The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1. Robert Vane Russell

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      One large group includes the Kol, Munda or Ho tribe itself and the Bhumij and Santāls, who appear to be local branches of the Kols called by separate names by the Hindus. The Kharias seem to be the earliest Kol settlers in Chota Nāgpur, who were subjugated by the later comers. The name Kol, as already seen, is probably a form of the Santali hār, a man. Similarly the name of the Korku tribe is simply a corruption of Koraku, young men, and that of the Korwa tribe is from the same root. The dialects of the Korku and Korwa tribes closely approximate to Mundāri. Hence it would seem that they were originally one tribe with the Kols, but have been separated for so long a period that their direct connection can no longer be proved. The disintegrating causes which have split up what was originally one into a number of distinct tribes, are probably no more than distance and settlement in different parts of the country, leading to cessation of intermarriage and social intercourse. The tribes have then obtained some variation in the original names or been given separate territorial or occupational designations by the Hindus, and their former identity has gradually been forgotten. Both the Korwas of the Chota Nāgpur plateau and the Korkus of the Satpūra hills were known as Muāsi, a term having the meaning of robber or raider. The Korwas have also a subtribe called Korāku, and Mr. Crooke thinks that they were originally the same tribe. Sir G. Grierson states that the Korwa dialect is closely allied to Kharia. Similarly the resemblance of the name raises a presumption that the great Koli tribe of Gujarāt and western India may be a branch of the Kols who penetrated to the western coast along the Satpūlra and Central India hill ranges. The Kolis and Bhīls are tribes of the same country and are commonly spoken of together. Both have entirely lost their own language and cannot therefore be classified definitely either as Kolarian or Dravidian, but there is a probability that they are of the Kolarian family. The Nāhals, another tribe of the western Satpūra range, are an offshoot of the Korkus. They are coupled with the Bhīls and Kolis in old Hindu accounts.

      The Savars, Sawaras or Saonrs are also a widely distributed tribe, being found as far west as Bundelkhand and east in Orissa and Ganjām. In the Central Provinces they have lost their own language and speak Hindi or Uriya, but in Madras they still retain their original speech, which is classified by Sir G. Grierson with Gadba as a Munda or Kolarian dialect. The name occurs in Vedic literature, and the tribe is probably of great antiquity. In the classical stories of their origin the first ancestor of the Savars is sometimes described as a Bhīl. The wide extension of the Savar tribe east and west is favourable to the hypothesis of the identity of the Kols and Kolis, who have a somewhat similar distribution. The Gadbas of Ganjām, and the Māl or Māle Pahāria tribe of Chota Nāgpur seem to be offshoots of the Savars. The Khairwārs or Kharwārs are an important tribe of Mīrzāpur and Chota Nāgpur. There is some reason for supposing that they are an occupational offshoot of the Kols and Cheros, who have become a distinct group through taking to the manufacture of edible catechu from the wood of the khair tree.71

      Another great branch of the Kolarian family is that represented by the Bhuiya and Baiga tribes and their offshoots, the Bhunjias, Bhainas and Binjhwārs. The Kolarian origin of the Bhuiyas has been discussed in the article on that tribe, and it has also been suggested that the Baiga tribe of the Central Provinces are an offshoot of the Bhuiyas. These tribes have all abandoned their own languages and adopted the local Aryan vernaculars. The name Bhuiya is a Sanskrit derivative from bhu, earth, and signifies ‘belonging to the soil.’ Bhumij, applied to a branch of the Kol tribe, has the same origin. Baiga is used in the sense of a village priest or a sorcerer in Chota Nāgpur, and the office is commonly held by members of the Bhuiya tribe in that locality, as being the oldest residents. Thus the section of the tribe in the Central Provinces appears to have adopted, or been given, the name of the office. The Bharias or Bharia-Bhumias of Jubbulpore seem to belong to the great Bhar tribe, once dominant over large areas of the United Provinces. They also hold the office of village priest, which is there known as Bhumia, and in some tracts are scarcely distinguished from the Baigas. Again, in Sambalpur the Bhuiyas are known as Bhumia Kol, and are commonly regarded as a branch of the Kol tribe. Thus it would seem that two separate settlements of the Kolarian races may have occurred; the earlier one would be represented by the Bhars, Bhuiyas, Baigas and kindred tribes who have entirely lost their own languages and identity, and have names given to them by the Hindus; and a later one of the Kols or Mundas and their related tribes, whose languages and tribal religion and organisation, though in a decaying state, can be fully recognised and recorded. And the Dravidian immigration would be subsequent to both of them. To judge from the cases in which the fissure or subdivision of single tribes into two or more distinct ones can still be observed, it seems quite a plausible hypothesis that the original immigrants may have consisted only of a single tribe on each occasion, and that the formation of new ones may have occurred after settlement. But the evidence does not warrant any definite assertion.

      37. Dravidian tribes

      The principal Dravidian tribes are the Gonds, Khonds and Oraons. The Gonds were once dominant over the greater part of the Central Provinces, which was called Gondwana after them. The above three names have in each case been given to the tribes by the Hindus. The following tribes are found in the Province:

      Gond, Oraon or Kurukh, Khond, Kolām, Parja, Kamār. Tribal Castes: Bhatra, Halba, Dhoba. Doubtful: Kawar, Dhanwār.

      The Gonds and Khonds call themselves Koi or Koitur, a word which seems to mean man or hillman. The Oraon tribe call themselves Kurukh, which has also been supposed to be connected with the Kolarian horo, man. The name Oraon, given to them by the Hindus, may mean farmservant, while Dhangar, an alternative name for the tribe, has certainly this signification.

      There seems good reason to suppose that the Gonds and Khonds were originally one tribe divided through migration.72 The Kolāms are a small tribe of the Wardha Valley, whose dialect resembles those of the Gonds and Khonds. They may have split off from the parent tribe in southern India and come northwards separately. The Parjas appear to represent the earliest Gond settlers in Bastar, who were subjugated by later Gond and Rāj-Gond immigrants. The Halbas and Bhatras are mixed tribes or tribal castes, descended from the unions of Gonds and Hindus.

      38. Origin of the Kolarian tribes

      The Munda languages have been shown by Sir G. Grierson to have originated from the same source as those spoken in the Indo-Pacific islands and the Malay Peninsula. “The Mundas, the Mon-Khmer, the wild tribes of the Malay Peninsula and the Nicobarese all use forms of speech which can be traced back to a common source though they mutually differ widely from each other.”73 It would appear, therefore, that the Mundas, the oldest known inhabitants of India, perhaps came originally from the south-east, the islands of the Indian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula, unless India was their original home and these countries were colonised from it.

      Sir Edward Gait states: “Geologists tell us that the Indian Peninsula was formerly cut off from the north of Asia by sea, while a land connection existed on the one side with Madagascar and on the other with the Malay Archipelago; and though there is nothing to show that India was then inhabited, we know that it was so in palaeolithic times, when communication was probably still easier with the countries to the north-east and south-west than with those beyond the Himalayas.”74 In the south of India, however, no traces СКАЧАТЬ