! 
4 
1865.] Notes of a tour 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. 
Gungadhur 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 Raigurh 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 Gangpore 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 Gangpore, 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 qualified 
to rule, that where there was no one of this class over a nation or a 
people, “the Guddee” 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 Guddees, as we do not find in 
the country 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 Suadeech, 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 ‘ suttce’’ 
was also generally followed in the family of the chiefs and in Brah- 
