Add Or 3402

A white monkey with blue mouth, hands, feet and tip of tail, its skin covered with small black spots. It wears a pink scarf and addresses a large stork-like bird with white neck and bluish-pink plumage. Below, a male figure with yellow skin and pink scarf, attended by a fan-bearer with dark brown skin, his hands folded in respect, approaches a four-headed, four-armed figure carrying two hand-drums and mounted on a gander with white neck and bluish-pink plumage.

Note: Interpreted to Santal audiences as Harur bonga addressing Garur (Gandgaru) bonga and perhaps vaguely suggestive of Thakur Jiu dispatching the gander Has to settle on the foam at the creation of the world. It is significant that both Garuda (Visnu’s bird vehicle) and Hanuman are connected in Hindu myth with flying. As rendered in the scroll, the encounter between the monkey and the bird recalls the interview between Hanuman (monkey ally of Rama) and Sampati, vulture brother of Jatayu, who dies when striving to rescue Sita from her abductor, the demon king Ravana. For the association of Hanuman with the Jagannatha trio see Add.Or.3840, where the trio is shown in a chariot preceded by a large, triumphal Hanuman.

Although the four-headed figure on a gander - clearly based on the Hindu Creator Brahma - is named to Santals as Sengel (flashing) bonga, its multiple heads are plainly evocative of Moreko Turuiko (the Five-Six) - younger brother of Maran Buru and with him protector of village welfare (W.G. Archer (1974), 29). Without some allusion to Moreko Turuiko, the celebration of the three chief Santal bongas in a scroll devoted to the Baha festival would hardly be acceptable.

For the Hindu-affected legend of Sengel bonga and his suppliant, Indra Raja (here attended by his servant, Daban), see Add.Or.2561-69.