4 Notes of a tour in the Tributary Mehals. [No. 1, 



The Bliooyas call themselves ' children of the wind' ' Pawun buns,' 

 this would establish their affinity to the Apes, as Hunooman is called 

 " Pawun-ka-poot," the son of the wind.* 



The Bonai hills shelter some thousands of the race commonly called 

 Coles, who all represent themselves as having at some period emi- 

 grated from Singbhoom or Chota-Nagpore. They have not benefited 

 by the change. Their brethren on the Chota-Nagpore plateau and in 

 the plains of Singbhoom are better off and better looking. The emi- 

 grants must be the most unimprovable of the race, who, finding that 

 the old country is becoming too civilized for them, fly from the clear- 

 ances they have made, hide themselves in the hill forests, and relapse 

 into the condition of savages. 



Amongst the races of Bonai yet to be noticed, are the Kolitas, a 

 very enterprising and respectable class of cultivators, that are found in 

 these regions, Sumbulpore, and strange to say, Assam. 



A very large proportion of the purely Hindu part of the Assa- 

 mese population are Kolitas, and in accounting for the different races 

 that are found in that province, the antecedents of the Kolitas have 

 always been a difficulty. They have none of the peculiarities of the 

 Indo-Chinese stock. They are considered, in Assam, as of very pure 

 caste, next in dignity to Kaists, and are on this account much in re- 

 quest amongst the higher classes as house servants. Another difficulty 

 in Assam was to account for what was called the Bhooya dynasty, of 

 which traces are found all through the valley, and it is recorded in 

 their history, that the north bank of the Brahmapootra above Bish - 

 nath was known as the country of the Barra Bhooya, long subsequent 

 to the subjugation of the districts of the southern bank by the Ahoms. 

 It appears to me, that there is a strong reason for supposing that the 

 purely Hindu portion of the Assamese Sudra population was originally 

 from this part of India. There is, in idiom especially, a strong resem- 

 blance between the Assamese and Ooriah languages, and though the 

 •Ooriah written character did not take root in Assam, this may be 

 owing to all the priestly families having been introduced from Bengal. f 



* They very probably formed a division in Rama's army, hence their adoption 

 of Hunooman's pedigree, and their veneration for " Mahabir." 



f In a paper in the Asiatic Society's Journal for June 1848, the Assam 

 Kolitas are described by Col. Hannay as having the high and regular features 

 of the Hindu, and many of them with the grey eye that is frequently found 

 amongst the Rajputs of Western India. 



