348 T. H. Hendley — An Account oftJie Maiwar Bhils. [Xo. 4, 



The common explanation of the construction of cairns and horses is as 

 follows : — Heaven is supposed to be but a short distance from earth, but the 

 souls of the dead have to reach it by a very painful and weary journey, 

 which can be avoided to some extent during life by ascending high hills, 

 and there depositing images of the horse — which, in addition to reminding 

 the gods of the work already accomplished, shall serve as chargers upon 

 which the soul may ride a stage to bliss. The more modest make a hollow 

 clay effigy, with an opening in the rear, into which the spirit can creep. An 

 active Bhil may, in this fashion, materially shorten the journey after death : 

 both men and women follow the custom. 



Sir, J. Malcolm says, " They (the Bhils) reverence the horse and do 

 " not mount him ; all their legends" (as far as Major Gunning and I can dis- 

 cover, the people of the Tracts appear to have no legends) " hinge upon him, 

 " they make mud horses which they range round the idol" ; this they do in the 

 fort at Khairwara " and promise to mount him, if he will hear their prayer". 

 This superstitious adoration, which is quite universal amongst them, and 

 which exists in parts of the Tracts where a living horse is almost unknown, 

 might, perhaps, seem to favour a Turanian connexion, and be a relic of a 

 life in which the horse was of some use to them, as it is now with the races 

 who live on and by his swiftness (Tiira, swiftness as of the horse). The cus- 

 tom is a common one. In a paper on ' Nooks and Corners in Bengal' (Journal, 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. XXI), the author notices that the villagers 

 offer clay horses at the foot of a tree near Plassey ; these people were probably 

 Muhammadans, as Ja'far Sharif in his Kanun-i-Islam mentions this as a 

 custom amongst them. A Bhil explanation for the ascent of hills is the 

 desire to obtain offspring. The Bajput adores the horse, as he does his sword, 

 his elephant, and furniture of war, at the Dasahra, Installation of Chiefs, &c, 

 but much in the same sense as the Kayath his writing materials, thfr fencer 

 his sticks, or the bania his account-books ; to him, therefore, we cannot 

 look for the origin of the Bhil custom. 



Platforms of stone, or sthdns, on which are placed slabs upright, 

 generally plain, or merely named after a god and daubed with red paint, 

 sometimes carved to represent Hanuman, quite an aboriginal deity if not 

 the deified aborigine himself. The deity to whom the slabs are dedicated is 

 usually Mahadeva ; occasionally a regular Devangan, or court of gods, is 

 formed around the real object of worship, but this is accidental. I have 

 neither seen nor heard of any gigantic stone monuments existing in the 

 Bhil country, either Menhirs or Cromlechs, as found in the Dakhin, nor 

 should we expect to find them where pre-eminently a village system flourish- 

 es, as amongst the Bhils : such works require a powerful and united people 

 for their construction. The erection of a slab is perhaps as good an evidence 

 of the existence of this Turanian custom as the presence of a huge and in- 



