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300 



P. Carnegy— The Bhars of Audi and Bandras. 



[No. 3, 





or plunderers, whether they speak the language of Mlechchhas or that of 

 Aryas." D&syu is a common word used in old Hindu writings to indicate 

 such outcastes as the Bhars, Bhils, Chiros, Gonds, and Kols, most of whom 

 strange to say, still keep up a Rajput tribal nomenclature, and most of 

 whom are gradually becoming again uplifted and enlisted into the fraternity 



of Rajputs. Family vicissitudes are thus treated by Manu : " Should the 



tribe springing from a Brahman by a Sudra mother, produce a succession of 

 children by the marriages of its women with other Brahmans, the low tribe 

 shall be raised to the highest in the seventh generation. As the son of a 

 Sudra may thus attain the rank of a Brahman, and as the son of a Brahman 

 may sink to a level with the Sudra, even so must it be with him who springs 

 from a Kshatriya j even so with him who was born a Vaisya." 



These quotations from the famous Code of Hindu Ethics surely make it 

 very clear that there was a general Brahmanical fall, when distinctions of 

 language even did not prevent the people from becoming a universal family 

 of Dasyus or outcastes, a family known in the area of which we treat as 

 Bhars ; and they also explain how in the general Brahmanical revival that 

 finally followed, these robbers and plunderers were admitted once more to 

 all the privileges and beatitudes of the twice-born. 



Many years of the official life of the writer have been devoted to duties 

 which involved the examination of the genealogies of some of our oldest 

 and best native families, and the results of his enquiries have led him to the 

 following conclusions : (1) That not a single member of the landed gentry 

 or local priesthood can trace back to an ancestor who held an acre of land 

 or who administered a spiritual function, within the area under enquiry 

 during the Bhar supremacy ; (2) That scarcely any of them can trace 

 back to an ancestor who came into Audh at the Muhammadan advent, when 

 the Bhars, who were then in universal possession of the land, were over- 

 thrown ; and (3) That the great mass of the landowners of to-day can trace 

 no further back than to an ancestor whose origin is easily discovered to be 

 both indigenous and spurious. 



Referring to the first of these three classes, it amounts unquestionably 

 to this ; that in what was once the very heart and soul of Hindustan, the 

 much vaunted birthplace of the solar race and of Hinduism, there was not 

 a single Hindu landowner left in it, and it had become overrun by pagans, 

 when the Muhammadans conquered it ; but no sooner had that event taken 

 place, than not a pagan was to be seen anywhere ; they had utterly dis- 

 appeared, and the country at once became peopled again with orthodox 

 Hindus, with their veds and their pandits, just as if they had never left it. 



In regard to the second of these classes, the writer thinks it expedient 

 here to quote some remarks from a treatise by him on the < Races of 

 Audh' :— 



