66 Memoir of Ga/pt. J as. Forsyth, by the Rev. Jas. Forsytli 



The Settlement occupied him for two years of arduous labour, 

 and at the close he gave in to the Chief Commissioner a report, 

 forming a volume of 356 pages, so full, elaborate, and exhaustive 

 on the entire statistics of the district, as to call forth the highest 

 eulogiums from the government. 



In his Settlement Report, Capt. Forsyth dwells, more than he 

 had previously done, on ethnical and historical details relative to 

 the Aboriginal tribes, with whom he had come so largely in con- 

 tact, in the course of his official labours. Previous to the 

 subjugation of the Provinces in 1819, these tribes had been al- 

 most constantly in feud with each other, but subsequent to that 

 event, under the firm and steady but mild repressing influence of 

 British rule, they had gradually subsided into an orderly and law- 

 abiding population, living in peace and harmony together, inter- 

 marrying and mingling freely with each other, and pursuing the 

 cultivation of their lands, exposed only to the ravages of the wild 

 elephant, buffalo, bison, and larger antelope, which wrought 

 such havoc among their crops'. As a people, they are so much 

 intermixed, that the original distinctions of race are in a great 

 degree effaced ; -but they are chiefly descended from those two 

 great fountains of population in Eastern India, the Rajpoot and 

 Hindu. Those of Rajpoot descent are much the nobler, and ex- 

 hibit a higher type, equally in physique and intellect. They are 

 met with chiefly among the Korkus and Bumahs ; and the Raj- 

 poot chiefs and land owners are boastful of their ancestry, assert 

 a pre-eminence on that account, and are watchful over the purity 

 of their blue blood. Their religions are not less mixed than their 

 tribes ; the Brahminical superstitions have largely obtained 

 among them ; but other forms of belief and worship retain their 

 ground. In particular, the ancient spirit worship, which gives 

 a special deity to every object in nature, to be worshipped by the 

 simplest of ceremonies, such as that of bending the body, and 

 propitiated by the simplest of oblations, such as the offering of 

 an onion, while the spirit deity itself is represented by a splash of 

 red paint on a rock or tree, or by any chance stone found in the 

 way — this ancient worship still keeps its place, especially among 

 the Gonds. Unhappily, their religions have no connection with 

 the moral life ; and greatly owing to this, it is abandoned to gross 

 indulgencies, and especially to excess of intemperance in the use 

 of an intoxicating drink distilled from the flowers of the Mhowa 



