Author: Eyre Chatterton

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 9781230432052

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV THE STORY OF LINGO Ye who love a Nation's legends, Love the ballads of a people. That like voices from afar off Call to us to pause and listen. Speak in tones so plain and childlike, Scarcely can the ear distinguish Whether they are sung or spoken: -- Listen to this Indian legend. --Longfellow. No account of the Gonds would be complete without some reference to the quaint songs which link themselves with the name of Lingo, the Gond prophet, and which form a sort of Epic once recited by Gond Pardhans, or Bards. This Epic for so we may style it, was first brought to light half a century ago, by the Rev. S. Hislop, one of the pioneer missionaries of the last century. Hislop in his wanderings amongst the Gonds, and in his researches into things Gondian, first heard of it from one of their Pardhans, or Bards. He reduced it to writing in the Gondi language with his own hand shortly before his too early and tragic death; and the task of having it translated, first into Hindi, and afterwards into English, was carried out under the direction - of his friend, Sir R. Temple, the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces. The English translation as it is found in these pages is that of Sir R. Temple himself, which is in every way to be preferred to a paraphrase cast in the metre of Longfellow's "Hiawatha," by Captain Forsyth in The Highlands of Central India. Reading it for the first time in Forsyth's paraphrase and with his not very sympathetic comments fresh in my mind, I was certainly not prepared for the quaint humour and real charm revealed in Sir R. Temple's translation. This Epic, as Sir R. Temple truly says, is "a compendium of Gond thoughts and notions." Though abounding in things borrowed from the Hindus, it is possessed of...