Colonel Dalton notes that the Kols, like the Gonds, give names to their children after officers visiting the village when they are born. Thus Captain, Major, Doctor are common names in the Kolhān. Mr. Mazumdār gives an instance of a Kol servant of the Rāja of Bāmra who greatly admired some English lamp-chimneys sent for by the Rāja and called his daughter ‘Chimney.’ They do not address any relative or caste-man by his name if he is older than themselves, but use the term of relationship to a relative and to others the honorific title of Gaontia.
21. Occupation.
The Mundāri language has no words for the village trades nor for the implements of cultivation, and so it may be concluded that prior to their contact with the Hindus the Mundas lived on the fruits and roots of the forests and the pursuit of game and fish. Now, however, they have taken kindly to several kinds of labour. They are much in request on the Assam tea-gardens owing to their good physique and muscular power, and they make the best bearers of dhoolies or palanquins. Kol bearers will carry a dhoolie four miles an hour as against the best Gond pace of about three, and they shake the occupant less. They also make excellent masons and navvies, and are generally more honest workers than the other jungle tribes. A Munda seldom comes into a criminal court.
22. Language.
The Kols of the Central Provinces have practically abandoned their own language, Mundāri being retained only by about 1000 persons in 1911. The Kols and Mundas now speak the Hindu vernacular current in the tracts where they reside. Mundāri, Santāli, Korwa and Bhumij are practically all forms of one language which Sir G. Grierson designates as Kherwāri.[22]
[1] Tribes and Castes of Bengal, art. Bhumij.
[2] The Mundas and their Country, p. 400.