302 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA 



weapons, and for tteir agricultural instruments, is forged 

 from the native ore of the hills, by a class called Agurias, 

 who seem to be a section of the Gonds. A Byga has been 

 known to attack and destroy a tiger with no other weapon 

 than his axe. This little weapon is also used as a projectile, 

 and the Byga will thus knock over hares, peafowl, etc., 

 with astonishing skiU. 



Though thus secluded in the wilderness, the Mandla. 

 Byga is by no means extremely shy, and will placidly go 

 on cutting his dhya while a train of strangers is passing him, 

 when a wild Gond or Korku would have abandoned aU and 

 fled to the forest. They are truthful and honest almost 

 to a fault, being terribly cheated in consequence in their 

 deahngs with the traders ; and they possess the patriarchal 

 form of self-government stiU so perfectly, that nearly all 

 their disputes are settled by the elders without appeal, 

 though these of course, under our aUen system, possess no 

 legal authority. Serious crime among them is almost 

 unheard of. The strangest thing about them is that, 

 though otherwise certainly the wildest of all these races, 

 they have no aboriginal language of their own, speaking 

 a rude dialect of which almost every word can be traced 

 to the Hindi. They can also communicate with the 

 Gonds in their language, though they do not use it among 

 themselves. A similar case' is that of the Bheels, in the 

 western continuation of these hiUs, who, though also 

 extremely wild, have no pecuhar language of their own, and 

 never have had, so far as history informs us. There are 

 many points of resemblance between the Bygas and the 

 Bheels, and there seems to be no evidence to connect either 

 with the Kolarian or the Dravidian famihes of aborigines. 

 Further inquiry may show them to be remnants of a 

 race anterior in point of time to both, and from which the 

 Hindi may have borrowed its numerous non-Sanscrit 

 vocables. We know that, at an early period in Hindii 

 history, Bheels held the country up t6 the river Janma, 

 which they do not now approach within many hundred 

 miles. 



There is every reason to beUeve that these Bygas are, if 

 not autochthonous, at least the predecessors of the Gonds 



