The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1. Robert Vane Russell
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 of Munda languages remain at present, and it seems therefore necessary to conclude that the Mundas of the Central Provinces and Chota Nāgpur have been separated from the tribes of Malaysia who speak cognate languages for an indefinitely long period; or else that they did not come through southern India to these countries but by way of Assam and Bengal or by sea through Orissa. There is good reason to believe from the names of places and from local tradition that the Munda tribes were once spread over Bihār and parts of the Ganges Valley; and if the Kolis are an offshoot of the Kols, as is supposed, they also penetrated across Central India to the sea in Gujarāt and the hills of the western Ghāts. The presumption is that the advance of the Aryans or Hindus drove the Mundas from the open country to the seclusion of the hills and forests. The Munda and Dravidian languages are shown by Sir G. Grierson to be distinct groups without any real connection.
Drawing water from the village well
Though the physical characteristics of the two sets of tribes display no marked points of difference, the opinion has been generally held by ethnologists who know them that they represent two distinct waves of immigration, and the absence of connection between their languages bears out this view. It has always been supposed that the Mundas were in the country of Chota Nāgpur and the Central Provinces first, and that the Dravidians, the Gonds, Khonds and Oraons came afterwards. The grounds for this view are the more advanced culture of the Dravidians; the fact that where the two sets of tribes are in contact those of the Munda group have been ousted from the more open and fertile country, of which, according to tradition, they were formerly in possession; and the practice of the Gonds and other Dravidian tribes of employing the Baigas, Bhuiyas and other Munda tribes for their village priests, which is an acknowledgment that the latter as the earlier residents have a more familiar acquaintance with the local deities, and can solicit their favour and protection with more prospect of success. Such a belief is the more easily understood when it is remembered that these deities are not infrequently either the human ancestors of the earliest residents or the local animals and plants from which they supposed themselves to be descended.
39. Of the Dravidian tribes
The Dravidian languages, Gondi, Kurukh and Khond, are of one family with Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Canarese, and their home is the south of India. The word Dravida comes from an older form Damila or Dramila, and was used in ancient Pali and Jain literature as a name for the people of the Tamil country.75 Afterwards it came to signify generally the people of southern India as opposed to Gaur or northern India.
As stated by Sir Edward Gait there is at present no evidence to show that the Dravidians came to southern India from any other part of the world, and for anything that is known to the contrary the languages may have originated there. The existence of the small Brahui tribe in Baluchistān who speak a Dravidian language but have no physical resemblance to other Dravidian races cannot be satisfactorily explained, but, as he points out, this is no reason for holding that the whole body of speakers of Dravidian languages entered India from the north-west, and, with the exception of this small group of Brahuis, penetrated to the south and settled there without leaving any traces of their passage.
The Dravidian languages occupy a large area in Madras, Mysore and Hyderābād, and they extend north into the Central Provinces and Chota Nāgpur where they die out, practically not being found west and north of this tract. As the languages are more highly developed and the culture of their speakers is far more advanced
See article on Gond.
Introduction to