182
to the soundscape of the BRT, serve to notify humans of the start and end of each
working day. This is described in greater detail in Chap. 4. The opening and closing
of some plants on a daily basis is also predictable enough for the Solega to use it as
a time-keeping mechanism:
Ka:ḍinalli kuri oṇṭe enduru ade. Oṇṭe hu: a:gottiga, “Mu:r gaṇṭe i:ga!”
There’s (a plant called) kuri oṇṭe ( Triumfetta rhomboidea? ) in the forest. When the oṇṭe
fl ower blooms, “It’s 3 pm now!” (we say).
Explicit animal signs can also be used to tell the time of day. A very familiar
example is the crowing of the rooster at dawn, which in Solega is referred to as
beḷakina (in)ja:vã ‘the morning call’.
O: (su:ryaniga) ottu mu:ḍikittu, ko:ḷi ku:gottu, i: tare he:ḷta:re... ko:ḷi ku:gida:ga beḷakina
ja:vã... a:ga na:ku gaṇṭe a:girutte.
“Oh! The sun has risen, the rooster has crowed,” that’s what they say... when the rooster
crows, it’s the morning call... then it’s four in the morning.
Daily cycles in honeybee activity outside the hive are also meaningful, in that the
lulls and peaks are said to occur at certain times of the day:
Je:nu kuruḍu edda:de, i:gatta mu:ru gaṇṭe a:gide. Je:nu kuruḍu nitta:ga sande aita:de.
A:ru gaṇṭe. I:gatta kuruḍu nitta:tu koṇo, taḍe innondu ashṭottu suttumõ, a:mele ho:ga:vẽ.
Innondu ga:ḷige no:ḍu alli, akka:pakka:da maragaḷa
The drones wake up, now it’s 3 pm. When the drones go to sleep, it’s the evening 6 pm. Now
the drones have gone to sleep. Wait, let’s get some more ( honey ), then we’ll go (home).
Have a look there, in the nearby trees.
The twin annual cycles of the monsoons and the fl owering of plants provide an
inexorably cycling backdrop before which many other biological events of shorter
duration play out. These biological events achieve added signifi cance when they are
seen to regularly overlap with discrete segments of the annual cycles. Another bird,
the ke:sakki ‘Indian cuckoo’, fi lls the air with its distinctive call towards the end of
the dry season , and heralds the onset of the monsoon. As described in Chap. 7 , the
mass migration of hejje:nu ‘giant honeybee; Apis dorsata ’ from the plains to the
highland forests co-incides with the mass blooming of important forest trees such as
honne mara , and is a signifi cant event for the Solega, who then prepare themselves
for the months of honey -gathering.
The naming of honey , obtained in different parts of the year, after the fl owers in
bloom around the time of harvesting that honey is a common feature of Solega bee-
related conversation. The reason for this practice is obvious—the bees would have
been foraging from particular fl owers for some time before the honey was har-
vested, and the honey consequently takes on the distinctive aroma and fl avour of
those fl owers. The result is a sequence of honeys that marches in step with the
phenological cycle, at least for the months when honey is available for harvest—
honne je: nu ‘ honne- fl ower honey’, eḷakina je:nu , ne:ri je:nu , ta:ri je:nu , holuge
je:nu , kaĩye kalagu je:nu and so on. A few select honeys do stand out for being
particularly delicious— maruḷi je:nu , which is associated with a small, unassuming
leguminous herb called maruḷi giḍa ( Indigofera sp. ), and more generally, nela
hu:vina je:nu ‘honey from ground-cover fl owers’ are eagerly sought after.
6 Signs and Relationships