PAHARIA LADS AND LASSES
Thus, once more, we are baffled in our attempts to find genuine
romantic love. Of its fourteen ingredients the altruistic ones are
missing entirely. What Dalton writes (248) regarding the Oraons,
"Dhumkuria lads are no doubt great flirts, but each has
a special favorite among the young girls of his
acquaintance, and the girls well know to whose touch
and pressure in the dance each maiden's heart is
especially responsive," will not mislead any reader of
this book, who will know that it indicates merely
individual preference, which goes with all sorts of
love, and is moreover, characteristically shallow here;
for, as Dalton has told us, these village flirtations
"seldom end in marriage."
The other ingredients that primitive love shares with romantic
love--monopoly, jealousy, coyness, etc., are also, as we saw, weak
among the wild tribes of India. Westermarck (503) indeed fancied he
had discovered the occurrence among them of "the absorbing passion for
one." "Colonel Dalton," he says, "represents the Paharia lads and
lasses as forming very romantic attachments; 'if separated only for an
hour,' he says, 'they are miserable.'" In reality Dalton does not
"represent them" thus; he says "they are represented;" that is, he
gives his information at second-hand, without naming his authority,
who, to judge by some of his remarks, was apparently a facetious
globe-trotter.
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