IINAU-BEN. Bunn. A large tree, of pale yellow wood, preferred for making combs. It bears a large fragrant fruit, but worthless.— Crawfurd, d. p. 102.
HO, a Chinese measure of capacity, about 7i gallons.—Sinimonds' Diet.
HO. Arias. He, Ho is ; the name of God. Ho ul Aziz, He is glorious.
HO, Horn, Horo, in the Kol tongue, a man. In the mountains S.W. of Calcutta are the Dlianga.r, Oraon, tho Kol, the Larka Kol or Ho, and the )shroud. The llo are a comparatively small tribe of the Kol race. Their country proper is the part of the Singbhum district called Kolehan, a series of fair and fertile plains studded with hills. It is about 64 miles from N. to S. and 124 from E. to W., and has to the S. and S.E. the tributary estates Mohurbhun, Keonjur, Bonai, and Gangpur, inhabited by Uriya-speaking Hindus ; to the east and north the Bengali pargana of Dhulbhum and district of Manbhum, and to the N. and N.E. the Ilindi district of Lohardaggah.
The Ho is the most compact, the purest, most powerful and interesting and best-looking division of the whole Munda nation. The more civilised Ho have an erect carriage, and dignified, fine manly bearing, with figures often models of beauty. The occupants of the less reclaimed parts are more savage-looking. Their tradition is that they came from Chutia Nagpur, and that they brought with them their system of confederate governments of Purha, .which they call Pirhi or Pin The Ho have a tradition that they once wore leaves only, as the Juanga women till 1871 did, and not long since threatened to revert to them unless cloth-sellers lowered their prices. The Ho
of the border-land have probably much intermixed with the Uriya. They are agricultural, but change their localities. A Ho bridegroom buys his bride, or rather his father buys her for him, the price being so many head of cattle. The Kol and Larka Kol are cognate with the Khond. The Ho lan guage differs so little in phonology and glossary from the Munda, Bhumij, and Santal, that Captain Tickell's account of its grammar may be taken as that of the Kol language generally. The Ho are addicted to suicide ; they have no endear ing epithets. They erect menhir or slabs, and dolmen or tablets, over the graves of their dead. The dance of the Ho and Santal is not that of the Munda, though the last have something re sembling it, and it can be made to assume a mourn ful cadence, as the same step and drum-beat is used at their funeral ceremonies. Colonel Dalton says (p. 106) the youths and maidens of the Ho mourn as they revolve, and lock up, keeping admirable time both in the movements of the feet and undulations of the head to the monotonous beat of the drums. They believe that the souls of the dead become bhoots (spirits), but no thought of reward or punishment is connected with the change.—Captain Tickell, As. Soc. .10727'. ix. pp. 783, 997, 1063 ; Lubbock, Origin of Civil, p. 268 ; Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 106, 184.