Note 13 — GOND

The yellow flowers of the tree Pahindi were growing on Dhawalgiri. Bhagwān sent thunder and lightning, and the flower conceived. First fell from it a heap of turmeric or saffron. In the morning the sun came out, the flower burst open, and Lingo was born. Lingo was a perfect child. He had a diamond on his navel and a sandalwood mark on his forehead. He fell from the flower into the heap of turmeric. He played in the turmeric and slept in a swing. He became nine years old. He said there was no one there like him, and he would go where he could find his fellows. He climbed a needle-like hill,13 and from afar off he saw Kachikopa Lohāgarh and the four Gonds. He came to them. They saw he was like them, and asked him to be their brother. They ate only animals. Lingo asked them to find for him an animal without a liver, and they searched all through the forest and could not. Then Lingo told them to cut down trees and make a field. They tried to cut down the anjan14 trees, but their hands were blistered and they could not go on. Lingo had been asleep. He woke up and saw they had only cut down one or two trees. He took the axe and cut down many trees, and fenced a field and made a gate to it. Black soil appeared. It began to rain, and rained without ceasing for three days. All the rivers and streams were filled. The field became green with rice, and it grew up. There were sixteen score of nīlgai or blue-bull. They had two leaders, an old bull and his nephew. The young bull saw the rice of Lingo’s field and wished to eat it. The uncle told him not to eat of the field of Lingo or all the nīlgai would be killed. But the young bull did not heed, and took off all the nīlgai to eat the rice. When they got to the field they could find no entrance, so they jumped the fence, which was five cubits high. They ate all the rice from off the field and ran away. The young bull told them as they ran to put their feet on leaves and stones and boughs and grass, and not on the ground, so that they might not be tracked. Lingo woke up and went to see his field, and found all the rice eaten. He knew the nīlgai had done it, and showed the brothers how to track them by the few marks which they had by accident made on the ground. They did so, and surrounded the nīlgai and killed them all with their bows and arrows except the old uncle, from whom Lingo’s arrow rebounded harmlessly on account of his innocence, and one young doe. From these two the nīlgai race was preserved. Then Lingo told the Gonds to make fire and roast the deer as follows: