The Wild Tribes of India

'J^»#N^y T vi.(.^'-^<-<- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Toronto http://www.archive.org/details/wildtribesofindiOOrown THE WILD TRIBES OF INDIA. -A J a KHEMi" PATH AN S ^ M TRIBES MAP Hu'!>rligu»*yi' ; \ THE WILD TRIBES OF INDIA BY HORATIO BICKERSTAFFE ROWNEY. ' Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle. Rough qua7-ries, rocks, and hills 'whose heads touch hcaveti. It 7vas my hint to speak And of the Cannibals that each other eat. The Anthropophagi, and men ivhose heads Do srroio beneath their shoulders.'''—OxHEl.LO. LONDON: THOS. DE LA RUE & CO. 1882 \The right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved. PRINTED BY THOMAS DE LA RUE AND CO., BUNHILL ROSV, f^ f/f ^ CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY REMARKS PART I. THE INTERNAL TRIBES. CHAPTER I. Tribes of the Central Provinces CHAPTER n. Tribes in Western India CHAPTER III. Tribes of Rajpootana and the Indian Desert . 50 CHAPTER IV. The Kolarian and other Races in Bengal ... 59 CHAPTER V. Tribes of the Madras Presidency 95 Vlll CONTENTS. PART II. THE FRONTIER TRIBES. CHAPTER I. J'AGE Tribes on the North-Westerx Frontier. .117 CHAPTER H. Tribes on the Northern Frontier 127 CHAPTER HI. Tribes on the North-Eastern Frontier .... 148 CHAPTER IV. Tribes on the Eastern Frontier 196 PART III. GENERAL REMARKS .... THE WILD TRIBES OF INDIA. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. Without attaching much importance to the distinc- tions Aryan and Non-Aryan, it must be conceded that the population of India may be broadly arranged under two distinct divisions—namely, the Aboriginal and the Immigrant. Between Kurrachee on one side and Chittagong on the other there are more than a hundred passes through the mountain barriers that invest the country—that is, the Suleiman, the Hima- laya, and the Arracan mountains ; and these have given various races of invaders admittance into a land famous for its wealth from time anterior to the dawn of legend and chronicle. On the other hand, the sacred books of the country, which are undeniably ancient, are full of the accounts of an indigenous population that existed in it prior to the races of the X THE WILD TRIBES OF INDIA. Sun and the Moon, and describe minutely the fierce conflicts they waged with the invaders of their hearths and home ; and these accounts have evidently a large substratum of truth in them. The aboriginal tribes, we read, were for the most part vanquished and reduced to serfdom, and formed the servile and im- purer castes of the Hindu community, amalgamating either wholly or partially with their conquerors. But there were those who did not submit, who fought and receded till they reached parts of the country where the conquerors did not care to seek for them ; and there is no reason to doubt that the dark wild tribes of the interior hills and jungles of India, who differ so widely from the inhabitants of the plains, are the remnants of the stubborn Dasyas that did not yield. The condition of the conquering race is now well known, for it has been largely written upon ; but of the aboriginal tribes who retreated before them the general knowledge is yet very inconsiderable. Every inaccessible jungle, hill-tract, and fen-land of the country is occupied by them ; and they are to be seen there even now almost as isolated by manners, language, and prejudices of race from the population by whom they are surrounded as they were in the ; INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XI past. But they are all more or less shy of strangers, and the unhealthiness and inaccessibility of their retreats scarcely invite inquiry or intrusion. We see many parts of the country marked on the maps as " unexplored " or " thinly inhabited," for the best of all reasons that they are malaria-guarded. The English power is of course nominally dominant everywhere ; but, in point of fact, these unexplored and thinly inhabited tracts have been to this day only occasionally penetrated here and there by some eager sportsman or zealous missionary, or by an intrepid official whose presence on the spot was required by some exceptional duty. With some of the tribes the outrages perpetrated by them have made our con- nexion somewhat more intimate than with others but the information thus collected regarding them is after all but scanty. As a rule the Government officials everywhere have work enough to absorb all their energies, and the jungle and hill tracts receive merely so much of their attention as is absolutely necessary to repel or guard against the raids eman- ating therefrom. It is scarcely possible under such circumstances to give any very full account of all the wild tribes in the country. What we propose to Xll THE WILD TRIBES OF INDIA. do is simply to note down within a short compass the little that is actually known at present in regard to their habits, modes of life, and distinguishing peculiarities. The chief abode of the aboriginal races to be described is the centre of the peninsula—namely, the Vindhya mountains, which run east and west, from the Ganges to Guzerat, and the broad forest-tract extending north and south from the neighbourhood of Allahabad to the banks of the Godavery; but they are not necessarily the aborigines of the places they now occupy. In the Vedas the Dasyas are spoken of as having given a great deal of trouble and annoy- ance to the Brahmans ; and they were apparently pushed into their present homes by successive tides of invaders operating against them, and often appear as if they were cut off into small parties in their flight, portions of the same race being found scattered in different corners of the country. The main divisions of the Dasya race as now seen are : the Gonds, the Bheels, the Kolis, the Mairs and Meenas, the Khonds, the Koles, and the Sonthals; but they are not all one people—at least not at the present day, whatever they may have been in the past. Some INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. XUl particular features they do share in common, such as a common physiognomy, consisting of high cheek- bones, flat noses, and thick lips, a black colour, simi- lar habits of life, and great sameness of character. But the dissimilarities existing between them are also great in several respects, as we shall notice more especially hereafter; and they themselves do not admit any consanguinity with each other. Grouping them according to their obvious affinities, the Gonds are seen congregating in the Central Provinces, the Bheels and KoHs in Western India, the Mairs and Meenas in Rajpootana, the Koles, Sonthals, and Dhangurs in Bengal, and the Khonds between Orissa and Madras ; all occupying the wildest parts of each province respectively, all content to be called the " Sons of the Earth " or the " Children of the Forests," while the people of the plains pride themselves on their descent from the Sun and the Moon. The largest number of aborigines are to be seen in the Central Provinces, and the next largest in the Tributary Estates of Bengal ; while the most savage specimens are, perhaps, those located within the limits of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. There are many smaller communities also scattered all over the — xiv THE WILD TRIBES OF INDIA. peninsula, in every direction except the extreme south, each with a distinct name and with some distinguishing trait peculiar to itself; and on the frontiers—in the west, north, and east—are tribes of half-breeds, or of outsiders who have pierced through and settled, who have for ages passed muster with the aborigines of the country, though still retaining marked traces of their foreign origin—Afghan, Mon- golian, or Indo-Burmese—in their features and habits. All these tribes hold themselves distinct and aloof from the people of the plains, though from a desire to rise above their natural condition they are gradu- ally engrafting on their own the most popular beliefs and prejudices of their more civilised neighbours. They are all fit denizens of the places they occupy namely, the hills and forests of their respective provinces, which, left to themselves, would in a short time be overrun by wild beasts, that multiply in India with such remarkable fecundity. It is the wild tribes alone that keep these in check. Without them there would be no traces of habitation on the hills, no hopes of clearance and settlement in the jungles. It is true that many of these tribes live very much like the wild beasts themselves, but still free—free at least INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. as those wild beasts are. The hatred of t)Tanny which drove their ancestors to their present retreats survives yet in them, the one redeeming feature in their character being their utter abhorrence of thraldom and despotism. PART I. THE INTERNAL TRIBES. CHAPTER I. TRIBES OF THE CENTRAL PROVINCES. The Gonds. The most numerous of the Indian wild tribes are the Gonds, who occupy the Central Provinces (or the very heart of the peninsula), which are divided into two nearly equal halves by the Satpoora hills, that run south of the Nermudda river, east and west. The districts comprised in these Provinces are accordingly grouped into three classes—namely, those lying north of, or above, the hills ; those belonging to, or em- braced by, the hills; and those lying south of, or below, the hills. The districts of the second division form the hill-region of the entire territory, a great portion of which belonged to Holkar before the Mahratta wars ; but at present the plateau of the hills belongs wholly to the Rajah of Rewah, while the valleys in its neighbourhood are owned by the British Government.

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