The Ethnology of India. . 39 



class the Kharwars, (fee. with Kolarians rather than with Dravidians. 

 Mr. Mather, quoting Mr. Jones, says that, passing on from the Khar- 

 wars, he came to the ' Oraons,' in whom he found " the difference from 

 the Mirzapore Hill people to he so great, that they appeared to be 

 quite another nation." In fact, the Oraons are now a good deal 

 interposed between the Kharwars and Kolarian Moonclahs, but Col. 

 Dalton also says that the Kharwars and Oraons, though in contact, 

 are very unlike one another in language, appearance, manners and 

 customs. The Kharwars, he says, are not quite so African looking 

 as the Oraons, but some of them seem to be not much better favoured. 

 A long connection with the plains would best account for the adop- 

 tions of the language and some of the manners of the plains-people 

 by the Kharawars and Raj wars. And here the question has suggested 

 itself to me, whether they may not perhaps be identified with the 

 Cheroos and Bhurs, those aboriginal tribes whose dominion in the 

 plain country to the north of these hills is matter of histoiy, who 

 seem certainly to have come from and to have gone to the country 

 now inhabited by these tribes, and who fr?>ni this point of their his- 

 tory almost or wholly disappear. Buchanan seems to speak ambi- 

 guously, sometimes classing Kharawars and Cheroos together, sometimes 

 treating of them as separate. While mentioning the Cheroos as 

 nearly extinct in the plains, he speaks of them as still existing in 

 numbers in the high country within the hills. In the accounts of 

 the latter country, on the other hand, I find no mention of either 

 Cheroos or Bhurs under those names. Farther inquiry seems neces- 

 sary. Our use of Roman letters applied to native names is very 

 uncertain, and if we could suppose the C in Cheroo to be pronounced 

 hard as in Cole, Cheroo would become Kheroo, and Kheroo would be 

 not very different from the Khara of Kharawar (the ( war' is a mere 

 termination), while Khara might again be connected with the name 

 of the Kolarian Khorewahs already mentioned, and with the Koors, 

 equally Kolarian, to be subsequently noticed. Again, the Bhurs are 

 more commonly known as 'Rajbhurs;' may not Rajhbur have been 

 corrupted into ' Raj war ?' 



The present dominant position of the Kharwars in a considerable 

 country would seem much to tally with the idea of their representing 

 the tribes once so famous. Both the Rajas of Singrowlee and Jush- 



