The Music of Hindostan c6.106

c6.106

From Nāgpur, where my tour began, I went to Wārsa, a few hours distant by train, where a party of Mārĭă Gōnds were to march in from Moholi, a couple of dozen miles away. Owing to some misunderstanding they failed to appear that day at all, and arrived only at nine the next morning at the station, our train, the only one in the day, being due at ten.¹ We found there a crowd of twenty-two under Rainu Patel of Chingli (east of Moholi), a man of fifty, with a striking face full of humour and character, the flat nose and thick lips of the Gond, and a thick-set figure on bow legs. He marshalled his pupils and divided them for singing into two parties of ten and twelve. These songs, being the first of the kind I had heard, could not be noted with any accuracy. The words of three of them were: