Читать книгу The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 3 - Robert Vane Russell - Страница 77

In the wilder tracts the Gonds were, until recently, extremely shy of strangers, and would fly at their approach. Their tribute to the Rāja of Bastar, paid in kind, was collected once a year by an officer who beat a tom-tom outside the village and forthwith hid himself, whereupon the inhabitants brought out whatever they had to give and deposited it on an appointed spot. Colonel Glasfurd notes that they had great fear of a horse, and the sight of a man on horseback would put a whole village to flight.87 Even within the writer’s experience, in the wilder forest tracts of Chānda Gond women picking up mahua would run and climb a tree at one’s approach on a pony. As displaying the ignorance of the Gonds, Mr. Cain relates88 that about forty years ago a Gond was sent with a basket of mangoes from Palvatsa to Bhadrachalam, and was warned not to eat any of the fruit, as it would be known if he did so from a note placed in the basket. On the way, however, the Gond and his companion were overcome by the attraction of the fruit, and decided that if they buried the note it would be unable to see them eating. They accordingly did so and ate some of the mangoes, and when taxed with their dishonesty at the journey’s end, could not understand how the note could have known of their eating the mangoes when it had not seen them.

The Gonds can now count up to twenty, and beyond that they use the word kori or a score, in talking of cattle, grain or rupees, so that this, perhaps, takes them up to twenty score. They say they learnt to count up to twenty on their ten fingers and ten toes.