The " Koh" of Cliota-Nagpore. 163 



ancestors brought under cultivation, and ryots from other parts of 

 India, more subservient to the wishes of the farmers, have been intro- 

 duced. In some villages the peasant proprietory right of the aborigines 

 has been entirely extinguished, and the few of that class that remain 

 are found in the position of farm labourers. 



In the southern parts of Chota-Nagpore the Moondah chiefs, there 

 as in Singbhoom called Mankees, have managed to retain their position, 

 first, by resisting in open arms all attempts to encroach upon it, and 

 lastly, by a settlement suggested and brought about by the officers of 

 the British Government and concluded with the Maharajah shortly 

 after the Kol disturbances in A. D. 1833. 



These Mankees have each under them about as many villages as 

 formerly were included in a " Purha," and they pay a quit rent to the 

 Maharajah as a commutation of the service and tribute in kind 

 formerly paid to him as Lord Paramount, and they collect this and a 

 little more as the contribution for their own support from the heads 

 of villages, who again collect according to ancient custom at fixed rates 

 from the villagers. There is fixity of tenure throughout, from the 

 Maharajah to the cultivator, notwithstanding the intervention of the 

 Mankee, the village Moondah, or Mohto. This is no doubt a living 

 exemplification of the relation that, in older times, subsisted between 

 the cultivator of the soil and his chief in most parts of India. 



In the Hoor Lurka Kols of Singbhoom we have a people who, 

 till recently, had no notion of what it was to pay rent to any one, or 

 even to give pecuniary support to their chiefs. They had their 

 Mankees and Moondahs, but no one exercised any right arising from 

 a title in the land except the cultivators. We have a very interesting 

 description of the Hos, their country and their languages, by Colonel 

 Tickell,* and to this, before proceeding further with my memoir, I 

 will add a brief sketch of their history. 



The Singbhoom district is of a singular interest to the ethnologist. 

 That portion of it called the Colehan, the Ho-desum or country proper 

 of the Hos, is a series of fair and fertile plains, broken, divided and 

 surrounded by hills ; about 60 miles in length from north to south, 

 and from 35 to 60 in breadth from east to west. It has to the south 

 and south east the tributary estates, Mohurbhun. Keonjur, Bonai 

 * As. Soc. Journal, Vol. IX. pp. 783, 997, 1063. 



