBKS. 169 for the better. Excessive and constant drunkenness is almost unknown, though drinking to a greater extent than is good for them on occasions has not entirely ceased. The whole of their earnings is not now dissipated in drink ; and the accumulation of the little capital needed to start cultivation on a more regular system is now possible to them all. An immense assistance in this respect has been derived from the great enhancement in the value of all agricultural produce, consequent on the opening up of the country and the American war. Large areas in the west of India, which formerly yielded cereals, have been devoted to the production of cotton, and a great extension of cultivation to supply the consequent scarcity of food- grains has taken place, and is still progressing, w^here ever the country is fitted by proper communications to yield an exportable supply. The great undertakings in railways, and other public works, which have marked the last decade, have also much increased the demand for labour ; and even the natural produce of these central wilds has acquired a commercial value which it never before possessed. Before I left India, the agents of Bombay mercantile houses were probing the recesses of my district (Nimar) in search of various articles of natural production which had suddenly become valuable for export, such as the oil-yielding seeds of the Mhowa {Bassia kit if olio), and the pure gum of the Dhaora (Conocaiyus latifolius). Altogether a new era has dawned for these " children of the forest.'^ The relation between labour and capital, long unfavour- able to the former, has been reversed, and hard rupees are finding their way into the hills of Goudwana, to the material improvement of the circumstances of 170 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. its decizens, instead of the poisonous liquor "which was fast hurrying them to destruction. Their contact with the Hindu races was Ions: to them nothing: but a curse ; but there is now a creneral as:reement of opinion that of late thej have been fast improving, both in well-being and in character, Where they still continue to work as farm-servants they receive better wages, and save something out of them ; and, either from such savin es or from their large earninojs on the railway works, many have found the means to settle down as small farmers on their own account. Even as borrowers their credit is much improved, A great deal of capital is now seeking the profitable investment ofi'ered by agriculture ; and loans are given on easier terms even to these still somewhat unreliable settlers. " The high price obtainable for oil-seeds of late years has perhaps done more towards this than anything else. It takes a mere handful of seed to sow an acre of tillee (sesamum) ; it flourishes with the rudest tillage on half-cleared land, for which no rent is usually paid for the first three years ; and it is cut and sold by the beginning of Xovember. I know two 'unencumbered' Korkiis who in 1867 cleared thirty acres of light land, and sowed it with tillee. They borrowed 80 rupees (£8) to buy bullocks and implements, and two manees (1,920 lb.) oi jowaree (millet) to eat. The interest on the money-debt was 20 rupees, and, as usual, double the quantity of grain had to be paid back at harvest. They had no other expenses, no rent being charged, and they themselves doing all the labour. The produce was 75 maunds (6,150 lb,) of oil-seed, which sold for 215 rupees (i*21 10^,), from which they repaid the 80 rupees' worth Tin: ABOKIGIXAL TRIBES. 171 of grain and 100 rupees in cash, leaving them gainers of 35 rupees (£3 105.), after paying off the whole of their debt. Thus they got a stocked farm, free from debt, in a single season, by their own manual labour alone, which would afterwards yield them at least £10 apiece per annum, or much more than they could live on in comfort. The money-lender at the same time cleared 40 per cent, on his money in eight months."* Such a farm as this may appear rather a miserable little affair to the English reader ; but such are the units of which the vast extent of Indian tillage is made up ; and to obtain possession of such a holding, with its slender stock, is an object of ambition to millions of labourers for a bare subsistence. There can be small room for doubt that the per- meation of these aboriginal tribes with Hindu ideas, manners, and religion, is steadily progressing ; and it may be hoped that this influence is now w^orking rather for the better than for the worse. The flighty, debauched, half-tamed Gond was a being much de- teriorated from his original state of rude simplicity ; but the steady and sober, if illiterate and superstitious, Hindu cultivator of the soil is a type towards which we should by no means regret to see the aboriginal races advancing. It is true that in thus joining the great mass of Hinduism they will exchange their rude forms of religious belief for a submission to the powerful priestly influence which still prohibits the advance of the people of India beyond a certain point, aud for a superstition which is morally no better than their own. The missionary may lose his chance in the meantime of * Extract from a Report, by the writer, on the Settlement of the Isimdr district. 172 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. getting tliem to accept some of his fetishes* in the place of their own. But probably they will then be no further, if so far, from the acceptance of a pure religion of morality than they are at present ; and when the distant day dawns for the dusky peoples of India, when the light of education shall dissipate their hideous superstitions, and lead them to inquire after a pure belief, they will be there, elevated and improved hy contact and assimilation with a race superior to themselves. Such seems to be the probable future of those sections of the a1)orio^ines who lie on the confines of Hinduism in the plains. But so long as the vast wildernesses of these Central Highlands remain un- cleared, which physical causes will in great measure render a permanent necessity, so long must human inhal)itants of a type fitted to occupy them continue to exist. For, such civilisation as we call it is impossible, and undesirable if it were Dossible. All that can be done for them is to eliminate by thoughtful administration causes which lead to their depression or demoralisation, and to avoid any treatment irksome to their wild and timid nature which is not necessitated by the general requirements of the country. To return to my doings at Puchmurree. Towards the end of Fel:)ruary numbers of Hindii pilgrims from the plains to the great shrine of Siva in the Mahadeo hills began to pass my camp. They usually encamp at the foot of the hill l)elow the shrine ; and, besides the road over the plateau, come by a way which leads througli tlie Ddnwa valley below the Puchmurree scarp. * Of course I mean what would prove fetishes to tliem in tlieir present intellectual staye — not that they are so to the missionary ! THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 173 Several other roads lead in from the south, all of which are rugged and difficult, and are traversed in fear and trembling hy the pilgrims. About this time I crossed over from Puchmurree to visit the opposite plateau of Motiir, which was also at that time under examination as a possible site for a sanitarium in these provinces. The Denwa valley lay between, necessitating a descent and ascent of about 2,500 feet each way. On my return from Motiir on the 26th of February I found the little plain in the Denwa valley below the shrine, through which my road lay, swarming with the pilgrims, some forty thousand of whom had collected in this lonely valley in a few days, and were now crowding up into the ravine where the cave is situated — a ravine through w^hich a week or two before 1 had tracked a herd of bison ! Most of these annual gatherings of pilgrims are, to the majority of the Hindus who attend them, very much what race-meetings and cattle-shows are to the more practical Englishman — an episode in their hard-worked and rather colourless existence, in which a nominal object of little interest in itself is made the excuse for an "outing," the amusements of which chiefly consist in bothies for the sale of all sorts of miscellaneous articles, universal gossiping for the elders, and peep-shows and whirligigs for the younger members. It is surprising how the familiar features of a fair at home come out, in an oriental costume, at these so-called religious gather- ings. The cow with five legs and the performing billy- goat adequately represent the woolly horse and the dancing bear of our childhood. The acrobats are there to the life, tying themselves into identical knots we loved so welk The begging gipsy appears in the fantastic Jogee. Ginger-pop and oranges are even 174 THE iriGHLAXDS OF CENTRAL IXDIA. faintly typified in mliowa grog and sticky sweetmeats. Aunt Sally alone is nowhere : there is nothing at all resembling the uproarious mirth of that ancient lady. Doubtless at all these gatherings there are a certain number of genuine pilgrims, whose end in coming is the performance of sacred rites at these holy shrines at such holy seasons ; for the fairs are all held at times when the worship of the local deity is held to be particu- larly efficacious. But generally their number is no greater a proportion of the whole than is that of the " members of the ring " in a Derby crowd. Such gatherings usually occur near the large centres of population, where solemn temples crown some sacred eminence by the holy Narbada. But the gathering at the Mahadeo shrine was of another character from these holiday outings. It draws its multitudes into a remote and desolate valley surrounded by the " eternal hills," where the Great God has his chiefest dwelling-place in these central regions. No gorgeous temples or im- pressive ritual attract the sight-seer. The pathways leading to the place are mere tracks, scarcely discernible in the rank jungle, and here and there scaling precipitous rocks, where the feet of countless pilgrims have worn steps in the stone. Young and old have to track out these paths on foot ; and all the terrors of pestilence, wild beasts, and the demons and spirits of the waste surround the approach in their excited imaginations. Arrived at the foot of the holy hill, the pilgrim finds neither jollity nor anything more than the barest require- ments of existence awaiting him. His food is dry parched grain, his couch on the naked earth, during his sojourn in the presence of Mahadevii. Should he be amoDg the first to arrive, the tiger may chance to TILE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 175 dispute with him the right to quench his thirst at the watering-place in the Denwa river. ^^ Those who come to a place like this for pleasure must be few indeed. On my way back to Puchmurree, as I passed through the assembled multitudes, many of them were starting, after a dip of purification in the holy stream, to scale the heights that contain the shrine. My way also lay up the pilgrims' pass ; and as I went I passed through numerous groups of them slowly toiling up the steep ascent of nearly two thousand feet. Both men and women formed the throng, the former stripped to the waist and girded with a clean white cloth, the horizontal marks of red and yellow which distinguished them as worshippers of Siva being newly imprinted on their arms and foreheads. The women retained their usual costume ; but the careful veiling of face and figure, attended to on common occasions by high caste ladies, was a good deal relaxed in the excitement of the occasion (and besides, were they not on their way to be absolved of all sin ?) ; and not inconsiderable reve- lations of the charms of many of the good dames, of light brown skins and jet black eyes, were permitted by the wayward behaviour of their flowing robes as they turned to stare in [astonishment at the salieb and his strangely-attired attendants pegging away past them up the hill with double-barrelled rifles on their shoulders. All were talking and laughing gaily — now and then shouting out "Jae, Jae, Mahadeo ! " (victory to the Great God). The cry raised by each as he took the first step on the hill was taken up by all the forward groups, till it died away in a confused hum among the crowd * As I went to Motiir on this occasion I saw the track of a tiger where the pilgrims drink. They had not then arrived, of course. 176 THE HIGHLANDS OF CEXTEAL INDIA. who had ah'eady reached the shrine, far up in the bowels of the hill. Gloom and terror are the last senti- ments in the religious feeling of the Hindii, even when approaching the shrine of the deity who has been called the Destroyer in their trinity of gods. It is considered sufficiently meritorious to perform such a pilgrimage as this at all, without further adding to its misery by wailing and gnashing of teeth. They believe it will do them good, because the priests say so ; but they do not think it necessary to weep over it, and " boil their peas " when they can. But at the best it is a hard clamber for those unused to toil. The old and decrepit, the fat trader, and the delicate high-bred woman, have to halt and rest often and again as they labour up the hill. The path was a zig-zag ; and at every turn some convenient stone or rocky ledge had been worn smooth by these restings of generations of pilgrims. For a long way before the shrine was reached the path was lined on either side by rows of religious men- dicants and devotees, spreading before them open cloths to receive alms, clothed in ashes picked out by the white horizontal paint marks of the followers of Siva, with girdle of twisted rope and long felted locks, hollow-eyed and hideous, jingliug a huge pair of iron tongs with movable riugs on them, and shouting out the praises of Mahadeo. The clang of a large fine-toned bell and the hum of a multitude of voices reached our ears, as, sur- mounting the last shoulder of the hill, we entered the narrow valley of the shrine. A long dim aisle, betwixt high red sandstone cliffs, and canopied by tall mango trees, led up to the cave. The roots of the great mangoes, of wild plantains, and of the sacred Chumpun,'''' * MicJielia Chanrpara. THE ABOEIGIXAL TRIBES. 177 were fixed in cracks in the pavement of the rock, worn smooth by the feet of the pilgrims, and moist and slippery with the waters of the stream that issues from the cave. The cave itself opens through a lofty natural arch in a vertical sandstone cliff ; and for about three hundred feet runs straight iuto the bowels of the hill. It is without doubt natural ; and a considerable stream of clear cold water issues from a cleft at its further end. Here is set np the little conical stone (Lingam) which represents the god, and attracts all these pilgrims once a year. No temple made with hands, no graven image, nothing of the usual pomp and ceremony of Brahminical worship, adorns this forest shrine. Outside on a plat- form a Brahman sits chanting passages in praise of the god, out of the local Sivite gospel (the Rewa Khanda) ; and a little way ofi" an old woman tolls the great bell at intervals. But within there is no officiating priest, no one but a retainer of the aborig^inal chief whose risfht it has been from time immemorial to act as custodian of the shrine, and to receive the offerings of the pilgrims. No pilgrim ever brings more up the hill with him than he means to offer ; for he may take back nothing — his last rupee, and even the ornaments of the women, must be left on the shrine of the god. Before passing into the cave the pilgrim leaves with the Brahmans outside (along with a sufficient douceur) his pair of small earthen vessels for the receipt of holy water. These they fill from the stream, seal up, and return to the pilgrim, who then proceeds to make the tour of the holy places on the MabdJeo hills. This takes him the whole of the remainder of the day. At each place a cocoa-nut is offered; and little piles of stones, like 178 TTIE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL IXDIA. cliildren's card-liouses, are erected at some point of their peregrinations to signify a desire for a mansion in Kailas — the heaven of Siva. Many of the places which shoukl in theory be visited are very inaccessible, such as the top of the Chaoradeo peak, and very few of the pilgrims make the whole round. I sat for some hours in the ravine sketchinoj the entrance to the cave and the picturesque throng about it. A few sulky looks from the professional religionists, and a drawing closer of their garments by the ladies, when they saw my occupation, were all the notice I met with. The brioht colourins^ which gives such a charm to congregations of Hindus was heightened by the • general holiday attire of the worshippers on this oc- casion ; and, in the mellowed light from above, which percolated rather than shone through the canopy of foliage, would have formed a subject worthy of a much better artist than myself. It was hard to believe that all this gay gathering had come in a day, and would go in another, leaving the valley again to the bison and the jungle-fowL Unlike most shrines where such pil- grimages occur, no one remains to look after the god when the pilgrims are gone. The bell is unslung and taken away, being evidently looked upon as the only thing of value in the place. When I first visited the cave I found that the Great God had been better at- tended to by the wild beasts of the forest than by his human worshippers — a panther or hyena having evi- dently been in the daily habit of leaving the only ofi'ering he could make before his shrine ! It is a common idea amongst Europeans that the worship at these Sivite shrines includes rites or mysteries of an obscene character. I believe this to be wholly THE ABORIGIjSTAL TRIBES. 179 groundless. No such thing could take place, here at any rate, except in public among a dense crowd ; and neither here nor at any other of the many shrines that I have visited have I either seen or heard of such a practice. It is undoubted that the small sects who worship the Sakti, or female power of Siva, do indulge in such obscenity. Their unholy rites are not, however, practised at the public shrines, but in the dark seclusion of their secret meeting-places ; and their existence 1 believe is wholly unknown to the great majority even of the ordinary followers of Siva. There is one object which will attract attention near this shrine of Siva, and which will receive a remarkable explanation. Projecting from the edge of a sheer and lofty cliff above the sacred brook is hung a small white flag. Innocent-looking enough it is ; but it marks a spot where, " in the days that are forgotten," human victims hurled themselves over the rock as sacrifices to the bloody Kali and Kal-Bhairava, the consort and son of Siva the Destroyer. The British Government, which cannot be accused of timidity in forbidding so-called religious customs which are contrary to humanity, has long since put a stop to these bloody rites. For centuries, however, they were a regular part of the show at these annual pilgrimages, both here and at other principal shrines of Siva. They are connected with the worship of the terrible mythical developments of the god above mentioned — forms which have, with some probability, been conjectured to be aboriginal deities imported into the Brahminical pantheon. Far to the west of Puchmurree, in the district of Nimar, is a rocky island in the Narbada river called Mandhatta, on which is situated the shrine of Siva called N 2 180 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. Omkar — one of the oldest and most famous in all India. Like that at Puchmurree, it is situated among rugged hills and jungles ; but it has evidently at one time been the seat of a great centre of Sivite worship. Ancient fortifications surmount its scarps ; and the area of nearly two square miles enclosed is piled up with the ruins of a thousand gorgeous temples. The most ancient of the temples at which worship is still paid are held by aboriginal Bheels as their custodians, and the more recent by a Bhihila family, who admit their remote derivation from the former. A legend is here current, and based on writings of some antiquity, that Kah' and Kal-Bhairava were here worshipped by the Bheels, long before the worship of Omkar (Siva) was introduced along with the Pidjpiit adventurer and his attendant priest, who were the ancestors of the present Bhilala custodian and of the hereditary high priest of Siva's shrine. The Kajpiit is said, by alliance with the Bheels, to have obtained the headship of the tribe ; and the holy man who accompanied him, to have stayed by his austerities the ravages of their savage deities, locking Kali up in a cavern of the hill (and if you do not believe it you may still see the cavern closed up), and vowing to Bhairavii an annual sacrifice of human beings. Listen now to the inducements which the local Sivite gospel * holds forth to devotees to cast themselves from the rock. " At Omkdr-]\Iandh{itta is Kal Bbairavd,. Regarding it, Parbati (wife of Siva) said unto twentj^-five crores of the daughters of the Gandharvas (angels): 'Your nuptials will be with persons who shall have cast them- * The Narmada Khanda, ■which jDrofesses to be a part of the Skandd Parana. A more detailed account of the Holy Island and its Shrines, by tlie autlior, will be found in the " Central Provinces Gazetteer," second edition. THE ABOEIGINAL TRIBES. isi selves over that rock.' Whoever thus devotes hims(.'lf to Kill Bbairavii will receive forgiveness, even thouojh he had killed a Brahman. Let the devotee make a figure of the sun on a cloth ; and take two flags, a club, and a chawar* in his hands, and proceed joyously with music to the rock. Whoever shall bodily cast himself down and die, will be married to a Gandharva. But if he fall faintheartedly, his lot will be in hell. Whosoever turns back again in terror, each step that he takes shall be equivalent to the guilt of killing a Brahman ; but he who boldly casts himself over, each step that he takes is equal in merit to the performance of a sacrifice. Let no Brahman cast himself from the rock. A devotee who has broken his vows, a parricide, or one who has committed incest, shall by thus sacrificing himself become sinless." In 1822, a European ofilcer of our Government witnessed the death of almost the last victim to Kdl Bhairava at this shrine. The island then belonged to a native State (Sindia), and our Government had not then begun to interfere with such bloody rites. The political ofiicer who wrote the account of it was there- fore unable to prevent it by force. I came on the description a few years ago in MS., hidden away among many other forgotten papers in the Government record room of the Nimar district. The concluding portion may be interesting, as perhaps the only account on record, by an eye-witness, of such an occurrence. After narrating how he vainly urged every argument on the youth to dissuade him from his design, the writer proceeds to relate how he accompanied him nearly up to the fatal rock. " I took care." he sa3^s, " to be present at an early hour at the representation of Bhyroo (Bhairava), a rough * A yak's tail used for fanning, etc. 182 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. block of basalt smeared with red paint, before wliicli he must necessarily present and prostrate himself, ere he mounted to the lofty pinnacle wlience to spring on the idol. Ere long he arrived, preceded by rude music. He approached the amorphous idol with a light foot, while a w^ild pleasure marked his countenance. As soon as this subsided, and repeatedly during the painful scene, I addressed myself to him, in the most urgent possible manner, to recede from his rash resolve, pledg- ing myself to ensure him protection and competence for his life. I had taken the precaution to have a boat close at hand, which in five minutes would have trans- ported us beyond the sight of the multitude. In vain I urged him. He now more resolutely replied that it was beyond human power to remove the sacrifice of the powerful Bhyroo ; evincing the most indomitable de- termination, and displaying so great an infatuation as even to request me to save him from the fell dagger of the priestess,'" should he safely alight upon the idol. So deep-rooted a delusion could only be surmounted by force ; and to exercise that I was unauthorised. While confronted with the idol, his delusion gained strength ; and the barbarous throng cheered with voice and hand, when by his motions he indicated a total and continued disregard of my persuasions to desist. He made his oflfering of cocoa-nuts, first breaking one ; and he emptied into a gourd presented by the priestess his previous collection of pice and cowries. She now tendered to him some ardent spirit in the nut shell, first * The priestess here referred to was probably the Bheel custodian of the shrine. There is nothing to prevent the hereditary custodian from having been a female at tliat time ; but priestesses, properly speaking, have never existed in India. Her receipt of his collections from the people also indicates this conclusion. THE ABORIGINAL TRIIJES. 183 making her son drink some from his hand, to obviate all suspicion of its being drugged. A little was poured in libation on the idol. She hinted to him to deliver to her the silver rings he wore. In doing so he gave a proof of singular collectedness. One of the first he took off he concealed in his mouth till he had pre- sented to her all the rest, when, searching among the surrounding countenances, he pointed to a man to whom he ordered this ring to be given. It was a person who had accompanied him from Oojein. An eagerness was now evinced by several to submit bracelets and even betel-nuts to his sacred touch. He composedly placed such in his mouth and returned them. The priestess at last presented him with a pann leaf,* and he left the spot with a firm step, amidst the plaudits of the crowd. During the latter half of his ascent he was much concealed from view by shrubs. At length he appeared to the aching sight, and stood in a bold and erect posture upon the fatal eminence. Some short time he passed in agitated motions on the stone ledge, tossing now and then his arms aloft as if employed in invocation. At length he ceased ; and, in slow mo- tions with both his hands, made farewell salutations to the assembled multitude. This done, he whirled down the cocoa-nut, mirror, knife, and lime, which he had continued to hold ; and stepping back was lost to view for a moment — a pause that caused the head to swim, the heart to sink, and the flesh to creep. The next second he burst upon our agonised sight in a most man- ful leap,t descending feet foremost with terrific rapidity, * The usual signal for the termination of a formal interview, t The place is called the "Bir-Kali" rock, which I believe means literally the " manful leap." 184 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. till, in mid career, a projecting rock reversed his position, and caused a headlong fall. Instant death followed this descent of ninety feet, and terminated the existence of this youth, whose strength of faith and fortitude would have adorned the noblest cause, and must command admiration when feelings of horror have subsided. Thus closed the truly appalling scene." '"' With the exception of the murder of a poor old w'oman who shrank from the fatal leap when brought to the brink, but w^as mercilessly pushed over by the excited religionists, this was the last of these sacrifices that was j)ermitted, the country coming in 1824 under our administration. But the powers of evil were not yet to be baulked of their victims. The British Government could prevent deluded and drugged devotees from casting themselves over the Bir-Kali rock ; but it could not deprive Kali and Kal-Bhairava of their fell executioner — the cholera demon. Year by year the pestilence invaded the encampments of the pilgrims. Sanitary science would say that it arose from the germs of disease brought from the festering gullies of the great cities, and pushed into activity by the exposure, bad food, defiled neighbourhood, and poisoned water, of the pilgrim camps, pjut the Hindii saw nothing in it but the wrath of the offended Divinity claiming his sacrifice. Year after year the gatherings were broken up in wild disorder. The valley of the cave, the steep hillside, and that green glade in the Sal forest, were left to bury their dead, while the multitude fled affrighted over the land, carrying far and wide with * Extract from a letter of 29th of November, 1822, from Captain Douglas, Political Assistant in Nimar, to the Kesident at Indore. THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 185 them the seeds of death. Everywhere their trcicks were marked by unburied corpses ; and the remotest villages of the Narbada valley and the country of the South felt the anger of the destroying fiend. A pilgrim fleeing from the fatal gathering could find no rest for the sole of his foot. The villages on his road •closed their o-ates a2:ainst him as if he were a mad doo- • and many who escaped the disease perished in the jungle from starvation and wild beasts. At last, after a terrible outbreak of cholera in 1865, the Government prohibited the usual gathering at the Mahadeo Cave. The people made no complaint. They do not seriously care about these things when left alone by the priests ; and here the priests were satisfied by the continuance to the hereditary custodians, on whom they were depen- dent, of their average income from the pilgrimage, in the form of a pension. It is very difi"erent when their gains are atfected. Two years ago a cholera epidemic threatened in Nimar, and the pilgrimage to Omkar Mandhatta was closed by order. The priests and guardians of the shrine were up in arms at once, basing their objections entirely on the money loss they would suffer. Since the closing of the Mahadeo pilgrimage the deities of destruction have been baulked of their prey. The valley of the Denwa, although now opened up by a good timber road made to penetrate the Sal forest, no longer witnesses the annual pilgrim congress. The Cave of the Shrine is silent and deserted. The interruption to the business of the country caused by these cholera outbreaks used to be terrible. Whole villages were sometimes swept away. I once marched nearly twenty miles to a small Gond village on one of the pilgrim tracks, in the district of Betiil. 186 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTliAL INDIA. I had been eluding the tracks of cholera the whole of the hot season, and had escaped without a single case of the disease in my camp. My people were almost ex- hausted with such a lonoj march in the height of the hot season ; and I joined them at the Yillagc, likewise much knocked up by a long exploration in the hills. I found my tent-pitcher and one or two others who had arrived struggling to pitch the large tent, without the usual assistance rendered by the villagers at the camping place. They placidly told me that the village was no longer the home of the living, every one in the houses being dead of cholera ! The only living object in the place was a white kid, wandering about with a garland round its neck. It was the scape-goat wdiich these simple people, after the manner of the Israelites of old, send out into the wilderness on such occasions to carry with it the spirit of the plague. Tired out as we were, it was death to stay in this place ; so we re-loaded the things and marched eight miles further, straight into the jungle ; and at nightfall pitched our camp by the banks of the wide Tawa river, far from human habita- tion. No one was seized by the disease ; and during all my marching, humanly speaking I believe owing to proper sanitary precautions, I never had a single case ill my camp. CHAPTER . V. THE LAY OF SAINT LINGO. The Pardhans, or bards, of the Gond tribes are in possession of many rudely rhythmical pieces, which it is their function to recite on festive occasions to their assembled constituents, to the accompaniment of the two-stringed lyre. The best and most complete of these, extending to nearly a thousand bars or lines, was laboriously taken down in writing from the lips of one of these Pardhans by the late Rev. Stephen Hislop, of the Free Church of Scotland mission at Nagpiir. But the lamented death of that indefatigable investigator into the history and manners of the Central Indian peoples prevented his furnishing it in a complete form. In a collection of his papers afterwards published under the editorship of Sir R. Temple, this legend appeared at length, with a translation of each word as it stood, only so far modified as to conform to the first require- ments of English grammar. In this guise, although well suited to the purposes of the student, the piece is almost unintelligible to ordinary readers ; and, if it be considered that the Gonds have never had any written language, and that these pieces have only been preserved by tradition from one of these troubadours to 188 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. another, it will not be surprising that a good deal of recension is requisite before it can be made suitable to the general reader. Whether or not the piece has any- original foundation in purely Gond tradition may be matter of doubt ; but it is certain that it has become greatly overlaid with the spirit and phraseology of Hinduism. It professes to recount the creation of the original Gonds at the hands of Hindu (Sivaic) deities ; what may be called their subsequent fall through the mating of meats forbidden by Hindu law ; their exile and imprisonment by the ofiended Hindii deity ; the appearance by miraculous birth and life among them -of a Hindu saint named Lingo,* whom they ungrate- fully put to death, but who rises again, and, after much penance and sujftering, delivers them from bondage, introduces Hindii observances, the arts of agriculture, and the worship of tribal gods, and eventually dis- appears and goes to the gods. The programme thus bears a singular resemblance in many respects to the legend of Hiawatha, the prophet of the Red Indians ; and to some an even more startling parallelism may suggest itself. My own opinion is that its origin is comparatively recent, subsequent to the propagation among the Gonds of Hindii ideas and rules. It seems to possess little value as bearing on their orio^in, assifrningf to them a northern descent, which is contradicted by the strong southern affinities of their lan";uao[e, and which is obviously only introduced as part of the Hindu machinery which pervades the piece. As a com- * This name is probably typical of the Lingaet sect, who are known to have actively propagated the worship of the Phallic Siva in the Deccan. THE LAY OF SAINT LTXGO. 18& position it has little merit, though here and there exhibiting something of beauty, and more often a good deal of quiet humour. The style of the original is very discursive, constantly losing sight of the narrative, often apparently leading to nothing, and full of repetition — defects which are probably the natural result of its usage as a ballad, handed down by mere word of mouth. It gives the idea of having been composed by the gradual accretion round a very slender thread of original story of successive episodes, manufactured by the semi-Hindu Pardhans for recita- tion before the almost entirely Hindu chiefs of the G6nds. Yet even as such it possesses some interest, as exhibiting, in a somewhat dramatic form, the recent Hinduisation of many of the Gond tribes ; and I have, accordingly, endeavoured to throw it into a shape that will not greatly fatigue my readers. I have excised from it most of the Hindii mythology with which it was overlaid, and which was often anything but orthodox ; and I have thought it best to omit nearly the whole of the latter part, which consists of tiresome details of marriage and other ceremonial, which do not even possess the value of being an accurate account of the practice of the present day. Thus the present version is greatly reduced in bulk, and is rather a paraphrase than a translation, though in many parts it will be found to adhere almost literally to the original, and little will be detected which has not some foundation therein. I should, perhaps, apologise for the adoption of the Hiawathian metre and style, and in a few cases even of the words of the American poet, in a piece which may appear almost like a burlesque of his Ked Indian legend. It is probable 190 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA, that the originals of the two legends may not have differed greatly in character ; and the close and curious parallelism between them could only be brought out by the adoption of the method introduced by the author of " Hiawatha," and now familiar to the public. But the "noble savage " of North America is a very different character from the poor squalid Gond of Central India ; and not even the o-enius of a Lono-fellow or a Fenimore Cooper could throw a halo of sentiment over the latter and his surroundings. I have therefore thought it best to give full play to the grotesque element in the tale, for which, it must be confessed, the Hiawathian style is provokingly well adapted. I should add that the serious student of Gond institutions liad better, perhaps, prefer the original to the version now offered. I.— THE CREATION AND TEIBULATIONS OF THE GONDS. In the Glens of Seven Moun- tains,* Of the Twelve Hills in the Valleys, Is the mountain Lingawangad, Is the flowering tree Pahindi ; In that desert far out-spreading Twelve coss round arose no dwell- ing : " Caw " saying, there no crow was ; "Chee " saying, there no bird was ; " Raghum " saying, there no tiger was. And the Gods were greatly troubled. In their heavenly courts and councils Sat no Gods of Gdnds among them. Gods of other nations sat there, Eighteen threshing-floorsf of Brah- mins, Sixteen scores f of Teling^nas ; Rut no Gods of Gdnds appeared there From the Glens of Seven Moun- tains, From the Twelve Hills in the Valleys. Then the Strong God Ktirto Subal,t The first-born of Mahddevd, Of the Great God Mdh.idevd, * The Sdfptira mountains are probably here referred to. t Such expressions are used throughout the legend to denote indefinite numbers. J Kartik Swami, the son of Si'va (Mahudeva), is thus termed iu the legend. THE LAY OF SAINT LINGO. 191 Pondered deeply in his bosom O'er a circumstance so curious ; Pondered much, and then be fasted, Devotee-like prayed and fasted For the coming of the Goud Gods From the Glens of Seven Valleys To the councils of the Godhead. Pondered thus till on his left hand Rose a most Portentous Tumour, Tumour boil-like, red^ and grow- ing _ Bigger daily, daily bigger, Till it burst, and from its centre Came the Koitor,* came they trooping. Sixteen threshing-floors they num- bered. Came and spread them o'er the country. On the hills, and in the valleys, In the arches of the forest, Every where they filled the country; Killing, eating, every creature ; Nothing knowing of distinction ; Eating clean and eating unclean ; Eating raw and eating rotten ; Eating squirrels, eating jackals, Eating antelope and sambar, Eating quails and eating pigeons. Eating crows and kites and vul- tures. Eating Dokuma the Adjutant, Eating lizards, frogs, and beetles. Eating cows and eating calves, Eating male and female buffaloes, Eating rats, and mice, and bandi- coots ; So the Gonds made no distinction. For half a year they bathed not, And their faces nicely washed not When they fell upon the dung- hills— Thus at first were born the Koitor From the hand of Karto Subal. Soon a stench began to issue From the forests and the moun- tains— Stench of Gonds that lived so foully. Rose the stench to M;ih;ideva, To his mountain Dewalgiri.f Wrathful then became the Great God, Called his messenger Nardyan, Said he, " Bring these Gonds be- fore me — Outcast wretches ! How their stink has Spread o'er all my Dewalgiri," Then the messenger Narayan Called the Koitor all together, Called them up to Dewalgiri To the Great God Mahadeva, Ranged them all in rows before him In the courtyard of the Great God. Then the Great God washed his body, Washed a little of the dirt oS ; Fashioned it into the likeness Of the King of Squirrels — Warclie ; Breathed the breath of life into it ; Down before the Koitor threw it. Straight the Squirrel then his tail made. Seeking passage to escape them, Jerking in and out among them ; And the Gonds began to chase it. Crying, "Catch it l" crying, " Kill it!" * Koitor is the national name for all the Gonds of difi'erent tribes. It signifies properly " men." t Dewalgiri is one of the highest peaks of the Himalaya range ; and is here used as identical with Kaihis, the mythic heaven of Siva. 192 THE HIGHLANDS OF CEXTRAL IXDIA. " Let us catch and skin and eat it." Some took sticks and some took stones, Some took clods, and off they scurried After Warche, King of Squirrels, Hip-cloths streaming out behind them. I3ut the Squirrel— Artful Dodger- Jerking in and out among them Popped into a hole convenient In the mountain Dewalgiri. And the Gonds all ran in after — All but four that stayed behind them. Then a stone took Mahadeva, A great stone of sixteen cubits, Shut them up within the cavern In the mountain Dewalgiri ; Shut them up, and placed the demon — Monster horrid, fierce Basmasur — Placed him guardian o'er the entrance. And the four that were remaining Swiftly fled from Dewalgiri, PJed across the hills and valleys, Fled to hide them from the Great God, From the wrath of Mahadeva. Long they wandered thus in terror, But no hiding-place discovered ; Till a tree at last ascending. On a hill a straight-stemmed date tree, Thence looked forth and saw a refuge — Saw the Ked Hills, Lahiigada, The Iron Valley, Kachikopa. There they sped them through the forest, And they hid them from the Great God. Now the goddess-queen Par- buttee — Consort she of Mahadeva — On the mountain top was sleeping, On the top of Dewalgiri. Waked she shortly from her slumber, Waked to find a something wanting In the air of Dewalgiri, Then she grieved, and thought within her, " Where can all my G6nds have gone to ? Many days our hill is silent. Once that echoed to their shouting; Many days no smell ascendeth, Pleasant smell of Gonds ascending; My sweet-smelling Gonds, where are they 1 And my Mahadeva, also. Him I see not ; much I fear me He has done my Gonds a mis- chief." And she grieved, and took no dinner, Prayed and fasted like a hermit, Devotee-like penance doing For her lost sweet-smelling Koitor. Six months thus she prayed and fasted. Till the King of Gods, Bhag- wantdl,* Swinging in a SAving and snoozing, By her penance greatly moved was — ]\Ioved to rise and look about him ;. Sent the messenger Narayan, Sent him forth to Dewalgiri, Sent to see what she Avas up to, * This is intended for Bhagwan, the unworshipped Creator of the Hindus (vide p. 154). His introduction here as a mythical personage is not consonant with the usual practice in Hindu writings. THE LAY OF SAINT LINGO. 193 "VVhy so sadly she was grieving. Soon she told her little grievance, How her pleasant-smelling Gonds had Disappeared from Dcwalgiri. Then Bhagwantal sent and told her He would try if he could find them ; And betook him to his swinging, And bethought him how to do it. IL— THE COMING OF LINGO. On the mountain Lingawangad, Grew the flowering-tree Pahindi. Flowers budding, still unopened. Yellow fl.owers of the Pahindi, Saw the King of Gods Bhag- wantal ; Saw and thought him of the Koitor, "Wandering sadly in the moun- tains, Pining deep in Dewalgiri ; Saw, and came as comes a rain- cloud, Spreading fanlike, camein thunder. Lightning flashed, the sky was darkened, Thus the God came to the Flower. Darkness spread around her cover, Gently oped the flower her blossom, Softly fell the quickening shower — Thus conceived the flower Pahindi. In the fourth watch of the night time Fell a heap of yellow safi'ron ; Fell beneath the tree Pahindi. Morning dawned, the clouds Avere oi:)ened ; Thundering still the clouds were opened. Burst the yellow flower Pahindi, Cracking burst it in the sunlight. Sprang to life from it my Lingo, Sprang into the heap of safi'ron ; Sat and wept among the satfron. Till his tears the God Paternal Dried with sprinkling of the saffron ; Sent the Giilar tree beside him, Honey dropping from its branches, Dropped it in the mouth of Lingo. Sweetness drinking then he cried not. Blew around him noontide zephyrs ; Grew my Lingo in their breathing. In a God-sent swing reposing Gently slept he till the evening. Purest water may be stained ; Stainless all and pure was Lingo. Diamond sparkled on his navel ; On his forehead beamed the Tika, Mark divine of fragrant sandal, Mark of godhead in my Lingo. Playing grew he in the safFron, Swinging slept he in his cradle, Honey sucking, nothing eating Of the wild fruits in the forest. Nine years old became my Lingo, "When his soul began to wonder Whether all alone his lot was In that forest shade primeval. There no wild deer cropped the herbage. Manlike form there none appearM; Somewhere they must be, thought Lingo ; I will seek them, I may find them. Then he rose and wandered on- wards, Wandered on by brook and meadow. Through the forest shade primeval, Till before him rose a mountain, Mountain pointed like a needle. o 194 THE HIGHLAXDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. Thither climbing, on the summit Lingo saw the tree Manditii, Saw beneath it Kirsaclita, Sweetly-flowering Kirsadita. There its perfume sweet inhaling Lingered Lingo for a little. Then he climbed the tree Mandita, Climbed and looked forth o'er the forest, To the valley Kachikopa, To the Ked Hills, Lahugada. Saw a little smoke ascending, Saw and very greatly marvelled At this circumstance portentous. Wandered on, and soon discovered In that forest shade primeval. Manlike forms four discovered — Saw the four Gonds that remained Hiding fearful of the Great God. Forest quarry having stricken, Steaks of venison were roasting, Pieces raw at times devouring. Seeing Lingo up they started ; Seeing them our Lingo halted ; Long time gazed they at each other. But the brothers inwards pondered. Brothers four we are, bethought them, Let us take him for a fifth one, Let us take him to our wigwams. Then they brought him to their wigwams. To their wigwams in the forest, And set meat before their brother. But he asked them whence the meat wa^, And they answered, "Of a wild boar." Then he asked them for its liver ; And they sought lung for the liver. But no liver could discover. Then they told him, " Lo, a strange thing ! Without liver is this creature We have slain in the forest." Lingo laughed at this conception Of a creature without liver, Asked to see it in the forest — Living creature without liver. Then the brothers much con- sidered Where on earth they might- discover In the forest or the mountains Living creature without liver. One suggested, " He is little, We are big, and practised roamers Of the forest shades primeval. Let us take him to the mountains Rough and stony, to the thickets Close and thorny ; he will fagged be, Thirst for water, get so hungry, Glad he will be to sit down, and Give up looking for a creature, Living creature, without liver." Then they took their bows and arrows — Bows of bamboo from the moun- tains, Shafts of bulrush from the marshes ; And they went by deepest thickets Of that forest shade primeval. Kurs the Antelope — they saw it. Killed it, found it had a liver. Mawk the Sambar — found and slew it. Found it also had a liver. Malul the Hare — they saw and killed it, In it too they found a liver — All the creatures had a liver. Tired and Aveary were the Brothers ; Lingo only was not wearied. Thirsty very were the Brothers; Clambered up upon a hill-top Seeking water, but they found none. Clambered down again, and wan- dered Tlirough a close and thorny jungle, THE LAY OF SAINT LINGO. 195 Where a man could scarcely enter. There they found a spring of water, Cool and sparkling in the shadow. And they plucked the leaves of Puhis, Making cups, and drank the waters, And refreshed were from their labours. Then said Lingo, " "Wherefore stay ye 1 We have not yet seen the creature. Living creature without liver. Witliout liver creature is not." And he said, "Here in the forest Let us clear a field and plant it. Down the trees here — let us fell them ; And the ground here — let \is dig it; Seed of rice here — let ns sow it. I will sleep here for a little While ye clear away the forest." Then slept Lingo, slept and dreamed he, Dreamed he of twelve threshing- places, Tbreshing-tioors that full of Gonds were. And his soul was greatly troubled ; And he rose and looked about him. Found the Brothers sadly hewing, Hewing sadly at a big tree ; And their hands had blisters on them. Blisters large as fruit of AoM. And their hatchets — down they threw them ; And went off and down they squatted. Then our Lingo up an axe took, Took and hewed he at the big tree, Hewed and levelled all the forest. Felled the trees and grubbed their roots out — In an hour the field was finished. And the Gonds said, " Mighty Lingo ! Lo our hands were sore and blistered, Hewing sadly at one big tree, Which we left still undemolished. In an hour has Lingo done it ! He has levelled all the forest ; Black the land appears l)elow it ; Thick the rice is sown upon it ; High a hedge is raised around it ; Single left an entrance to it ; Strong a gate is placed before it." Then they rose and turned them homewards, Homewards went they to their wigwams. Soon the rainy season cometh, Black a little cloud appeareth. Strong the winds from heaven are loosened. All the sky is clouded over ; Now the rain begins to patter. lu a while the streams run knee- deep, All the hollows flooded brimfull. Thus three days and nights it rained, Then it stopped as it begun had. And the rice began to shoot up ; Green became the field of Lingo. High as fingers four it sprouted, Sprouted thus high in a day's time. In a month 'twas somewhat higher, With a man's knee it wa^ level. In the forest shade primeval Sixteen scores of Deer were dwelling ; Chief among them Uncle Mamdn; Nephew Bhasyal — heir apparent. Rich the odour reached their noses Of that rice-field in the clearing. First the Uncle sniffed the odour. And the Nephew sniffed it after, o 2 196 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. Then the Nephew fetched a gambol, Upwards leaped he, jomts all cracking, And his ears with pleasure cocking. To his Uncle near he trotted, And he said, "^ly ancient Uncle, See this lovely field of green stuff. May we have it for our dinner 1" But the Uncle, ancient Mamdn, Warning, chiding, spake in this wise — " Ere you leap 'twere wise to look well. In the valleys of the forests Many fields there are of green stuff; Touch ye not the field of Lingo — Go and graze on some one else's. Sixteen scores of Roliees are ye ; But of all your nohle sixteen Neither buck nor doe will left be If ye touch the field of Lingo." Then spake Bhdsyal the Nephew, Spake disdainfully in this wise — " Old are you and somewhat feeble, We are young and rather fri;^ky ; Seven-foot-six about the mark is We can clear a running high jump- Stay behind^ Old Ninkampi'ipo ! They might catch you if you tried it." Then his ears pricked twitchy- witchy, And his tail cocked jerky-perky. And went forward to the rice-field. And the Uncle, deeply thinking. Greatly grieving, left behind was. But he slowly followed after. At the fence the Nephew halted, And prospected for an entrance ; But an entrance nowhere found he, For the sixteen scores of liohees. And the sixteen scores to mutter 'Mong themselves began in this wise — "Left behind is ancient Mamtin, He the very wise among us. Now this Bhiisyal, youthful Nephew, He must show us how to do it. Uncle Maman spake of Lingo, Said that very sapient uncle, Look behind and look before you, Ere ye touch the field of Lingo." Answered them the valiant Nephew — "Keep not company with ancients, Full of years and slack of sinews, Follow me" — and then he bounded O'er the hedge into the rice-field. After him the Rohees leapt all — Leapt the sixteen scores of Eohees ; Leapt they straight into the rice- field, And the rice began to graze on. Soon the Uncle coming after By the hedge stood and looked over; And his mouth began to water Like a dripping spring in summer. Bat no entrance seemed to offer, And his joints were stiff and feeble ; So he stayed outside, reproachful, While those sixteen scores of Rohees Eat up all the field of Lingo. Eat it up, and back they leapt all, Stood beside that ancient Mamdn, Who in words of solemn Avisdom Warning, chiding, spake in this wise — " Hear, ye sixteen scores of Rohees ! O my children, my poor children! Very nicely ye have done it — Eaten up the field of Lingo. Father Lingo, he the powerful, THE LAY OF SAINT LINGO. 197 When lie comes to see his rice- field, What on earth will he think of itr' Then thevery youthful Ehdsyal, To the sixteen scores of Eohees Counsel offered, spake in this wise — " Listen, brethren ! let us speed now To our forest shades primeval. On the stones our feet well placing, On the leaves our footsteps keeping, On the grass our way selecting, On the soil no footmarks leaving. Let us cunningly our way take To our forest shades primeval." As he said so did the Rohees, Lightly stepping left no traces, Marks of footsteps none appeared ; Reached their forest shades prim- eval. Some to sit down, some to sleep went, Some to stand up in the cool shade, 'Gan these sixteen scores of Rohees. Midst the perfume sweet of flowers, Swinging in a swing, was Lingo ; Swinging slept he, and he dreamed, Dreamt of sixteen scores of liohees, Of a devastated rice-field. And his soul was greatly troubled ; And he rose and looked about him. Looked, and went to reconnoitre By the way of Kachikopa; Went he through the Iron A-^alley, To the Red Hills, Lahugada, Went the very valiant Lingo ; Saw the devastated rice-field ; Thence returning, to the Brothers, Brothers sleeping in their Avig- wams, Spake our Lingo — " Listen, Bi'others, Listen to my doleful story, How these sixteen scores of Rohees All ourrice-field havedemolishcd.'' Then the Brothers, greatly troubled By this doleful tale of Lingo, Wailed a wail of disappointment. Spake the words of bitter anguish — "To the gods our yearly firstfruits, Firstfruits that we yearly oiler, Now of what shall Ave give first- fruits, Since our rice-field is demolished'?" AnsAvered Lingo — " Lo a first- fruit To the Gods of Rohees' livers, Of the sixteen scores of Rohees Liver firstfruits shall Ave offer. On the perfume of the flowers I, a devotee, can prosper ; Ye are Gonds with hungry stomachs, WhereAvithal shall they be filled. Now these sixteen scores of Rohees All our rice-field have de- molished ? " Then the Brothers took their weapons — Bows of bamboo from the moun- tains, Shafts of bulrush from the marshes ; And in Avrath they sought the rice-field, Where the soil Avas black and naked, SaAv they nothing but the stubble Of the rice that waved so greenly. Then a fiame of mighty anger, From the heels of Lingo rising. To his matted head ascended, lieddened Avere his eyes like fire- brands, 198 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. Bit his tingcrs till the l)lood came ; Said he — " Search ye for the footprints Of these sixteen scores of Rohees." Then the Brothers bent them downwards, Searching closely for their traces, Traces nowhere that appeared Of the sixteen scores of Rohees. Searched they long and found a footmark, Single footmarks scarce appearing, Thence the jungle trodden down ■was To the forest shades primeval. Fast they followed on the traces, But the sixteen scores they saw not. Soon a Peepul tree appeared Towering high above the forest ; Clambered Lingo to its summit, Looked he from it o'er the forest, Spied the sixteen scores of Rohees, Rohees in the shade reclining, Rohees sleeping, Rohees frisking In the forest shade primeval. Then said Lingo to the Brothers — " Take your bows and take your arrows ; Quickly get ye round about them, To the four sides of the Rohees. Slay and spare not, smite the rascals ! Hence my bolts I will deliver." Then the Brothers stalked around them, To the four sides of the Rohees ; Thence their bulrush shafts delivered ; Shot our Lingo from the Peepul. Smitten were the herd of Rohees, Only Maman, Uncle Maman, And one little female Rohee, Of tliose sixteen scores remained. Then our Lingo aimed an arrow At that L^ncle, ancient jMamdn : But the arrow from his hand fell. Thought he, surely here's an omen That this very ancient IMaman Of our rice has nothing taken. Then to run began the Rohee, Female Rohee that remained ; And to run began the Uncle. Brothers all behind them followed. Shouting " Catch them " to each other. But they vanished and were seen not. And the Brothers, much disgusted, Back returned to their Lingo. Then said Lingo, " Search ye, Brethren, For a firebox in your Avaistbelts." Flints and steel they forthwith brought out. Struck a spark among the tindtjr. But the tinder would not burn. Thus the whole night long they tried it. Tried in vain until the morning, When they flung away the tinder. And to Lingo said, "0 Brother, You're a prophet, can you tell us Why we cannot light this tinder?" Answered Lingo, " Three coss onward Lives the Giant Rikad Gowree, He the very dreadful Monster, He the terrible Devourer. In his field a fire is smoking ; Thither go and fetch a firebrand." Then the Brothers went a little. Went a very little, onwards ; Thence returned, and said to Lingo — " Nowhere saw we Rikad Gowree, Nowhere have we found this Giant." Then said Lingo, "Lo my arrow, V>y its pathway see ye follow." Then he fitted to his bowstring THE LAY OF SAINT LINGO. 199 Shaft of bulrush straight and slender ; Shot it through the forest thickets, Shot it cleaving through the branches, Shot it shearing all the grass down ; Cut a pathway straight and easy; Fell it right into tlie fireplace Of the Giant Eikad Gowree ; Fell, and glanced it from the fire- place, Glanced, and sped into the door- way Of the Avigwani of the Giant ; Fell before the seven daughters, Seven very nice young women, Daughters fair of Rikad GoAvree. Then those seven nice young women Took the arrow and concealed it. For they oft had asked the old man, Asked him when they would be married ; And he always answered gruffly, " When I choose that you be married Good and well, if not you won't be." And they thought this was an omen. Now the Brothers, greatly fear- ing Lest they all should eaten up be, Counsel taking, sent the youngest, Sent iUikeseral the youngest. To prospect the Giant's quarters. By that pathway straight and easy "Went this very young Ahkeseral; Saw the Giant's smoke ascending; Coming nearer saw the Giant, Saw him, like a shapeless tree trunk. Sleeping by the fire and snoring — By the fire of mighty tree stems, Stems of Mohwil, stems of Anjan, Stems of S;ljn<i, stems of Tekt;l ; Blazing red, its glow reflected From that form huge and shaj)!'- less Of the Giant Rikad Gowree, Of that very dreadful Rakshis, Of that terrible Devourer. Then his knees began to (juake all, O'er his body came cold shudders. Leapt his liver to his throat all, Leapt the liver of Ahkeseral. But he crept up to the fireplace, Crept and snatched a blazing fire- brand, ]>lazing brand of Tamadita. Groaned the Giant, fled Ahkeseral, Dropped the firebrand, and a spark flew, Flew and lighted on the Giant, On his shapeless hip it lighted. Raised a blister like a saucer ; Started up the Giant swearing ; Also feeling very hungry. Feeling very much like eating. Saw that very young Ahkeseral, Plump and luscious as a cucumber. Saw him running and ran after. Ran and shouted loud behind him. But in vain he followed after. For the very young Ahkeseral, Speeding swiftly through the forest. Shortly vanished and was seen not. And the Giant, much disgusted, Then returned to his fireside. And Ahkeseral, returning, Told his greatly trembling brothers Of that very dreadful Giant. But the very valiant Lingo Said, " Repose ye here a little, I will go and see this monster 200 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. That so mucli has discomposed you." At the crossing of a river, In that straight and easy pathway, Lingo saw the stick Wadiida Floating down upon the current. Saw he too a bottle-gourd tree, Saw it growing by the river ; Pulled a bottle-gourd from off it, Fished Wadiid;i from the river, Stuck the one into the other. Plucked two hairs Avherewith to string it, Made a bow and keys eleven, Played a tune or two, and found he Had a passable guitar. Pleased was Lingo, and proceeded To the field of Kikad Gowree ; Kikad Gowree lying snoring By the fireside, mouth wide gaping, Tushes horrible displaying. Lying logiike with his eyes shut. Close by grew the tree called Peepul, Peepul tall with spreading branches. Quickly Lingo clambered up it, Climbed aloft into its branches ; Sat and heard the morning cock crow, Thought this Giant soon would waken. Then he took his banjo Juntur, Struck a note that sounded sweetly. Played a hundred tunes upon it. Like a song its music sounded ; At its sound the trees were silent; Stood the mighty hills enraptured. Entered then that strain of music In the ears of Kikad GoAvree, Quickly woke him from his slumber ; Rubbed his eyes and looked about Looked in thickets, looked in hollows, Looked in tree-tops ; nothing finding, Wondered where on earth it came from, Came that strain of heavenly music, Like the warbling of the ]\Iain;i. Back returning to his fireside, Sat down, stood up, sat down, stood up ; Listened, wondered at the music; Jumped and danced he to the music. Sung and danced he to the music ; Eolled and tumbled by the fire- side To the warbling of the music. Soon at daybreak his old woman Heard that strain of heavenly music ; Came she wondering to the fire- side, Saw her old man wildly dancing — ■ Hands outstretching, feet uplift- i n f Head back reeling, dancing, tumbling, To that strain of heavenly music. Saw and wondered, saw and called out — "Ancient husband, foolish old man ! " Looked he at her, nothing said he, Danced and tumbled to the music. Said she, listening to that music, " I must dance too." Then she opened Loose the border of her garment. Danced and tumbled to the music. Then said Lingo, " Lo my Jantur ! To thy strain of heavenly music Dance this old man and his woman ; THE LAV OF SAINT LINGO. 201 All my Xoitor thus I teach will, Thus in rows to sing and d;uici3 all, At the feasting of the G6nd Gods, At the feast of the Dewali, At the feast of Budhal Pena, At the feast of Jungo Reyt;il, At the feast of Pharsa Pena — Salutation to the Gods all From this various tuneful Jantur i" Then he ceased the wondrous music ; Hailed the old man from the tree- top. Saying — " Uncle, Eikad Gowree, See your nephew on this tree- top ! " Then the Giant, looking up- wards, Saw our Lingo on the tree-top ; Called him down, shook hands, and said that He was very glad to see him. Asked him in and made him sit down ; Rang and called for pipes and coffee ; Apologised for having thought of Making breakfast of Ahkeseral ; Thanked our Lingo very kindly For his offer of the livers Of those sixteen scores of Rohees; In return proposed to give him All those seven nice young women, With their eyes bound, will they nill they, To be wedded to the Brothers. And those seven nice young women Wlien they heard about the young men, Of those young men faint and fasting Waiting tireless by the Rohees, Forthwith packed they up their wardrobes, On their heads they took their beds up, Back to Lingo gave his arrow — Arrow of the truthful omen — Saying good-bye to their parent. Followed Lingo to the forest, To tliat forest-shade primeval. Reached those young men by the Rohees, Made a fire, and had someluncheon Of the livers of the Rohees. Then the brothers 'gan to squabble O'er those seven nice young women. Holy Lingo, virtuous very, (^uite refusing to be wedded, vSomewhat easier made the pro- blem ; And he soon arranged it this wise — That the eldest of the brethren Each should take two nice young women. While the very young Ahkeseral Should be fitted with the odd one. Then returning from the forest, By the valley Ivachikopa, To the Red Hills, Lahiigada, Holy Lingo joined the Brothers To those seven nice young women. To the daughters of the Giant. Water brought and poured it o'er them, Bowers of branches raised around them^ Garlands gay he threw about them, iSfark of Turmeric applied he — And declared them duly wedded. Then the Brothers mighty pleased were With their good and virtuous Lingo; Said they'd go forth to the forest, 202 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL [NDL4. Go and smite tlie bounding red- deer, Bring its liver to their Lingo, Gather wild flowers for their _ Lingo, ^^^lile those Sisters seven should swing him, Swing him gently as he slumbered. Then their bows and arrows took they, Took and started to the forest. And the sisters swinging Lingo Thus began to say among them — " See this Lingo ! who so solemn As this brother of our husbands 1 Neither laughs he, neither speaks he, Neither looks he even at us. He must laugh, and speak, and gambol, Must this very solemn Lingo ; Let us pinch and pull and hug him." And they pulled him by the arms. Pulled his feet and pinched his arms ; But the more they pulled and pinched him All the sounder slept our Lingo. Till the sisters, vexed to find him Notliing caring for their toying. Took to hugging rather closely. Hugged that very virtuous Lingo, Till they woke him from his sleeping. Wrathful then was holy Lingo, At those wanton Giant'sdaughters ; Kose the flame of indignation From his boots up to las top- knot ; Looked about him for a weapon. For a Aveapon to chastise them ; Saw a pestle hard and heavy, Pestle made for husking rice with ; Bounded from his swing and seized it. "With it thrashed those Giant's daughters ; Thrashed them till they bellowed loudly. Fled and roared like Bulls of Bashan, Fled and hid them in their wig- wam^. Soon the Brothers back re- turning. Bringing game and bricging wild flowers, Found their Lingo quietly sleep- Sisters none his swing were rock- ing. j\Iuch astonished, they betook them To the wigwams of the Sisters. But had scarce begun to scold them Ere they found the tables turned — " Pretty fellows are you truly ! Thus to leave your wives behind you And go hunting in the forest, While your very holy Lingo Tries his arts upon our virtue. We have quite made up our minds now Not to stay another minute. But to take our beds and ward- robes. And return to where Ave came from — To our poor deceived papa ! " Then the Brothers said among them — " 0 that sinful, wicked Lingo ! How the villain has deceived us ! When Ave offered him the fairest. No, he Avanted none, he told us ; Called them sisters, called them mothers ; NoAv to play so mean a trick on Us when liuntinu in the forest ! THE LAY OF SAINT LINGO. 203 Let us get him to tlie jangle, Kill him there, and [)ull his eyes out. Hares and antelopes we've hunted, Now Ave'll hunt our little Lingo. Bread or water let us touch not Till we've played a game of marbles With the eyes of faithless Lingo." Then they went and wakened Lingo, Saying, " Rise, our youngest brother." And he rose, and wondering asked them Why so late they had returned, Bringing nothing from the forest. And they answered, " Lo, a Creature, Mighty strong, appeared before us ; And we fought him with our arrows. But this mighty Creature fell not, Neither fled he ; come then with us." Then rose Lingo, and before them Stalked he on into tlie forest, To the forest-shade primeval. Looked for traces of the Creature In the grass, among the bushes; But this mighty Creature saw not. Then they sat them down and rested By the tree called Sarekata. And the Brothers went for water, Went and pondered how to kill him ; And returning softly, liidden ]^y the stoui of S:'irek;Ua, From tlieir bows four arrows sped they, liulrush shafts, at holy Lingo. Split his skull was, pierced his neck was, Cleft the liver was of Lingo. Down he dropped, and out his life passed. By the Tree called Sarekata. Then a knife they took and gouged him, Out the eyes they bored of Lingo ; In a hole they put the body ; Strewed it over with some branches ; Pulled some leaves and made a goblet For the bored-out eyes of Lingo ; Tied it up into a waistcloth, Hied them homeward to their wigwams ; Called their wives, and lit some torches, Blazing torches made of flax- stalks ; Played their horrid game of marbles With the bored-out eyes of Lingo. So the Brothers four of Lingo And those seven nice young women Chucked his eyes about like marbles For an hour's time by the torch- Ji-lit. III.— THE EESURRECTION OF LINGO, AND DELIVERY OF THE GONDS. In the Court of great Bhagwantdl Sat the Deities assembled ; Sat they in the Upper World, Wondering where, in earthly regions, Lay the body of their Lingo : Wondered much, but nothing knew they In Avhat region it had fallen. Then Bhagwantdl took a basin, 20-t THE HIGHLANDS OF CEXTEAL INDIA. Washed a little of his hody, Washed a little of the dirt ofif : Took and made of it an image; Breathed the breath of life into it; Made Kagesur, Lord of Ravens. Amrit* sprinkled he upon it. From hishand released it, saying — " Search the forests, search the mountains, Search the valleys, search the rivers, For the body of my Lingo." Then Kagesur, Lord of Kavens, He the very black and cunning, S wif tly sped him on his errand ; Searched he first the Upper Regions, Thence descended to the Lower ; Searched their hills and glens and forests, Till he reached the Iron Valley, In the Red Hills, Lahiigada. Peered among the forest thickets, Saw the twigs that covered Lingo, Looked below them, found our Lingo, Looking horrid, with his eyes out, Split his skull, and pierced his liver. Hied him l)ack to great Bhag- wantal, Told the doleful tale of Lingo. Then the God said, " Ha ! I see it. By his birth-place has he fallen, By the flowering tree Pahindi." Then he sent for Karto Subal, Gave a flask of heavenly Amrit (Bade him well to .shake the bottle). For external application To the .skull and neck and liver Of the gouged and butchered Lingo ; And despatched hiniAvith Kagesur To the valley Kachikopa, To the P.ed Hills, Lahiigada. Flew the Raven straight before him ; Reached the place ; then Karto Subal Took the flask of heavenly Amrit, Poured it o'er his wounds and bruises, Stitching up the chiefest openings In his head and his abdomen. Soon his eyes began to open,t And he saw the Lord of Ravens ; Thought he'd slept a little soundly ; Asked them, " Had they seen his Brothers 1 " And was very much astounded When they told him how they found him Gouged and butchered by his Brothers. Then he thought perhaps 'twere better Now to leave this lot of Brothers, And their seven nice young Avomen ; And go seek those other Sixteen, Sixteen threshing-floors of Koitor. So the Strong God and the Raven Hied them back and told Bhag- wantal ()f their surgery successful. Anil our Lingo lledivivux Wandered sadly through the forest, AVandered on across the mountains Till the darkening of the evening, Wandered on until the night fell. Screamed the panther in the forest, Growled the bear upon the moiur- tain. * The water of immortality. t It is not related how these organs