4 Notes of a tour in the Tributary Mehals. [No. 1, 
The Bhooyas 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.t 
* They very probably formed a division in Rama’s army, hence their adoption 
of Hunooman’s pedigree, and their veneration for “* Mahabir.”’ 
+ 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 reeular features 
of the Hindu, and many of them with the grey eye that is frequently found 
amongst the Rajputs of Western India, 

