[What is in a name? Juliet of William Shakespeare had such a question. The reference was a rose. Yes, a rose still smells sweet if it is called by any other name. Therefore, the question stands if it does matter in a nomenclature and if it does not. The following is a little attempt to study the concept with the word “Dulung”.]

Dulung is the Name of a Bengali Magazine for Literature and Sociology

It was an evening in October, 1996. In a small and make-shift stall at the Indian Institute of Technology Durga Puja premises we have been selling an ordinary-looking periodical with a name DULUNG. A young person arrived with his wife. We were encouraged with their smiling faces. They purchased a few issues of the periodical and before parting surprised us with the information that their daughter was named Dulung.

We were really glad. DULUNG is the name of a little magazine that we publish from Kharagpur (a railway town of West Bengal, India). Dulung is an eighteen years old Bengali little magazine for literature and sociology. The periodicity of this magazine has been flexible – issues have been three in a year, ten issues in a year and two in a year.

This little magazine was named Dulung for the following reasons:

1. Dulung is a tiny river flowing through some part of the West Medinipur district and we belong to this district.
2. Our attempt to develop as wordsmith was humble and we had considered us little as little was the river Dulung in comparison with the mighty Ganga or Yamuna or Brahmaputra of the Indian sub-continent.
3. Dulung belonged to the region of West Bengal which was greatly stirred by the movement of the agrarian hapless people in the seventies of the last century. The said movement, known as the Naxalbari Movement under the leadership of a China-inspired communist group of India had touched different cross-section of the Indian society, directly and indirectly.
4. We had a desire to make our readers aware of the state and aspiration of the locals through the periodical.
5. The word ‘dulung’ means passage or motion and this sweet little word has its owner in the  tribal people (Santhal, Lodha, Mal…) who had been driven out throughout the ages to the forested hilly tracks of the Santhal Paraganas of the eastern India by none other than our forefathers and again by the representatives of the British Empire.
6. Dulung is a bi-syllabic sweet little word with a musical resonance probably because of the presence of “l’ and ‘n’. It is pronounced as dooloong and also as doolang.  Dulung has other closer uses such as dulong, dulang, dulonch  and so on.

Dulung was published first in April, 1990. It was just after the fall of the Soviet Empire and just with the beginning of the multiplied disasters in the life of the toiling millions in India because of the acceptance of the prescription of economic restructure by the pioneers of Globalisation. Nearly one hundred issues of Dulung have so far been published. Dulung has strived to provoke thoughts and has essayed to interpret the happenings from non-dogmatic attitude and from the angle of ones who keep in mind that they are parts of the humanity running from the millions of years. Dulung has been awarded as the year-best little magazine by the Little Magazine Research Center of Kolkata in 1993. This little magazine has been warmly accepted by a small section of the people who do still expect a fresh issue from its publisher. At present publication of Dulung has become irregular.

 

 

Dulung is the Name of a Tiny River of West Bengal (India)

 Junglekhand was a land of dense forests to the west of the Gangetic plain and it was a shelter for some Indian tribals( santhal, lodha…). This region is now shared by the Indian states of Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa. And quiet flows a tiny river through this region of tranquility and serenity and this is river Dulung. A rain-fed river it is.

Chilkigarh, a winter tourist-site in the Jamboni Police Station of West Bengal and close to the National Highway 6,is famous for Kanakdurga temple.(Kanak means ‘made of gold’. Durga is a very important goddess of the Hindus.) This is a typical Pancharatna style temple, but this is century-old and and stands as a ruin. Kanakdurga temple is situated on the bank of the charming Dulung.

The Dulung flows through an area where most of the people are very poor and are always neglected by the administration. During the rainy season the adjoining area of the river is flooded and at times thousands of people are marooned and hundreds of houses are collapsed. The river Dulung has ever been a victim of administrative indifference.

The river Dulung is very close to Jhargram, a small town in the West Medinipur district. You will find one Dulung Hotel in Jhargram.

 

 

Dulung is the Name of a Reserved Forest

Dulung  is the name of a reserved forest in the Lakhimpur district of Assam in the north-east of India. Dulung and Subansiri reserved forests of the same district has been earmarked by the Bombay Natural  History Society as important Bird Areas. A dam-project on the river Subansiri (an important tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra ) has been a concern for the environmental experts as a vast area may be set to be submerged and may be dangerous for a rich biodiversity zone and for the wild life rich with tiger, leopard, marbled cat, golden cat, wild dog, gaur,langur, slow loris and gharial.

Rupahi Rajgarh village, situated in the Dulung forest area between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, has been a centre of unrest for some time. The elephant catchers and tamers lived in Rupahi Rajgarh area are under continuous threat of eviction. Actually they have been physically assaulted and looted and evicted time and again by the miscreants and the security forces of Arunachal Pradesh. They have even appealed to the Prime Minister and still now they are in utter poverty with no place to settle and with really nothing to live on. 

 

 

Dulung is the Name or Surname of Persons

• Dulong or Pierre Louis Dulong (1785-1838) was a French Physicist and Chemist. He was born in Rouen, France.

He is famous for the Dulong-Petit law which states that

the product of the specific heat per gram and the atomic weight of many solid elements at room temperature has almost the same value, about 6.3 calories (264 joules) per degree Celsius.

He is one of the French scientists whose name has been engraved on the sides of the Eiffel Tower under the first balcony in recognition to the contributions by Gustave Eiffel. His name appears in the following way:

                                                    Dulong
                                                    Pierre Louis Dulong
                                                    physicist and chemist

• Dr H Andi Jamaro Dulung is a renowned person in Indonesia. He was chairman of the Youth Movement Anshor PP mengemban. He is a member of the House of Representatives Commission. Dr Dulung is known as

Masters in Psychology Unpad Bandung
S3 Teknologi Pendidikan Universitas Negeri Jakarta S3 Technology Education State University of Jakarta

 

Dulong is the Name of a Ceremonial Food Bowl

This ceremonial food bowl is 14 inches long and is used by the Toraja people, Sulawesi Isl, Indonesia.

In the funerary feasts the Torajan people use this bowl.

Dulong holds vegetables or meats and receives graceful attention from the people.

 

 

Dulung is the Name of a Boat Associated with Islam in Indonesia

Dulung  is a boat. You are sure to notice its unusual and specific shape. Offerings of ‘dihaturkan’ are placed on this boat. The frontal projection of the boat is trisected with one composite center and there are two forks to the right and to the left. The ‘bermaksudkan’ has seven parts and reminds us the number of days and points to the ‘progress of human life from the day onwards’.

Yellow, green and red are the colors used on the body of the boat. Yellow has been used at the top of the raised-up frontal projection. This has been done in order to show honor and this is the traditional culture.  ‘Berwana’ yellow is only in one direction. This is to suggest that Allah is one and he is almighty and he has the supreme authority in the universe as he is the creator. The boat has five pillars and these are to indicate prayer times which are five in the Islamic religion.
Thus, different parts of the boat have associated with the said religion symbolically.

 

Dulang Paglaum is the Name of a Project to Feed the Children in the Philippines

 This project aims to feed malnourished and starving children in the district of Jaro, Iloilo City, the Philippines. This is a benevolent exercise of Luzette Villareal. She is an artist and she belongs to Jaro.

(From the Website of Luzette Villareal)

 

 

Dulang Stands for ‘low table’ in the Phillipines

Deedee has been a prolific freelancer for more than twenty years. It is interesting to note what she has left in her blogs for us. Let us see what she has written while inviting everyone to her blogs —

 ‘dulang is a Tagalog word for “low table” that is normally used for dining purposes.’

Deedee uses the dulang as a centerpiece in her residence and for conversations of life. On her desire we have been privileged to sit around the dulang in her residence in Manila (capital of the Phillipines) if we get occasions and in her blog always as a surfer of the internet.

Dulung  in China

Dulung is the name of a community in China. It is a community of nearly 6000 people. They live mainly in the valleys along the banks of the river Dulung ( Dulung stands for ‘little dragon’) in the western part of Yunnan Province where Tibet and Myanmar are closer too. Some more people habitat on the Burmese side of the Dandanglika Mountains. Dulung is the language of this people and they use the script named Han. Women generally tattoo their faces. They believe that by this way the evil spirits may be warded off. But the Dulung women have been changing themselves as they have chanced to come in contact with the rapidly changing urban society of the modern days.

Still one may experience the primitive mode of their life in some places. This is reflected by the nature of hunting, fishing and food-gathering means of sustenance, forest-dependence, tight clan relationship, chicken-sacrifice to the spirits by the ritual specialist called shamam and slaughtering of an ox at Dulung New Year.

Dulung people have been in a tremendous conflict between the past and the present although their mode of expression is not noisy and with least of the demonstrative effect.

 

Tattoos in the Face of the Dulong Women

Women with tattooed faces in the Dulong River Valley may still be noticed although their number may be less than 60 only. In July 2003, Shen Xingshi, a photographer from E Anhui Province , has recorded their lives on

Dong Chunlian

Dong Chunlian is a woman with facial tattoos. She has not preferred remaining tied to the valley. She has responded to the call of the outside world and has been successful to draw their attention to Dulung. She has attended the Ethnic Expo, Taiwan, 2000 and also visited Japan.

Dulung is the Name of a Newspaper

 The following three incomplete lines are from (http://www.ace.lu.se/images/Syd_och_sydostasienstudier/working_papers/mason):

‘The fact that Javanese language legal sources as stone and copperplate inscriptions and manuscripts written on European, Chinese and native paper (Dulong) are found spread from Lumpang, South Sumatra….’                  (made bold and italicized by the author)

 

 

Conclusion

Linguists may help us how this little word DULUNG has acquired such astonishing varieties in a stretch of a large landmass in the eastern hemisphere and even in France as an exception. But the root might have been somewhere in the tribal people’s tradition and treasure.