Indian Antiquary Vol 04

SR No.: 032496
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 410
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
Sanskrit writings, but am not in a position to give chapter and verse. Throughout Central and Southern Khandesh they are village watchmen and shikáris, and paid labourers for the cultivating and trading castes; often, indeed, under our "Reign of Law," reduced to a state of personal slavery or little better, and living under a yoke of stamped paper that enters into the soul of the poor demi-savage as bitterly as could fetters of iron. In the Sâtpur â mountains to the north and the dense low-lying forests of the west they form often the whole population of remote jungle villages. To the east and south-east they give place to the Koli in the plains, and in the hills to the Târvi, but to the north-east they run on quite into British Nimar, and how much further I know not. They are numerous along that part of the Sâtmala range in the south-west which lies between Châlîsgâm and the great gap of Manmår through which the G. I. P. Railway runs, and in that direction they extend as far south as the Punâ District, but keeping (as far as my limited knowledge of the Nasik and Ahmadnagar Collectorates allows me to state) rather to the plains than to the Sahyadri Hills, in which, I fancy, the presence of a much superior aboriginal race, the Hill Kolis, leaves little room for them. Among a people thus scattered over a country nearly as large as Ireland, and subject to considerable variety of climate and nourishment, there are naturally various types of appearance and even of character.
The Bhills of the Sahyadri and Sâtmala are generally much superior in physique, features, and intelligence to those of the Sâtpurâs and Central Khândesh, and in the ranks of the Bhill Corps at Dharamgåm one may see, amongst dwarfish figures surmounted by faces which almost suggest the African, many wellbuilt men, and even some tall and handsome ones with regular features and wavy hair.
Like most Indian races, whether Aryan or aboriginal, they are divided into kúlas or families having different surnames, but they don't mention these often, except in the case of the "Mewâs Chiefs" of the west, who are always spoken of by their family names of Wasåwå, Walvi, Pârvi, &c.
Probably no race in this Presidency has given
I remember a party of Bhills who committed a murder in Puna being "spotted" as wanderers from Khandesh by
[NOVEMBER, 1875.
more trouble to reduce to order, considering its numbers. The Marâthâs, never tolerant of forest tribes, appear to have treated the Bhills like wild beasts, and the latter seem to have heartily accepted the position, the result of which was a war of raids and dacoities on the one side, and extermination by all possible means on the other. The favourite manoeuvre of the Maratha leaders was to humbug their simple adversaries into coming in to make peace, and ratify the treaty with a grand carouse. "You know, Saheb," said a Bhill in narrating one of these coups, "that our people can never resist an offer of liquor." The invariable 'grace after meat' of the entertainment was a wholesale massacre of the unsuspecting and intoxicated savages,-generally by precipitating them over a cliff or into wells. A race accustomed for several generations to regard these tactics as the main characteristic of organized government and civilized society might be expected to give trouble to the first British officers who came into contact with them. Accordingly the early history of Khandesh as a British district is one long record of devastating raids and fruitless pursuits varied with an occasional skirmish or execution. The Bhills derived great advantage from the natural wildness of parts of the country, the desolation to which all of it had been reduced by serving as a cockpit for the later wars of the Marâthâ empire, and the deadly unhealthiness of the jungle posts.
Of one of these, Nawapûr, there is a legend that after a certain detachment had been there for a few months the native civil official in charge carted in their arms and accoutrements to head-quarters with a brief and naïve report that the men were 'khalás jhale' (expended); and even now native subordinates often resign when ordered there on duty. This state of things was finally terminated by the raising of the Khandesh Bhill Corps, and the adoption of measures to induce the Bhills to come in' for pardon and settle down to such cultivation as they could manage, in which the chief mover was the late General (then Captain) Outram, whose name is still famous among the people of Khândesh, and connected with a heap of legends which will no doubt justify some euhemerist of the future in proving him to be
the remains of their dinner, which contained food not entering into the diet of the local dangerous classes.