Central India · Gondwana; Mandla and ChhattisgarhTribalGondi-speaking Gonds, sung by Pardhan bards
In the oldest recorded Gond telling the tribe's gods start life badly: left by their mother, they are taken up by Parvati, but Mahadeo tires of them and shuts them in the cave of Kachikopa Lohagarh behind a stone sixteen cubits across. Parvati searches without finding them. It is Lingo, the culture hero, who lifts the stone and lets the gods out, and they emerge in four groups that become the four divisions of Gond society. Lingo then fixes the worship of the great gods, the Persa Pen, and is remembered as the first priest and the founder of the Gond way, Koya Punem. The Pardhan bards sang the story and Verrier Elwin wrote it down. Here the great god of the Hindus is the jailer, his wife the searcher, and a Gond hero the one who sets things right.
Central India · Kachargarh, Gondia, MaharashtraTribalGond revival movement
Motiravan Kangali's Pari Kupar Lingo of 1986 re-anchors the story to the Kachargarh caves: the thirty-three children of Mata Kali Kankali are imprisoned there for twelve years and freed by Lingo at the urging of Jangu Bai. The telling underpins the revived Kachargarh pilgrimage each February.
What is different here:
The mother becomes Kali Kankali, the number of gods is fixed at thirty-three, the cave is placed at Kachargarh, and Shiva's role as jailer fades; the story serves a modern Gond religious revival.