149(AS) Maragaḷa gumpu?
A group of trees?
(NG) Ã, maragaḷa gumpu. A: gumpu maragaḷadu ashṭe.
(Yes, a group of trees. That group consists of trees, that’s all.)
(JS) Adu ambugaḷu, matte ja:sti thik, tumba maragaḷu. Gumpu irutte, arda
e:kare, ondu e:kare.
(There are vines, and trees growing close together. It’s a group, half an
acre or an acre (in area).)
(AS) Andare, tumba saṇṇadu...
(So it’s a very small...)
(JS) Ã, solpa cikkadu. So:la fa:resṭu tara ka:ṇatte
(Yes, it’s quite small. It looks like a shola^5 forest.)
(NJ) Gumpu mara. ondu, hattu mara idda:ga, adu tho:pu mara.
(A group of trees, when you have about ten trees, that’s a tho:pu of trees.)
(JV) Illi, namma a:fi s mum-bha:ga tho:pu ide
(There’s a tho:pu here, in front of our offi ce.)
Here, the consensus seems to be that tho:pu ka:ḍu refers not to the entire hill
forest macrohabitat, as BG and MRM assert, but rather to small, isolated groups of
trees. It is quite possible that BG’s conception of tho:pu ka:ḍu represents an older
Solega meaning of the term—younger Solega, especially those who have had
greater contacts with Kannada speakers, might generally be unaware of this mean-
ing, and their understanding of the term may have converged with the standard
Kannada meaning of tho:pu, which is ‘orchard’ or ‘grove’ (as in ma:vina tho:pu
‘mango orchard’ or tengina tho:pu ‘coconut plantation’).
5.3.2 Beṭṭa:ga:ḍu
In Extract III, BG mentioned that beṭṭa:ga:ḍu ‘mountain forest’ was one of the
habitat types found within the tho:pu ka:ḍu macrohabitat. Beṭṭa:ga:ḍu , in turn,
seems to be a grouping of many vegetation types, all of which happen to share the
key feature of being found on a mountain.
Extract V (K)
(JS) Doḍḍa beṭṭa:gaḷu, avella beṭṭa:ga:ḍu anta baratte. Alli doḍḍa ka:nu 6
baratte, saṇṇa ka:nu baratte, matte beṭṭa bo:ḷi, avella a:girutte, adakke
beṭṭa:ga:ḍu. matte beṭṭa:ga:ḍinalli ḍra:i fa:resṭnu: ide. Ella maragaḷu
ive, ja:sti.
(^5) See san.n.a ka:nu ka:d.u below
(^6) These terms are explained below.
5.3 Landscape/Forest Types in Solega