1865.] Notes of a totir in the Tributary Mehals. 7 



including, it is said, several colonies of Brahmins, were slaughtered or 

 driven out of the country by the Lurka Coles. To the south, another 

 great vassal, under the title of Gurhoutea, holds the Hemzeer estate, 

 consisting of 84 villages, and an unlimited run of hill and forest, 

 (xungadhur the Gurhoutea, boasts that he can travel twenty-four miles 

 in a direct line over his own ground without seeing a human habita- 

 tion, all through hill and forest, which, united to enormous tracts of 

 hill and forest of Raigurk and Sumbulpore, forms perhaps the most 

 extensive uninhabited region in all India. The third of these vassals 

 has his estate on the north-west of G-angpore and holds the passes into 

 the country from Jushpore and Chota-Nagpore. This estate is in 

 advance of the passes, and looks as if it had been filched from Jush- 

 pore, to which from the geographical features it ought to belong. 



The chief is of the ' Seekur' family and claims connectionship with 

 the Rajah of Pachete. His ancestor the first Rajah of G-angpore, was, 

 we are told, invited by the Bhooyas to take charge of their country ; 

 from which, it is said, they had just expelled a Rajpoot family called 

 the " Kaiserbuns ;" but as I stated above, I think it more probable that 

 the ruling family are descended from the original Bhooya chiefs. The 

 traditions, assigning to them a nobler birth, are founded on the sup- 

 position that the Rajpoots or Cshetryas were the only class cmalifiecl 

 to rule, that where there was no one of this class over a nation or a 

 people, " the G-uddee" was vacant, and a Cshetrya had only to step 

 in and take it. The Cshetryas must have wandered about like knights- 

 errant of old, in search of these vacant G-uddees, as we do not find in 

 the countiy any descendants of the followers whom they must have 

 had, if they came in other fashion to oust the native chiefs and seize 

 the country. 



It was admitted to me that until these Tributary Mehals came 

 under British rule, a human sacrifice was offered every third year 

 before the shrine of Kali at Suadeeh, where the present Rajah resides. 

 The same triennial offering was made in Bonai and Bamra, Bhooya 

 priests officiating at all three shrines. This fact appears to me to be 

 confirmatory of the theory that the Hindus derived from the abori- 

 ginal races the practice of human sacrifices. 



In the above named districts, the practice of widows going " suttee" 

 was also generally followed in the familyof the chiefs and in Brah- 



