1874.] H. Banerji — Identification of Aboriginal Tribes. 15 



the Eev. Mr. Dunlop Moore, Sir John Malcolm, Captain Probyn and 

 other authorities are of opinion that the Kols or Kolis and the Bhils are 

 not distinct races, and we know that the Juan gas or Janguas are a 

 subdivision of the Kolarian race, the conjecture therefore follows that the 

 Kolarian race with all its branches was known to the Puranic writers under 

 the generic name of Bhillas, for we have hitherto failed to find in the 

 Puninasand the poetic literature of the middle ages any description or 

 details of the Kols distinct from those of the Bhils. The Bramha Vaivarta 

 Parana ascribes the origin of the Kols to a Tivara mother. Parasara and 

 others say that the Bhillas were born of a Tivara father and a Bhrahmani 

 mother.* 



The Bhils speak a sort of Hindi throughout their haunts in Eajputana, 

 and they are much more Hinduized in their habits and customs than most 

 of the other aboriginal tribes of Southern India. Indeed, the elder Hindu 

 writers classed them among the Antyajas or lowest castes of the Hindus. 

 It has been already noticed that the great Parasara, the father of the still 

 greater Yyasa, ascribes their origin to a Brahmani mother and Tivara father ; 

 the Tivara is the modern Tiar of Northern India and Bengal, and the 

 Tivaras according to the same authority were the offspring of a Chur- 

 naka woman by a Pundraka, both very low castes, the- Churnakars 

 are the Chunaris or makers of Chunam ; and these facts show that the 

 Bhillas were considered from a very early period to be a cross between an 

 Aryan and an aboriginal tribe. Later writers, particularly lexicographers, 

 it is true, classed them among the mlechchhas, but neither Manu nor the 

 otlier lawgivers have done so. Parasara appears to be a great tolerator of 

 all the hated tribes, and this may be accounted for by the fact, that he 

 himself begot Vyasa by a Kaivarta woman called Matsyagandha or she of 

 fishy-smell. Her son, Vyasa, of course, gives her a Kshatriya origin by a 

 most unnatural myth, though he admits her to be the nursling of Dosa, the 

 Kaivarta chief. Now these Kaivartas have been classed along with the Bhils 

 in one of the law books of the Hindus. f So we have not only the Kaivartas 

 but thePajakas (washermen) and the Charmakars (leather dressers) in this 

 category. The Charmakars are scarcely considered as Hindus. Sir George 

 Campbell, speaking of them in his Ethnology of India says " They used to be 

 sworn in a Court by a peculiar guru of their own, not by the ordinary name 





TffT ^T^f^TlW^ 



